An open letter to a national hero

Ilan,

It is the spring season again. Migrating birds return and the seasonal flowers are in full bloom. Every year it happens. It was like this sixteen years ago too. You saw this season in Lebanon. Who could have foretold that it would be your last spring; that it would be the last time you’d be looking at the return of the migrating birds, and taking in the scented air of the seasonal flowers?
Sixteen years is a long time. But this garden remains unchanged. Time has not altered it. It is the one place I visit each time I return to Ra’anana and feel a sense of familiarity.

I look onto rows and rows of names; young men and women whose name is now neatly engraved on a stone and whose life is neatly summed in five lines. I look around and the memories return;. I see Royi’s name. He was killed in Har Dov, in an ambush. Daniel was a victim of the "Night of Hang-gliders" which, some say, sparked the first intifada. Shlomit was killed in a helicopter crash when we were still in the army. And as I sit here, I see your name in front of me.

It all comes back to me now, fresh, vivid, and raw; the radio news flash announcing an incident in the Lebanese border; then the list of fatalities and your name among them. The following day we met here, your family, army colleagues and school friends. I remember the coffin draped in the national flag. I remember you being lowered into the patch of land where you’re now. Your mother whispered that you mustn’t bury flowers. Your parents’ faces have returned to haunt me many times since. We stood there dazed and embarrassed, not sure what to say to them. We had no training or practice to deal with the situation. Yael finally went up to your father and told him that we were your school friends. He smiled at her and she hugged him. Then they both broke down crying.

Tali, who had been with you in the same class since elementary school suddenly recalled how the teacher explained to the class that Ilan means ‘tree’ and that it symbolised life because trees were strong, bore fruit and lived for a long time. There were even special laws in the bible protecting trees during times of war. "So why weren’t you blessed with the qualities of a tree? Why were you not protected?" she asked wistfully. Ronen recalled how we used to sprint around the perimeter of this cemetery during our sports lessons and how you always came first. Now you are on the other side of the wall, no longer running.

There it was: our first class reunion, in a cemetery, not even a year after we left school. It was an abrupt end to our childhood; a rude awakening to a stark reality. And we weren’t yet 20 years old.

Ra’anana, the small provincial village where we grew up is no longer small or provincial. And yet anyone who grew up in Ra’anana still thinks of it as a moshava. I wonder what you’d make of it if you saw it now, with its traffic lights, McDonald’s and high-rise buildings.

Often, unexpectedly, I think of you. I think of all the things you could have been. I hear your pop music blaring from your ghetto blaster and your contagious laughter. Then, in a familiar sequence of thoughts, I am returned to that terrible day in April 1989 when the RPG pierced your tank and shattered your plans; your hopes and dreams. Then there’s that surge of guilt. Who decides the names on this mortal lottery? Who decides whose journey ends mid-way?
Meanwhile, the violence continues unabated and the rows here grow longer. Blood, hate and tears make it impossible to look into the distance. Will we forever live by the sword? Will we live to see the end of these murderous times?

We, your school friends, are now scattered around the globe. We have taken up different professions, embraced different life styles in different places. Who would have thought that one day you’d appear in my writing? That I’d write about you in the past tense?
And now, each time we get together we mention your name and there’s a moment of silence as we remember you, the school kid with the incorrigible smile, the sprinter who would not stop running and the young soldier who went to Lebanon and did not return.
Ilan Haziza fell in Lebanon on April 8, 1987. He was 19.