He sits at a wobbly table in his usual café in the heart
of Jerusalem finishing off his third cigarette. He puffs away anxiously, eager
to start the next one as soon as his tired lungs will let him.
He doesn’t usually drink espresso, but today he needs a
good kick.
He wriggles in his seat, can’t seem to find a comfortable
resting position. His insides are squirming as he reads the paper.
On an ordinary day he would nurse a latte while eaves
dropping on his neighbours; a woman is pregnant, a couple breaking up, the
state of the government. Today all the talk at the tables around him is the
same.
A boy, who more than one thousand eight hundred and
twenty five days ago, was taken from his home soil in an act of warfare or terrorism,
and now, after all this time, his return looks within arm’s reach.
Five years. The man thinks about what has happened to him
in five years. How the street he looks out on has changed. How the street
language has changed. How people have changed.
For so long this boy has neither seen his family or his people.
Does he realise there has been a worldwide campaign to bring him out? Does he
care? Or does he just want to be with his parents who have sat in torment and torture
in a purgatory where they can neither mourn the death of their son, nor hope
for his return? That is, until now.
At long last, his nation’s protests, petitions and
prayers will be answered.
The man read’s on, and his excitement is confused by the
following paragraph explaining the price of the exchange. One thousand and
twenty seven convicted criminals, each with at least one life sentence for acts
of violence and terror. Hands dyed red with the blood of the innocent. They
will be returned to their homes, some just minutes from the café.
Will this trade throw this city into an all too familiar
wave of chaos where Molotov cocktails are the least of his worries?
The article says these prisoners are not only to be
released, but to be given a pardon signed by the president. He doesn’t envy the
president.
He lights another cigarette, a luxury the stolen boy has
not had for so many years.
So many questions swirl in his mind. He sways with the ebb and flow of
his moral compass.
This is not an equal exchange by any means, but we cannot
leave a live man behind enemy lines. But doesn’t this encourage the militia to
do this again? How many more lives will be lost from this trade off? In what
state will we be getting him back? Is this just a political move for a
government who is losing public support?
He concludes that the trade is irrational, but none the less it is what must be done.
He realises now that he is a part of a country that sees
more value in the life of a stranger than he has for his own. He still shuffles
in his seat, but now more so from anticipation than concern.
Today is not an ordinary day.
