smoke

“Yeah, I heard you’re a big rock star here, but not in my room

Smokers,” Ron the psychologist told me in the small treatment room that was there

So at school Vitzo Hadasim.

With sadness and a sense of defeat, I extinguished the red Marlboro cigarette

Mine was in the disposable cup he handed me earlier and was now half full.

This was our third meeting. I was in the 10th grade and I agreed to start

Talk to someone about what I went through at home before I went to boarding school.

“So what do you say about this holocaust I went through at home?” I asked

And I looked into his eyes with a spark of rage.

Ron didn’t smile. His face wore a very serious expression and he looked into my eyes and said to me:

“What i say? I’ll tell you what I say. I say you will grow up

To be a person who values his freedom more than the average person. I say

That you are a special warrior, and if God forbid you fall into captivity one day, you will know how to survive

Him more than anyone else I know. I say you should know

Grow from it and become a symbol for those who were in the dark pit like you. choose to be

The Batman. That’s what I’m saying. Oh, and stop smoking, it’s just a cheap escape

of your fears.”

I longed for mercy, and instead he gave me empowerment.

The meeting with Ron was over, and it was our last meeting. Ron

I moved to work at the youth center, and I got a new psychologist that I especially liked,

In the name of Isaiah Bola, who always came to school riding a thin bicycle,

cuts through the fields of Netanya.

Isaiah smoked a pipe, and once recommended that I watch the movie “Smoking” by

Paul Auster and explained to me how similar our life paths are to the winding paths of

The cigarette smoke. For our last meeting, when I was in high school, I didn’t wake up

On time, but when I opened the door of my room in the boarding school I saw that it was taped to it

A note with an illustration of a hot air balloon, on which it is written: “You didn’t come to the meeting

Ours, but I arrived. I’m sure you had a good reason. see you later

soon? Isaiah.”

Many years have passed. The Jerusalem cold did not spare me and the girl I was accompanying now

To the juvenile court she did not stop smoking, cigarette after cigarette, and when she stopped

And she asked me, “What about you? You don’t smoke do you?” I replied, “Not for years.”

In the meantime, we were called to enter the hall, and when the girl crossed Badal

The cigarette under one of her shoes was like it was the last cigarette for her,

I remembered Ron and Isaiah.