They sat in silence for a long time, hearing nothing but their breathing and the drops falling from the ceiling.
Daniel was turning the matter over in his mind. He could no longer bear the silence, nor being merely a listener.
He wanted to say something... anything to break the silence that Yusuf's story had created.
He cleared his throat slightly, and his voice came out hesitant:
"You know... I wasn't born here. I was born in New York. Brooklyn."
Yusuf raised his eyebrow, as if to say, "So what?"
Daniel swallowed hard and continued:
"I always heard that Israel was the promised land. The only democracy in the Middle East. The place where Jews could live in safety after what happened in Europe. My grandmother survivedthe Holocaust... Our whole lives revolved around the idea that this land was our salvation. So I decided to come here. I arrived just two months ago... I joined the army to defend this homeland."
Yusuf remained silent, but he did not look away.
Daniel felt encouraged to continue:
"I thought I was fighting terrorism. That you wanted to destroy us. That I was fighting for
freedom."
Yusuf smiled bitterly and said in Arabic first:
"Freedom..."
Then he repeated it in heavy English:
"Freedom? Freedom from whom? Your freedom... or mine?"
Daniel froze.
He didn't know how to respond.
Yusuf added:
"When your freedom is built on walls that surround me... it is not freedom. When your daughter laughs while my daughter hides from the bombing... that is not freedom. Freedom does not mean that only you live. Freedom means that we all live."
Daniel bowed his head.
For the first time, he felt that the words he had grown up with seemed hollow in the face of such stark simplicity.
He remembered his grandmother, her stories about Europe, about fear and persecution.
He raised his head, his voice shaking:
"My grandmother always said, 'It will never happen again.' That's why we need Israel."
Yusuf replied, his voice growing deeper:
"It will never happen again... It shouldn't mean 'it will never happen again to the Jews', it should mean 'it will never happen again to any people'. What is the point of escaping injustice only to create greater injustice on someone else's land?"
Daniel remained silent.
He felt he was hearing a new echo of his grandmother's famous phrase... but this time from the mouth of a man who had lost his parents, his home and his child under his army's missiles.
That night, they sat facing each other for the first time without barriers.
They were no longer just a guard and a prisoner.
They were two men on opposite sides of the road, each trying to understand the other, and
perhaps to redefine himself.