All Yellow

A finely-dressed Orthodox man stands at the traffic lights, handing out pamphlets. Beard perfectly tousled, he sports designer glasses and fits snugly into his pressed black suit. As the lights turn red he strides by the bumpers of halted vehicles, gazing directly into drivers’ eyes, hands pushing forth religious literature while his face remains serene, lips never move. A man of conviction.

On foot, I cross the busy interchange, passing an animated cluster of people. They shift erratically, a human swarm over the traffic island. I slow down to find them circulating around an office chair. Bright yellow, hostage colour. A photograph propped up in the seat.

Their mood is buoyant, like a group of friends holding a surprise birthday party. I check myself for this perverted idea, since Avinatan – that’s him in the photograph – is in fact packed in a tunnel one hundred kilometres south of here. A demented party in Gaza where the birthday boy refuses to come out from an endless game of hide and seek.

Someone holds up a camera to record: bustling intersection, empty chair. And the unmissable subtext, the grim situation in this country, on this planet, some awful truth about the human condition and our magnificent ability to hate, all that big picture mess and Avinatan stays chained to a wall.

The group walks on, pushing the office chair across the interchange like a rolling punctuation mark, brushing the silent book preacher deeper into the scenery of our waking nightmare.