Exactly thirty years ago, a prime minister who sought to bring peace to the region was assassinated in Israel. Time flies when you’re repressing truths. After the assassination, many voices quickly offered reassurances, explaining that the murderer was just a bad apple, an aberration that in no way reflected the national mood.Three decades have passed. Itamar Ben-Gvir – a racist found guilty of criminal acts, who was among the leaders of demonstrations where Rabin was portrayed as a traitor – has long since been promoted from convicted criminal to Minister of National Security. And the man who stood on stage riling up those crowds that waved posters of Rabin in Nazi uniform? He’s the prime minister.Three decades have passed. Rabin is still dead, but his legacy lives on. You can feel it in the air, like a bothersome hum, an itch you can’t scratch, a phantom pain in an amputated limb. It’s here to remind us, at every moment, of what we once were and what we’ve become, of how quickly we traded dreams of good neighborliness and justice for a messianic fantasy of eternal war.To mark the anniversary, I’m sharing a story I wrote soon after the assassination. It’s a story about childhood, friendship, and pets, but above all, it’s about longing and frustration: two emotions that today, thirty years later, I feel all the more powerfully.

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Rabin’s dead. It happened last night. He got run over by a scooter with a sidecar. Rabin died on the spot. The guy on the scooter got hurt real bad and passed out, and they took him away in an ambulance. They didn’t even touch Rabin. He was so dead, there was nothing they could do. So me and Tiran picked him up and buried him in my back yard. I cried after that, and Tiran lit up and told me to stop crying ‘cause I was getting on his nerves. But I didn’t stop, and pretty soon he started crying too. Because I really loved Rabin a lot, but Tiran loved him even more. Then we went to Tiran’s house, and there was a cop on the front stairs waiting to bag him, because the guy on the scooter came to and squealed to the doctors at the hospital. He told them Tiran had bashed his helmet in with a crowbar. The cop asked Tiran why he was crying and Tiran said “Who’s crying, you fascist motherfucking pig.” The cop smacked him once, and Tiran’s father came out and wanted to take down the cop’s name and stuff, but the cop wouldn’t tell him, and in less than five minutes, there must’ve been like thirty neighbors standing there. The cop told them to take it easy, and they told him to take it easy himself. There was a lot of shoving, and it looked like someone was going to get clobbered again. Finally the cop left, and Tiran’s dad sat us both down in their living-room, and gave us some Sprite. He told Tiran to tell him what happened, and to make it quick, before the cop returned with backup. So Tiran told him he’d hit someone with a crowbar but that it was someone who had it coming, and that the guy’d squealed to the police. Tiran’s dad asked what exactly he had it coming for, and I could see right away that he was pissed off. So I told him it was the guy on the scooter that started it, ‘cause first he ran Rabin over with his sidecar, then he called us names and then he went and slapped me too. Tiran’s dad asked him if it was true, and Tiran didn’t answer but he nodded. I could tell that he was dying for a cigarette but he was afraid to smoke next to his dad.

We found Rabin in the Square. Soon as we got off the bus we spotted him. He was just a kitten then, and he was so cold he was trembling. Me and Tiran and this uptown girl with a navel stud that we met there, we went to get him some milk. But at Espresso Bar they wouldn’t give us any. And at Burger Ranch, they didn’t have milk, ‘cause they’re a meat place and they’re kosher, so they don’t sell dairy stuff. Finally at the grocery store on Frishman Street they gave us a half-pint and an empty yoghurt cup, and we poured him some milk, and he lapped it up in one go. And Avishag—that was the name of the girl with the stud—said we ought to call him Shalom, because shalom means peace, and we’d found him right in the Square where Rabin died for peace. Tiran nodded, and asked her for her phone number, and she told him he was really cute, but that she had a boyfriend in the army. After she left, Tiran patted the kitten and said that we’d never in a million years call him Shalom, because Shalom is a sissy name. He said we’d call him Rabin, and that the broad and her boyfriend in the army could go fuck themselves for all he cared, ‘cause maybe she had a pretty face but her body was really weird.

Tiran’s dad told Tiran it was lucky he was still a minor, but even that might not do him much good this time, because bashing people with a crowbar isn’t like stealing chewing gum from a candy store. Tiran still didn’t say anything, and I could tell he was about to start crying again. So I told Tiran’s dad that it was all my fault, because when Rabin was run over I was the one who yelled it to Tiran. And the guy on the scooter, who was kind of nice at first, and even seemed sorry about what he’d done, asked me what I was screaming for. And it was only when I told him that the cat’s name was Rabin that he lost his cool, and slapped me. And Tiran told his dad: “First, the shit doesn’t stop at the stop sign, then he runs over our cat, and after all that he goes and slaps Sinai. What did you expect me to do? Let him get away with it?” And Tiran’s dad didn’t answer. He lit a cigarette, and without making a big deal about it, lit one for Tiran too. And Tiran said the best thing I could do would be to beat it, before the cops came back, so that at least one of us would stay out of it. I told him to lay off, but his dad insisted.

Before I went upstairs, I stopped for a minute at Rabin’s grave, and thought about what would have happened if we hadn’t found him. About what his life would have been like then. Maybe he’d have frozen to death, but probably someone else would have found him and taken him home, and then he wouldn’t have been run over. Everything in life is just luck. Even the original Rabin— after everyone sang the Hymn to Peace at the big rally in the Square, if instead of going down those stairs he’d hung around a little longer, he’d still be alive. And they would have shot Peres instead. At least that’s what they said on tv. Or else, if the broad in the Square wouldn’t have had that boyfriend in the army and she’d given Tiran her phone number and we’d called Rabin Shalom, then he would have been run over anyway, but at least nobody would have got clobbered.

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Housekeeping Note:As requested by readers, my narration of the story in English is followed by a bonus recording. So if you hear me talking to you in a weird language after the story ends, I’d like to assure you that I’m not mumbling a spell to conjure up the spirit of Lilith or trying to hypnotize you into joining the Mossad. It’s just me reading the story in Hebrew.Intro translated by Jessica Cohen״Rabin’s Dead״, Translated by Miriam Shlesinger, from the book “The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God & Other Stories” published by Penguin Random House 2015

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