Dov would tell himself afterwards that he knew something bad would happen that day, as soon as they got out of the taxi in Tzion Sheli. The IDF boy looked more nervous; for a moment he thought it was Josh - nothing would surprise him now - but then he glanced across to the children’s playground and saw his stepson and Rebekah having foreplay on the carousel.
‘Here you are!’ Asher was beside them.’You pay the cabbie? How much you pay? WHAAAT?’ He was stepping in front of the cab and waving his arms, leaning in at the passenger window yelling, walking towards them waving a fistful of shekels. ‘That guy ripped you off!’
Do shrugged. ‘I assumed he was a good plain Jewish cabbie.’
Asher narrowed his eyes at him. ‘Always the wise guy, eh!’ A moan came from the playground and the adults looked over to see Rebekah climb on top of Josh on a swing. ‘It does my heart good to see good plain Jewish kids having fun in their own land.’
As they watched, an Arab woman with a small son walked up to the playground. She stood with her face pressed against the caging; the little boy did the same. Then she shouted something at the teenagers; Rebekah shouted back laughing. The woman shouted louder this time and Rebekah jumped off of the swing - and Josh - and strode over to the woman and child. She looked very angry.
‘Aren’t you going to - ‘ Jackie moved towards the situation - it was definitely a situation - but Asher put his arm out and held her back.
‘No. That’s not how we do things here.’
‘But - ‘
‘I said no, Jackie. Josh is a lovely kid - but I’d rather my girl was dead than be like him. She knows we have to fight back. Or there was never any point in us surviving.’
Now Rebekah was face to face with the woman, separated only by the cage, both of them shouting in each other’s faces in two different languages which, Jackie had noticed before, sounded alike when the speakers were angry. Stepping back so that Jackie and Asher couldn’t see him, Dov slipped his best camera carefully from his satchel - he knew it was corny to still carry the old-fashioned kind when everything was so much easier done digitally, but he had been enchanted by the work of Vivian Maier when it went viral that time, and she’d used a Rolleiflex, they were just so beautiful. Careful not to make a sound, he took half a dozen shots. This was gold - ‘Prisoners’ he’d call it.