When Hamas returned the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit after five years of captivity, they dressed him in a plaid shirt with navy shoulders, a navy-and-white collar and navy cuffs. Some people made fun of the shirt, saying that he was dressed at the height of Gaza fashion. Others expressed outrage at the terrorists, saying that they had made him look silly on purpose. But I believe that the person who chose the shirt chose it carefully, believing it looked nice, worthy of the momentous occasion.
*
“What is she wearing, that is not the way to dress.” My classmate is speaking Hebrew, a language in which these words sound natural. It is only when translated into English that they sound strange. The object of scorn is another girl, walking across the basketball court. I look at myself, dressed almost exactly as she is. I chose the outfit carefully, even saying to someone that I had found the perfect sweater buried deep in my closet; I did not even remember I owned it. I am not sure if my classmate is being cruel to me or if, in her indirectness, she is trying to be kind.
*
When I still lived in New York, a girl in my seventh-grade science class left a copy of Seventeen on her desk. I had never read Seventeen before. I did not know it existed, though clearly this girl did, knew enough to have it mailed to her house, her name and address stuck onto its back in rubber cement. For her, I was sure, the pictures, the stories, were helpful tips, possibilities, not glimpses of a world she would never understand.
*
If, like me, you are living in Israel at age eighteen, you no longer need to know the way to dress. You stand in a line behind hundreds of other girls and get three uniforms that fit you or that don’t. Some girls don’t accept that right away; they try to take the knowledge they gained in their previous lives and apply it to this new environment. They take their uniforms to tailors and make their pants low-rise, tight, get it so the pockets don’t ride up on their butts and make them look huge, get it so the belt is not too high up, so their stomachs don’t pouch underneath. I am not one of those girls. Still, eventually, we will all look equally ugly.
*
When Gilad Shalit was back in Israeli hands, the first thing they did was dress him in something more respectable—a military uniform. But not in his uniform. It was a brand new one, creased, as if he were a kid just beginning his three years of conscription, not a man finally free after five years of imprisonment. The news reported that on the flight from the border of Gaza back to Israel, Gilad “felt ill”, that there was concern for his health. Maybe he had caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror, the alien uniform hanging loosely off his frame, and panicked.
*
Almost every night, I dream that I am looking through my closet for something to wear. At first I am pleasantly surprised to find that my closet is packed with clothes. But everything is wrong. Crushed velvet crop tops. Chenille. Everything one size too small. Any person who would choose these clothes must be irredeemably unattractive. The kind of ugly that can only come from deep inside.
*
Rumor has it that Gilad lives in my neighborhood. I’ve never seen him, but once I went into a grocery store and everyone was talking about him. Minutes earlier, he’d bought some milk and left. A female employee was telling her friend: “Of course I would fuck him.
Even if he were even uglier than he is.”
Karen Marron lives and writes in Tel Aviv. She is a creative nonfiction editor and the production editor of The Ilanot Review, and has an MA in creative writing from Bar-Ilan University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Queen Mob’s Tea House, Unbroken Journal, Hobart, and Drunken Boat, among others. She tweets occasionally @marronglacee.
Featured Image Credit: Israel Defense Forces [CC BY-SA 2.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons
