All I Love and Know by Judith Frank Page A

Matt wondered what she had made of her bruising, loudmouthed daughter, and imagined many a migraine requiring lying on the couch with a cold compress on her head. She had a way of narrowing her eyes that made her look chronically puzzled, or a little dim. Lydia, he knew, thought Malka was stupid. But maybe, he thought, she narrowed her eyes to let everything in more slowly, until her nervous system could stand it.
    He knew that taking her grandchildren to the States would be the last straw. Even thinking about it made him have to close his eyes against the awfulness of it. He heaved himself off the counter and went out onto the tiny balcony.
    The social worker was there, leaning meditatively over the railing with a lit cigarette in her fingers. “Shalom, Shoshi,” he said, glad to see her. “May I bum a cigarette?” He gestured toward the small table her cigarettes and lighter lay upon.
    â€œSure.”
    â€œI’m an ex-smoker,” he confided, after lighting up and exhaling.
    She shrugged comically. “So am I,” she said. “Until there is a pigua .”
    He had heard that word enough times to know that it referred to a terrorist attack. Daniel had explained that it came from the root “to hurt,” so that literally it meant something like an injury.
    They smoked for a little while, leaning over the railing and looking down at the street, where a cluster of little girls with backpacks was coming home from school, all of them chattering at once. Matt shot a sideways glance at Shoshi. She wore patterned pants and a short-sleeved shell, small gold hoop earrings; she was well put together, if not particularly stylish. He pondered what to say to her, and settled upon, “You must see a lot of horrible things.”
    She turned and bestowed upon him the gentle, steady gaze he was coming to love. “Yes,” she said. “But for me, it’s the smell that is the worst.”
    â€œTell me about it,” Matt drawled, sniffing his arm and making a face.
    â€œAt home, when I call to say there has been a pigua , my husband turns on the boiler. But even after many long, long showers, the smell stays with me for about a week.”
    â€œHow do you keep on going?”
    â€œWe don’t work all the time. Each unit is on duty for only three months.”
    He nodded. “How many social workers are there per unit?”
    â€œIt’s depend,” Shoshi said, making a translation error Matt was getting used to. They always went out in pairs, she told him, and had a support team checking in with them. The entire unit met at the very end to assess their performance and to talk through their feelings. “That night, I can’t sleep, but I go to work the next morning. I feel sick, weak, nauseated.”
    She spoke with the openness of the social workers he knew, which to his ear, bordered on the burlesque; if she were American, she’d be mentioning “sharing” a lot. He imagined that there was probably an Israeli equivalent to that language that was a little blunter. He could tell that her frankness came partially, but not only, from her training—and the part that came from her personality felt immensely touching to him. He had been used to feeling outrage that suicide bombings in Israel were widely televised in the U.S. while the bombings upon Palestinian civilians never were. But her struggle to help grieving and traumatized people brought into relief everybody’s vulnerable humanity. It pressed upon his worldview and scrambled it a little.
    He said gently, “Well, you’re very good at what you do. We’re lucky we got you.”
    â€œThank you,” she said gravely. “I must leave you today. Now it’s become the work of the social worker from Bituach Leumi.”
    They struggled for a while over how to translate that—“national security”?—until Matt understood that it was something like the Israeli