Free Look for Me by Edeet Ravel Page A

they suggested, and I was angry at him for being rude and alienating the entire hospital staff, but we were both just stressed out and disappointed. The experience brought us even closer, if that was possible. We breathed the same air and a few times we had the same dreams at night. Once we both dreamed we were in a field filled with rabbits and we were feeding them lettuce; another time we dreamed we were on a sailboat with Asian sailors.
    Before Daniel I had hardly thought about men, or about how they might be different from women. I now felt that there was such a thing as maleness (men were never cold, for example); this uncharted territory was interesting, and also moving. I watched Daniel, the things he did, the way he looked at the world. I watched how he held a coffee mug or undressed, I noticed his attitude to his body, his work, other people. I had dreams in which I found myself on a planet inhabited only by men and I tried to pass for one as well, and no one guessed I was really a woman because I’d come to know Daniel so well.

    When I came home from the beach it was past midnight. I realized that I hadn’t eaten all day, so I boiled two eggs and made myself a sandwich. Then I undressed, turned on the air conditioner, and lay in bed. On some nights, as soon as I shut my eyes I saw a tangled dam, the kind a small, industrious animal might construct out of sticks and leaves and mud. The image interfered with sleep and in fact was no more than a visual projection of insomnia. When that happened, I would summon three memories and try to slide with them through the dam and into sleep.
    The first memory was of a sandstorm. I was twelve; we were about to move to the city and our flat was full of boxes. The ones my father had packed were neatly marked dishes and books , while my mother’s packing style was reflected in her less disciplined scrawls: junk from drawers and junk from office.
    We’d been warned that day that a sandstorm was coming our way; there were continual reminders on the radio, and our teachers instructed us to roll wet towels and place them under doors. And yet somehow from one moment to the next it slipped my mind, and shortly after I came home from school I decided to walk to the corner store to buy a snack. My parents were still at work and there was nothing tempting in the fridge or pantry. I left the building and began crossing the parking lot. All at once it came. I didn’t understand at first what was happening—I only knew that I couldn’t open my eyes or breathe or move. I kneeled on the ground, pulled off my shirt, and wrapped it around my head. The sand burned my skin, sank into my hair, entered my mouth and nose through the shirt. And yet I found that if I covered my face with the palms of my hands, inside the shirt, I could breathe, and I was after all, alive, a tiny living cocoon, breathing inside my hands, inside theshirt, inside the sandstorm. I decided that it was precisely because people were so small that they managed to survive on this huge and dangerous planet: how much air did we really need, and what did we need apart from air? Eventually someone noticed me; I felt strong arms lifting me into a car. I was rescued.
    The second memory was a remnant from my army days. I’d been sitting on my bed trying to clean my weapon and as usual everything was going wrong. I finally threw the rifle on the floor in disgust and ran out of the barracks. I made my way to the edge of the camp, looked out at the trees beyond the fence, and decided that I was nothing more or less than a prisoner. A prisoner in a jail operated by cruel and insane jailers. I heard someone call my name and I turned. Sheera, the girl who had given me the gold locket, came up to me. She handed me my weapon, but as if it were something else—a birthday present, or a lovely sweater. “You’re smarter than everyone here,” she said. I noticed her long brown hands, her long slender fingers and perfectly curved