Ilay

Ilay Ovadia, the paramedic who was with Igor in Lebanon, about Igor

Igor's death was very hard for me to get over. It haunted me for months.

Unfortunately I happened to have lost many loved ones in my life. Two of my cousins, ex-girlfriend's little sister, when she was only 13, my classmate died in a suicide bombing attack near my house. The list goes on. But every time I had somehow managed to come to terms with those losses, finally even accepting them as sacrifices for our country.

Getting used to death probably helped in my profession, where we face it on a regular basis, and quite possibly that is why I decided to become a paramedic in a first place. One thing I knew about myself though. I was not a fighter, simply by nature.

When that conflict in the North began I was in Hebron, ironically with the field engineering regiment. I could see the border from my post up the hill, strikingly beautiful, coming to life with splashes of bright yellow and red on the horizon. Our bombardment, their bombardment.

It was all far away and despite a strong urge to go there and help I knew it was better for me and my family if I stayed where I was, Syria’s north, not Lebanon’s. Things were only getting worse and at the last moment I was ordered to go to Tiberias and join the 13 Golan Regiment.

A reservist who picked me up on the road, went: “Prepare yourself, Ilay. Jokes are over. You will see wounded. Your life is going to be in danger.” After that I kept quite for the rest of our journey. Just asked him to buy me an Ice Tea on a gas station. I felt like at the very least he owed me that one.

Upon arrival I met with a regiment doctor and orderlies, some of whom I already happened to meet before during my previous years in service in different parts of the country. Igor was already in the hospital when I got there. We became acquainted. Our folding beds stood next to each other.

They kept putting off our deployment and every day I heard new and new chilling stories from paramedics returning from the north. Some of them were my close friends. I grew more and more depressed and frightened, could not stop crying. I did not want to go, I had a bad feeling about going, thinking that if I did I would never come back. By the end of nearly every telephone conversation with someone from home, except for my parents, who did not know much, I ended up in tears.

Igor, on the other hand, liked to take the mick out of me. "If you die that just means it was your time to go" - he used to say. "Look at it this way. Someday you are going to die anyway. So why not do it in style and be a hero?" For more than a week all we did was eating gourmet meals, smoking cigarettes and laughing at me. He even came up with a nickname for me: "Paramedic Ilay - coccinelle and maroccai". He found it hard to believe I was from Morocco.

Virtually at the very last moment we had swapped squads with Igor. He wanted to be in the "Help squad", where in his view all the action was. I did not care. We went into Lebanon and for a first few days stayed in Marcabe village.

We moved from place to place for no particular reason, made lots of mistakes but mostly got away with it. I remember one night Igor suddenly paged me on the radio. That was unusal for we normally had nothing to share over the radio. He needed steroids. I asked what for, and that annoyed him: "Have you got any or not?" "Yes, yes. I have got solomedrol." Under the cover of darkness, together with three other soldiers, he sneaked under my window all the way from the house their squad was hiding in. He reached through the window and I put an ampule in his hand. "Nice to have business with you" - he said in English, shaking my hand.

The next night was that god-damned night. We wandered through the village when Igor's squad came under fire. Igor ran forward straight away looking for wounded. Instead of telling him to stay away and wait for wounded to be carried into safety, someone had simply told him: "Over there". And Igor with all his passion went straight under bullets, no second thoughts, thinking only about the wounded soldiers.

I got there with the resque party. I was running up the ravine saying to myself: "Ilay, concentrate. Those are not your wounded, you will only be there to help. For sure Igor is already looking after them, and he is going to tell you what to do." I found a spot where we were supposed to receive wounded soldiers a complete mess. I saw first stretchers, started to do what was needed, and then at some point asked one of the orderlies: "Where is Igor?" His answer made me sick with horror: "Leave him, there nothing we can do there." I realised I was now on my own.

When a chopper with wounded took off, we were left there with only dead bodies. Lost and shaken I stood over Igor's stretchers. I wanted to cover him with a blanket, but wind would not let me do it, as if trying to make me look. I burst into tears. Finally I somehow managed to put myself together and cover him. But since then could not get this image of Igor, lying there dead, out of my head. His eyes kept following me wherever I went. I thought I was going crazy. I could not stay alone in the dark. I saw him everywhere. And not only in dreams: on the bus, inside an ambulance, at home. I could feel he was dissapointed with me for not being able to do more that night. I felt guilty and sometimes still do. If not in what happened to Igor, then in my failure to help wounded, Igor had left for me to look after. I know I could not possibly do much more, but at the same time for some reason feel all the blame from that night on my shoulders. Even if it does not make any sense.

As I said in the beginning, it was extremely hard for me to get over that night. For some time I could not talk without breaking down crying. I was in a very bad shape. An orderly who worked with me all the time, was trying to cheer me up with "Paramedic Ilay - coccinelle and maroccai", but that did not help. Only after a few weeks I finally got back home. Looking back, it was probably a good thing for me. Staying in Lebanon for a while made me deal with the emotional trauma quickly and learn my lessons from the experience.

I took many good things on board from Igor, he saved me from my fear of war. Had I not been fighting side by side with him, I would have never overcome it. He made me stronger, changed something inside me. His death turned out to be a sort of pivotal point in my life. Thanks to him I have made some important decisions about my future. During those two and a half weeks I became very attached to Igor. And the thought of letting him down in the end is staying with me and not going away. Every day in my mind I go over and over through the events of that night, searching for answers. Maybe some day I am going to find what I am looking for.

Ilay Ovadia