The Drive by Yair Assulin is NOT a book against the compulsory military service in Israel. Is NOT a book written from a leftist perspective - although the author is a regular contributor to the Haaretz, the fanion of the left in Israel. The Drive is instead a book about chronical depression and masculinity misunderstood.
An unnamed young man is driving with his father to the WHO (Mental Health Office) at Tal Hashomer in Ramat Gan. He is a non-combat unit after being discovered that he has asthma. His family, especially his father, although is fully supporting him, cannot understand what is happening to him and keep outlining the risks of leaving the army altogether. The further integration into civil life in Israel depends at a great extent of the evaluations one got durin the military service. Being officially stamped as mentally unfit means not only a stigma for life, but also a very limited chance of professional achievement and for finding a partner as well (especially in the religious circles, as the narrator of the story is religious too).
But he cannot ignore for ever what is happening to him. ´(...) I knew that someone looking from the outside could not even begin to comprehend the suffocation that filled me each time I took the train to the base, the insurmontable pain I felt when I walked through those gates, the fear of something I cannot describe or define, the horribly cramped sensation that was unrelated to anything, certaninly not to a particular place or space´.
As the story evolves, so it is the story of the chronical depression, through the eyes from his family and people he is in touch with at the military base. ´I looked at Dad. He saw my look and put his hand on mine. I told him I was sorry, and he said that was nothing to sorry about, that he knew I was telling the truth, but all he was saying, again, was that he could not understand what was so bad for me than, and that he throught or feared I wasn´t telling him everything, because if I was then he simply could not understand what it was so bad´.
He is banging his head against the wall, he is crying, he is about to jump in the front of a car. His interest in politics and the surrounded reality is disappearing. There is no more ´us´, it is only him and his pain and anguist. He feels trapped inside himself. Meanwhile, he is surrounded by arrogant and self-important people, keen to humiliate the others. He is turning madder and madder from a day to another, but it is not enough for the other people to notice the pain. ´(...) that betrayal of words, the capacity of people to say things without really meaning them, or to say things or take them back, or even to say them and deny they´d ever said them - that betrayel drives me mad´. ´My soul was genuinely threatening to explore at any moment. I really wanted to die. Every morning I wanted to die when I woke up and saw that miserable gray room with its four bunk beds, and the other soldiers getting dressed and polishing their boots, and I realized that another horribly normal day was about to begin´.
The emotional pain and restlesness are described in the smallest details and it is written depression all over the pages. The torments of the mind and of the heart are heartbreaking.
The army system in itself, with sometimes false gratifications doesn´t satisfy him, it deepens his pains and alienation. ´I repeated that the army was suffocating me. I said that all around the world, this was the age when a person shone by flourishing and I felt as if I were dying in the army. Why did we Israelis have to do that? I said I was dying, that I couldn´t breathe in that place´. They say in Israel that army is the school of life, that it makes you grow up fast and mature faster, For many, the friendships made in the Army lasts a lifetime. Everyone knows from an early age how their life will be after finishing high-school: the psychometric tests, the medical evaluations, the army service. This is the duty as it is the miluim, the reserve duty. Those few who actually skipped for different reasons the army service do not share it. But unless one has rich parents to set up a company for them, applying for work without the army service is a recipe for long time unemployment. The very religious who are not going to the army by principle do not deal with such issues, as they are supposed to spend time learning Torah in the kollel anyway.
It is a complex issue, but this is not the aim of the book. Depression is a lifelong companion and its fights are by far harder than the ones fought in the army. The Drive is a testimony of the terrible true of this disease, no matter where and what context.
At first, I was a bit disappointed how abruptly the book ends. But, after all, the book it is called The Drive and it ends when the drive is over and the military psychiatrist put him on extended leave.
I´ve read the book, that was awardede Sapir in the English translation by the excellent Jessica Cohen, the artisan of all the good Hebrew books translations.
Rating: 4 stars
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