MICHAEL'S UNIT had finished a month of reserve duty guarding a prison in Nablus housing some 450 terrorists. His last sleepless night pacing a watchtower finally ended with being processed out from the base back in Jerusalem at 7 a.m., but by the time he had been credited with returning his rifle and other equipment and made it across town to his apartment, his wife had left for work and their three daughters were in kindergarten and grade school. Home at last, he reveled in the stillness of the empty apartment, a welcome contrast to the constant clamor of the prison. Michael showered, ate a bowl of cereal, and stretched out on the living room couch to watch a movie his wife had taped for him while he was away. He settled back to watch “Treasure Island” and celebrate his freedom by taking a pea-sized chunk of hashish from its hiding place in a film canister and placing it in his favorite pipe, a customized Dunhill briar. He lit it, inhaling deeply and holding his breath, unwinding after the long night on guard duty and end- less ride bouncing in the back of an army truck back to the city. Michael was fast asleep before the movie's theme music had faded. Ten minutes later he jumped awake with a start, slapping his chest, where a hot coal of hashish had burned through his T-shirt and onto his skin. His leap awake and instinctive slapping at the tiny burning coal had knocked it into the couch cushions. Fearing a fire, he tore the cushions off and followed the ember's smoking trail down to the frame, where he slapped it out. Or so he thought. Wisely deciding to surrender to his fatigue and go to bed, Michael went to his bedroom and sunk into the embracing comfort of his king size waterbed. In the dream that soon followed, he was amused to see four men in blue overalls and gas masks beckon to him. They were yelling something. Suddenly, he awoke to hear “GET UP! GET UP!” from one of four firemen who were racing into the room. The place was a nightmare: he stood up and breathed in a lungful of smoke, then became aware that he was being carried out of the apartment, which was on fire. He glimpsed flames being doused through the third-floor flat's living room window by a fire hose as he was carried out and down to the street below. Choking for breath, he finally stopped gagging with the help of a fireman's air tank, just as his wife, Pauline, ar - rived. They hugged fiercely, gratefully. “Are you OK?” she asked. “What happened?” Michael thought a moment, and decided to offer a modified version of the truth to avoid possible self-incrimination. “I fell asleep on the couch while I was smoking a cigarette, and it burned a hole in my shirt,” he wheezed. “When I jumped up I knocked it into the cushions. I thought I had put it out, but I must have missed a piece that was still lit.” The upside was that their waterbed had saved his life. Sleeping on the mattress on the floor, he was safely under the black cloud of poi- sonous polyester smoke from their incinerated living room furniture that had filled the apartment before the firemen broke in. It took over a month for the place to be restored, during which they stayed in a rented apartment paid for by their insurance. Fortunately, they were covered for almost everything, including having all their clothes and bedclothes dry cleaned and laundered. Michael used the time to create a third bedroom by walling off the dining room and making it into their new master bedroom, where they moved their lucky waterbed. They had just moved back some six weeks later, when Michael's father and siblings came from the States for a visit to cheer them up after their ordeal. They decided the perfect thing for the end of this warm December would be to drive south to Eilat for a couple of days of sun and swimming. As he did whenever he visited Eilat, Michael would do some scuba diving. He had his own equipment – tank, regulator, wetsuit, flippers, mask – which he stored in the boidem, the ceiling storage compartment in the apartment's hallway. As it faced away from the living room, which was the focus of the fire, it had apparently escaped damage from the heat and smoke. That was why he was so surprised the next morning in Eilat, when he cleared his mask and began his first dive. On his second breath, at about two meters' depth, the rubber seals of his air regulator, which had indeed been cooked by the heat of the fire, disintegrated into a lungful of rubber fragments that he inhaled. Michael clawed to the surface choking and gasping for air, heaving and spitting out bits of phlegm and rubber. As he crawled onto the beach, coughing and weighed down by his air tank, other divers ran over to release him and someone handed him a glass of water. He finally stopped retching enough to drink. “That was close,” Michael thought as he tried to clear his rasping throat. “Ten seconds later and I'd be too deep to survive breathing in a lungful of crap.” He shuddered in the heat of the beach at the sudden thought that the fire had almost killed him twice.'
