"This Thursday we are going to storm the Prime Minister's Residence, you hear me?" I scolded Ravid as I prepared a fruit salad to devour as I watch the latest cooking reality show, preempting the hunger that will hit me as I watch the Thai dishes being prepared.
"I think you should properly say 'picket the Prime Minister's Residence," he said.
"Ok, what does it matter how we will do this," I brandished my knife.
"That's totally fine," he replied.
"And no excuses, ok?" i said. "You cannot just complain all day and just not do anything. This time you are not going to get me off track, ok?" I placed a banana slice on the peach and wondered what the judge on the show would have ruled.
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"Me?" He looked at me with bewilderment. "Yes, you," I replied, as I sat next to him on the couch.
"You are the one who last week told me that you don't feel like going because of some crap about how this was a political protest and that this cannot be a non-political even if you are protesting a man who is charged with criminal conduct."
He answered, "Yes, it's true I said that," and then he silenced the presenter in one of the ads on television for an air conditioning device.
"But I also said that if you really want to go we will go, and you said that you were afraid of the crowd because we live with your parents," he continued.
"Yes, that does sound like me," I said with a sign of embarrassment. "At least we honked when we passed under the bridges waving the protest flags," he tried to comfort me. "We are true freedom fighters," I quipped.
"That's all water under the bridge," he said as he increased the TV volume. "Now there is a feeling of a national awakening, a real one. If you think this is what you really feel, then ok, let's go. It's important."
"I totally mean it. Why do think I might be faking it?" I said, annoyed, as I thought about the judge at that cooking show that said she was willing to go to prison if needed because of her protests, or on some other celebrity who finally spoke out along with the thousands who flooded Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and were countered with water cannons.
I also thought to myself that I was the only who was sitting on his behind in search of excuses and only resorts to armchair speeches on the perception that has developed over the past 50 years due to the occupation and other measures, a perception that has made it possible for the government to adopt such a detached policy toward the coronavirus, replete with military metaphors and doctrines that all but ignore the plight of the people.
"Scratch my back," I heard my father saying after he had emerged from the side of the couch. "What?" I asked. "Scratch my back!" he continued, reprimanding me for not complying. "More upwards, left, stronger! Yes, with your fingernails, you wuss."
"Stop insulting him," my mother cried out from the couch. "He is not that sensitive," my father replied. Ravid increased the TV volume. The judges on the cooking show were just arguing over some dish that had been prepared unsuccessfully, and I just leaned by and imagined myself storming the area of the Prime Minister's Residence with gloves and a mask.
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