I Was There
A traumatized, recently discharged Israeli soldier, Ya’ar, is undergoing psychiatric treatment, mandated by the military. He recalls the horrif moments of a battle in Gaza. In an almost naïve manner, he strips bare the onset of trauma and the damage it causes to the soul, but he also discovers that confronting trauma can have a surprisingly beneficial, regenerative effect. He unravels the complexities of his reality, overshadowed as it is by moral ambiguities. He probes his personal entanglement in a conflict that began many years before he was born.
The agonizing on a not-so-comfortable therapist’s couch is one of the three periods of time into which Herbelin intermittently takes the reader. Another is his military service in a special-ops unit: the tough training, the raids on Palestinian homes to carry out arrests of terror suspects, his experiences of urban warfare. The third period is the extended cycling journey he undertakes through South America, during which he tackles his fear, guilt, pain and loneliness.
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“The book will be familiar to those who ‘were there’ and, at the same time, introduce readers who were not, to the world of a post-traumatic victim as a whole human being, one whose life did not begin with the ‘incident’ and does not end in some kind of therapy.”
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“Herbelin touches upon themes that rarely appear in contemporary Hebrew literature... not only in a societal context, but also a psychological one. The courage he demonstrates by probing his deepest wounds – which are the wounds of Israeli society as a whole – is inspiring.”