h i s t o r y
Ezra was born in Jaffa, an ancient port city joined to Tel Aviv, Israel. The family consisted of his father, Avram Ben-David, his mother Devorah Shafir, his older sister Rivka and his baby sister Hannah. Growing up, Ezra lived in a somewhat dysfunctional and military-oriented household; his father was a veteran, his heart hardened by war, and Rivka joined the Israel Defence Forces a few months after she turned eighteen. The family never had a lot of money; there were a lot of mouths to feed, his father spent most of his remaining money on alcohol and his mother earned as much as she could as a music teacher at a local Hebrew public school. But beneath the family's maybe not normal, but at least human exterior, was something they all kept extremely well hidden. All five of them were Shifters. They were not the only ones, there were about four known Shifter families in Israel and all of them kept in very close contact with each other. They'd vowed not to utter a single word that could possibly give themselves away, and dared not question the severity of what would happen should the general public find out. Fortunately Ezra's family didn't have a lot of trouble "pretending" to be human. They had mounds of other things to worry about and their being Shifters wasn't even on the list, they hardly ever thought about or payed much attention to it.
For the first few years of Ezra's life, things were generally alright. He spent most of his time on the streets of Jaffa's poorer districts with his best friend Judith Katz, sneaking out of school three hours early with a small handful of other kids and spending the rest of their day wandering around the inner city, getting up to mischief and running amok, or they'd all simply go down to the harbour and loaf around by the malecon.
By the time Ezra was eleven his father had already started trying to get him to concider following a military career, but Ezra had never really toned any interest. From an early age he had developed a great enthusiasm for photojournalism and had his heart set on becoming a photographer, and was absolutely over the moon when his mother and older sister had given him a camera for his fourteenth birthday. It wasn't a very fancy camera, it was a big and bulky second-hand thing that still used film and the quality wasn't very good, but it was all they could afford. To Ezra it was the greatest thing in the universe and he looked after it as if it were made of gold. Avram was silently infuriated by the idea of his skinny, weedy son completely engrossed by and tinkering with a camera that looked like it could crumble to pieces any moment.
If my daughter can have a passion for serving our beloved country, then by God so will my son.
Although Ezra got along very well with his mother and two sisters, he and his father fought like cat and dog and were constantly at each other's throats, partly due to vast differences of opinion and major personality-clashes. Avram had indeed at one point in his life been a caring and loving man, but had since been hardened by the cruelty and heartlessness of the wars he'd fought in, and had upon retiring succumbed to alcoholism in feeble attempts to smother his troubles. But even so, he had been crowned a war hero with almost legendary status, and Avram was hell-bent on having his only son follow in his footsteps and did everything in his power to get Ezra into the army. He wanted to see if his boy could turn out to be a stronger man than he had been. Ironically when he eventually did get his way, Ezra, then seventeen, didn't last very long.
Ezra dropped out, or rather was politely thrown out of the army mere months after recruitement. They had said quite frankly that Ezra was a lost cause as far as the military was concerned. He couldn't keep up with any of the other recruits, he was always stepping or tripping out of line, both literally and figuratively, wrongly addressing a superior, somehow hurting himself on the obstacle courses, his rifle was nearly bigger than he was and he was terrible at handling it- if he'd stayed any longer he was still one day accidentally going to shoot himself with it.
Needless to say when Avram, head abuzz with an entire bottle of cheap alcohol, saw Ezra returning looking just as scrawny and waif-like as before as if a mere wind could knock him over, the overwhelming exasperation welling up inside of him was almost too much to bear. With Avram's drinking and temper increasing, Ezra was certain that one day his father was still going to fly off the handle and beat the crap out of him, or something. Rivka had already moved out, but Hannah was only six years old and he didn't want her growing up in any violent circumstances as far as they could help it. He had to find
something to keep his father happy. It was then that the idea to join Mossad dawned on him, and when he was eighteen that was exactly what he did. It wasn't the army, but Ezra felt it was good enough for his father.
He joined the Collections department, which mainly specialised in espionage operations abroad. It sounded interesting and Ezra had always been a professional at being inconspicuous. At least, he always thought he was. On his first day, however, he felt as though someone had knocked the wind out of him. There were Shifters everywhere! He had almost forgotten they existed. To the ordinary human eye a Shifter was indistinguishable from any other human being, but a Shifter knew immediately when he was looking at another Shifter. Where had they all come from? Surely... but Mossad... so they... wait, what? How did they know? Did the public know? Probably not? No, they couldn't possibly know, could they? The questions whirled around in Ezra's baffled mind, but his case officer merely laughed at the utter surprise on his face and he felt a friendly slap on the back. Mossad knew everything there was to know about Shifters, and therefore the government knew too, but they abided by extremely strict rules and precautions that ensured that absolutely no one other than them and a select few others knew about the Shifters. Shifters provided an enormous advantage to Israel as far as Intelligence gathering and covert operations were concerned- who would find any suspicion in a scruffy stray mongrel rummaging through rubbish bins and wandering around the city, or a bird perched on the roof above an open window? Or even a fly on the wall?
One particular operation took him to Sudan, to a small isolated city located somewhere in the heart of the scorched Nubian Desert. The city served as more of a smokescreen for the terrorist group operating in the vast underground network of rooms and corridors beneath the city's streets and in the center of the city itself. Adjacent to the city, so much it was actually concidered part of it, was a small town-like settlement where people had simply one day began setting up homesteads. No one payed much attention to them. They were mostly merchants and craftsmen from further up north who had no particular interest and involvement in the activities of the main city. Ezra spent about a month meandering through the streets of the city as an unkempt, ill-fed looking white dog. Of course nobody was suspicious, just very confused at first. "Where on earth did that dog come from? I've never seen it around here before. Did you see it? What dog? Yes I have, it probably belongs to one of the traders outside the city. They've always got people coming and going."
The dog befriended everyone quickly enough. He would sit outside headquarters every morning and whenever someone entered, left or simply walked past he would issue a playful bark and start wagging his tail vigorously as if wanting a game of fetch, and was absolutely thrilled to see them. They were amused by him and would often throw him bits of food and ruffle his ears and fur, sometimes throw a stick a couple of meters off and applaude as he'd catch it clean out of the air. They appeared to be somewhat glad to have this new burst of positive energy in what was otherwise a frequently grim environment. One woman had developed an increasing fondness for the dog and sometimes even let him into the building, putting a little makeshift basket on the floor for him to sleep in. Ezra had after about three weeks gathered the information he needed, and made his way back to the settlement outside the city. Ezra transfigured back into a human and decided to stay at a little inn until he was to be fetched. He still had another week to go. He had no means of communication on him, or much of anything really, and so in advance Mossad had simply arranged to collect him after one month. Until then, he'd be a tourist in the small desert town, with its square clay and mud houses and colourful craft and food markets. He was a traveller and had just previously been touring Southern Africa, and was now on a trek through North Africa.
One afternoon Ezra was in one of the small, square clay houses, making casual conversation with a spice trader, both of them leaning idly against the counter. Ezra heard footsteps enter the house, although thought nothing of it. This was a shop after all. But when he saw the expression on the tradesman's face as he looked over Ezra's shoulder and slowly backed away against the wall, intuition told him exactly who it was, and that he was really fucked now. His blood turned cold as he felt the barrel of a rifle press against the back of his neck. Very slowly he raised his hands and, placing them behind his head, allowed himself to be lead away. Ezra was taken prisoner and for three days was subjected to brutal interrogation. They didn't ask him who he was or who he worked for; they already knew all that. They had informants, their own ways of finding things out. Instead they went in for the kill immediately: what was making it possible for Mossad to infiltrate even their most impenetrable buildings, simply helping themselves to information that would otherwise be impossible to obtain? What was helping them?
Who was helping them? But Ezra was being difficult, and when they realized that he clearly was not going to divulge any useful information whatsoever, they decided it'd be easier to simply beat it out of him.
That didn't work either, and they had grown tired of not making any progress. They were just about to take Ezra into the middle of the desert and leave him there, when they were contacted by the Director of Mossad, Yosef Amar, demanding to negotiate Ezra's freedom. Yosef suggested a trade, and they replied that they would only let Ezra go if he could provide them with information that Ezra was refusing to give them, or if four of their members currently imprisoned in Israel were returned to them, unharmed. If the Director failed to carry out this order within three days then Ezra would simply be executed. Yosef was at a loss on what to do. They could simply order an air strike and demolish the entire city- it was too far into the desert and isolated to attract much attention from any possible allies they might have, and with the ongoing crisis in Darfur, it wouldn't raise any suspicion as far as Israel's responsibilty for it was concerned. But then of course Ezra would be killed too, and he was determined to do everything in his power to bring the boy home alive. But he was also reluctant to let the prisoners go, they were an extremely big risk and releasing them would be like lighting the fuse of a bomb. It was then that the plan began slowly formulating in his head. He wasn't sure if it was going to work, or how severe the consequences will be should there be any, but he sure as hell was going to try.
Early morning on the third day, an Antonov An-26 aircraft landed on a strip of runway just outside the city, and from it immerged Yosef Amar with the three prisoners, followed by two men armed with assault rifles. Four of the terrorists were there, waiting. Ezra was with them, his wrists were tied with a piece of rope and he had an old sack over his head, but as they stood up they yanked the sack off. No words were spoken, but each side traded their hostages for the other's. When Ezra had been handed over he was a bloody and battered mess, but alive, and was finally allowed to return home with two broken ribs, a broken wrist, a broken nose and two dark purple eyes of which one was swollen shut. By their standards he had gotten off lightly; normally their hostages didn't last long enough for help to arrive. Yosef had to support Ezra as they went back to the plane, he could barely stand up. Ezra was in a daze, he couldn't think or speak or do much of anything, but as soon as he felt the plane take off into the sky, and he was finally safe and on his way home, he was unable to keep himself conscious any longer and he passed out. An hour after they had taken off, a squadron of F-5E Tiger II jets soared over the city. Within minutes the city had been annihilated. The jets were at the time in use in Sudan, and that particular squadron had been flown by Mossad operatives working undercover as allies of the Sudanese Liberation Army during the conflicts in nearby Darfur. The commander of the squadron contacted Yosef shortly after and confirmed the air strike had been a success.
Ezra wasn't sure for how long he'd been unconscious, but when he came round he was lying in a hospital bed. He felt terrible, but a lot better than he had. His midriff and wrist were thickly wrapped in bandages and he was beginning to be able to see through his swollen eye again. Every now and then there'd be a spasm of pain if he breathed in too deeply, but he could live with it. When he returned home shortly after sunset after being discharged, Judith and his older sister flung themselves at him with enough force that nearly pummeled him over and sent him back to hospital. After several minutes his mother pryed him away from them, feeling it was her turn now. She pulled him into a tight embrace and wept. Ezra closed his eyes, he wasn't sure whether he should have felt ashamed or not as his eyes began to sting, and a teardrop rolled down his cheek. Soon after, Hannah came running through the front door too and threw her little arms around his waist. Ezra hadn't really expected anything from his father, usually by that time Avram had passed out already, so therefore felt an enormous jab at his insides as the man slowly made his way from the house towards them, looking tired and worn and very sober, pulling his son into a hug.
Ezra's safe return home seemed to have sparked a period of sobriety for Avram, and for the first time there seemed to be hope for the man. The peace didn't last very long, though, and was broken somewhat involuntarily. Avram had in passing asked when Ezra would be returning to work, and Ezra had replied that he wouldn't, he'd resigned.
"Call me a coward, but I don't really want to put my neck on the line every time I go into the office until I eventually retire, if I even live that long. I want to be a photographer, I want to go into photojournalism. It's still risky but it's probably a hell of a lot safer than being dropped off in the desert halfway across the world so I can spy on terrorists armed to the teeth with weapons I didn't even know could exist. I'm not interested, I mean I've tried being interested, but I'm not, and I don't want to spend the rest of my life doing that. For Rivka it's fine, it's what she wants to do, and that's great, but it's not for me. I'm really sorry, I've tried making you happy, I've tried doing what you want me to do, but I can't ever be like you. I don't want to come back from war a hero only to spend the rest of my days being miserable and wasting away over alcohol. I don't want to be like you."
Avram had been listening, but upon hearing Ezra's last two sentences he struck him. Ezra probably saw it coming, he hadn't ever directly stood up to his father like that, but he couldn't stop himself in time, and even if he could he probably wouldn't have. His mother had up until then been the peacekeeper in the house, raising her two remaining children as best she could while trying to hold the fort, but the tension welling up inside of her over the years that she had fought so hard to surpress had in that moment's violence reached its breaking point. Ezra had never seen her so angry before, it seemed impossible that such a small, petite woman could house so much rage- he'd always known her as the long-suffering, most loving and kindhearted woman anyone could imagine. She didn't scream and shout, but the look in her eyes and tone of her voice was murderous. Devorah hadn't even bothered packing, she'd merely grabbed her two children and some money and left. She had had enough with her feelingless husband who she had tried to help as much as she could but who had simply refused it, and she had had enough of her son nearly getting himself killed while trying to win the love of a father who appeared to have no love left in him.
The three of them spent the night at the airport. Ezra had phoned Judith from a public telephone and told her everything, that they had to leave, they were flying to America first thing in the morning, they were moving to a city called Cascade. What had felt to be only two or three hours later, Judith had arrived at the airport with nothing but a small chocolate bar that she shared among the four of them, and stated matter-of-factly that she was coming with them whether they liked it or not, they were more like family to her than her own. Early the next morning as the sun was just beginning to peep from over the horizon, the plane on its way to Cascade was rumbling down the runway before it lifted itself into the air in one majestic swoop.
{ o o c // Lol that was bad. xD And very long. o_O The send button was beginning to detect me as a spam bot and started making me fill out security codes whenever I clicked preview. Haha. }
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