"Every person has a name," wrote Zelda in her best-known poem. Every person has many other things as well: a final night and a moment before. Sometimes they have prepared for the moment painstakingly. Sometimes it arrives suddenly, like a thunderbolt on a clear day. It's the moment before your first night on an army base, "the first night without mom," as a popular song put it. Before the first morning at nursery school with other children. Before your first kiss, as you sit on a bench on the boulevard. Before your first high school matriculation exam. Before you pull the trigger for the first time in basic training. "Take your time," the shooting instructor says, but there is no moment more fraught. The butterflies on the eve of a journalist's first published article, an architect's design before he presents it to a client, a scalpel in the hands of a surgeon. As dawn rises, it will begin. The night ahead is filled with hopes, fears, ruminations, insight and preparations. We remember everything, and nothing. There is no contradiction here. We're feeling a lot of things simultaneously and only time and hindsight, a lot of hindsight, will allow these events to seem any less dramatic. Tonight is Gilad Shalit's final night as a prisoner. Tonight he will take leave of loneliness and fear. Perhaps he will engage in soul-searching. How did this happen to me? What happened to my friends? Why was my captivity so lengthy and was all that suffering necessary? Perhaps, too, he will feel a slight sense of guilt for possibly not following regulations, but even then, he has paid for his mistake, with interest, many times over. This is the last night when he can imagine, for the thousandth and maybe the millionth time, his reunion with his mother and father: the first glance, the first hug. Only he knows if he plans to give free rein to his emotions. Will he tremble and let the tears flow? That would be fine. Or perhaps he will remain stoic and restrain his emotions as if he had been here all along. That would be okay too. Whatever he chooses to do is fine. Most likely, Gilad did not sleep last night. Aviva, Noam, Yoel, Ya'ara and Grandpa Zvi burned the midnight oil as well. When a prolonged nightmare is about to end, it's impossible to sleep. They still don't know what Gilad will be like when they see him again. When Maj. Gen. Amos Gilad [director of policy at the Defense Ministry] said on Sunday that Gilad is in good condition, his father Noam, as affable a man as his name suggests, could only respond by saying "Inshallah" [Arabic for "God Willing"]. Beyond the differences of opinion over the Shalit deal, which certainly never consumed Gilad himself, the nation of Israel is currently suffused with a love that crosses all divides. We stand as a single, united camp that is wholly a mountain of blessing. Even people like myself, who never referred to Armored Corps Sgt. Shalit as a beloved child or son, feel, deep in our hearts, an enormous love for the boy.
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