He would invariably be cold at first. We had a routine going and he would hold me to it to precision before he ever let down his guard. Some days it didn’t matter if I performed all the rituals or not. He would remain closed, hidden; sealed with anger. His mother would often pass by his bedroom without our knowing. Sometimes I would turn around and see her standing there, watching us. Her eyes appeared vacant yet focused – on what I could not be certain. She would be deep in thought and my glance would startle her. She would then bounce back, shake her head slightly and walk away. On days that she didn’t watch us she would spend stuck in her armchair reading through her papers of school work to correct, examine, edit, translate; critique. She always seemed to have something important to do that needed her urgent attention as soon as I arrived, which is why she couldn’t stop to chat. Sorry, I’m sorry…come inside. You’ve caught me in the middle of something. Alon is in his room; he’s been waiting for you.

Without fail Alon would be waiting for me. In his tiny room in a pokey flat in Tel Aviv he was told to wait for me, patiently and respectfully. His mother ran through a list of exactly what he was and wasn’t to do in my company. Her frequent offers of chocolates and home-baked biscuits to ‘sweeten the lesson’ as she put it didn’t disguise her false kindness profusely enough. She constantly needed to find a way in, to be involved without seeming to be involved. She needed to know everything that was going on between her son and me – she had ‘to approve of things’ she said. Approval was only a small part of the reason why she behaved the way she did. What she really needed was to connect. She tried to connect with her work, with her piles of paper and important sets of tasks. She had lots of colleagues who she attempted to connect with through feigns of common ground. She would spend hours researching people before approaching them and refined the art of inconspicuously including random bits of relevant information into conversations that would often lead to profound friendships as a result. And as a result she seemed to connect. Yet none of it really mattered because the only person she genuinely wanted to connect with was the one person who was proficient at cutting her off; her own son.

I spent one hour a week with Alon and it was often the most excruciating hour of my day. In fact, looking back, I dreaded my time with him. I would force myself to prepare for his lesson, finding the force I brought on myself the only element of challenge that kept me going back for more week after week. Like a sick dog I would go back for more bad food. And then I would begin to eat grass in the hope that someone would notice this universal sign of sick dog behaviour and help me. Instead, people walked past preferring to be blind to what was happening. This self-inflicted pain carried on for months and months without pause for comment or question.

Every week I would creep into his room to find him staring out the window. My footsteps didn’t seem to matter. I would carefully sit down beside him making sure not to end up too close to his person – after all I was his tutor. I would wait there patiently, holding my books and finding a comfortable position in the chair, until he was ready to let me in for the hour. Sometimes he would start talking without any need to prompt. He would tell me about his day with a desperate look in his eyes. They were dulled with sorrow. It didn’t make any difference whether he was smiling or laughing – his eyes were sad. Occasionally he would talk to me as a friend or at least someone he could tolerate but those moments were so random and infrequent they hardly stand out in my memory at all. Most days I would feel his anger rising up before I walked through his doorway. He would have his back to me every single time. After a while I could tell what sort of mood he was in just by looking at his back and how it was arched; which muscles were tensed, where his hands were, which direction his head was pointing in. I became an expert in reading body language thanks to Alon. It is a skill I thank him for to this day. I whisper words of thanks in my head hoping he can hear them somehow.

Week after week I would let him berate me. I would sit there and give my confidence, my joy, and my happy disposition over to a twelve year old boy who would in turn watch my eyes scorn as he tore each one up individually, slowly and skillfully. My mouth did not flinch. I would hold it still and tight as I watched him back. He was a true master of his work. He had trained himself to hear his mother’s footsteps from a young age. It did not matter if she was barefoot or wearing soft slippers he would switch to Alon the twelve year old as soon as he suspected her ears were listening.

On the last day I ever saw Alon I arrived at their flat a little earlier than planned. It had been pouring with rain that afternoon and I had taken advantage of a dry patch in the weather to walk over to the other side of the city as fast as I could before the rain started again. As I approached their building I slowed my pace down, realising I was way too early to walk upstairs and knock on the door of the home of people who often raised my hairs at the thought of them. His mother’s silent footsteps were starting to freak me out and I was beginning to tire of the exhausting sessions with Alon which involved hardly any English language learning and a lot of what I have now come to believe was a weird version of psychoanalysis. I was sitting at the bottom of the stairwell when I heard a door opening upstairs and a male voice emanating from inside.

I had only met Alon’s father once yet I knew straight away it was not him talking. Before I could get up and pretend to not be there at all the man and Alon’s mother were downstairs. They had used the lift. The man hobbled out of the lift and as my eyes honed him I realised he was quite young and missing a leg. He came towards me using his crutches and then stood right in front of me, waiting for Alon’s mother to catch up to him. I noticed an army symbol on the pocket of his shirt that I thought signified the paratroopers unit although my memory was rusty. As she crept towards me her hesitation overcame her and she stopped halfway between the lift and the man on crutches. It is wonderful to meet you, he said. I have heard all about you. Oh, I muttered, who are you? Before he spoke any further he turned to look at Alon’s mother who gestured tacitly with her head and eyes. I’m a friend of the family…a close friend.

Although they shared a bedroom I had never met his little sister. She was always out during our lessons; at a friend’s house, at an after-school activity. Yet the bedroom was covered in her. She had noticeably begun taking over any available space. All that was left for Alon was the corner where his bed lay and the one wall that it backed onto. I was not sure how much younger she was. I didn’t like to pry and neither Alon nor his mother ever spoke about her. From the collection of Disney paraphernalia and other mass produced items that plastered most of the interior I guessed she would have been about six or seven years old. Her possessions were so colourful and cumbersome that they would often distract my attention at the start of our lessons and it would take me a few minutes to block them out and focus on Alon.

On that last day it was as if Alon’s sister had suddenly vacated the room. I had come upstairs while his mother was saying goodbye to their friend. I walked towards his bedroom listening carefully for any signs of upset or a particularly bad mood that might help me to ease into the lesson a little more smoothly with prior knowledge of what to expect. When I heard whimpering I felt goose bumps on the skin of my arms popping up with a lack of any control. I tiptoed the rest of the way and stood at the doorway until Alon could feel my presence. Although he didn’t turn his head I could tell he knew I was standing there. He wiped the tears off his face with his arm and then continued to stare straight ahead. I walked in and sat down in my usual position.

Who was that man? I asked abruptly. The mystery surrounding his visit and connection to the family had begun to eat away at me at a fast pace. As I heard myself repeating the question I looked around the room, hoping something would distract my focus and let me get lost in its colours for a while so that the tension between us could dilute. It was as if the walls had been painted stark white and all the silly clutter removed. My eyes wandered around and around as I made attempts to block out the verbal bashing I was receiving from Alon. And then my eyes found something. Had it been here all this time? I tried to search my thoughts but nothing matched up with the lonely photo that was stuck to the wall just above Alon’s bed. It was a photo of an adolescent boy in army uniform. He had a proud, thick smile on his face. I tried to speak but all that came out were tears. They rolled down my face as I stood up and ran out the room, out the front door, down the stairs and all the way home.

The rain poured down as I dragged my heavy heart through the streets, between the noise, around the stress and over the panic until I reached my front door. When I found quiet at last it was as if the heaviness had escaped from my heart and was now pounding down on me. It pounded until it beat me to the ground. I lay there, flat on my back, staring at the roof of my bedroom. All I could see on my plain white ceiling was a clear photo of the face of the boy on Alon’s wall, whose deep eyes and cheeky smile were exactly the same as his once would have been before the horror came in and stole his childhood. That night I cried until the loss that ached in my stomach drugged me to sleep.

There are days when I think it will never go away. There are times when I can hear his voice so distinctly I almost turn my head to check if he is standing behind me. There are hours that go by where my only thoughts are of him; his passionate outcries, his hateful words, his anger that was really soaked in awful pain and grief. He could not bare the sight of me and I understand that now. Everything about me reminded him of a loss that would never return and so instead he would lash out at me for being all that he wanted back. And then one day I left as well. I left to fill the gaps in for myself. I decided the details bore no significance at all. I left so that he could start to heal the wound I had unwittingly helped to aggravate.

There would be no other brother. There would just be a wide open space for him to fill up with all the thoughts he did not want. My presence only threw them back in his face; in his way. When I would walk into his room he could not breathe. His whole body would tense up as I encroached further and further upon the one place he had left to throw his darkness. His mother had hoped that my mask of English teacher would soon wear off and that instead he would see male friend, just like an older brother. Her plans for connection to her son via me not only backfired they wedged a greater rift between them.

Sometimes when I look back on that stinging time I can see her standing there, in his doorway – his back to her as he sits at his desk staring blankly out the window. She is standing there as still as can be, waiting for him to give her anything at all. She would wait there forever if she could. She would do anything to avoid the wide open space that keeps chasing her around, begging her to throw her dark thoughts into its inviting pit. Her thoughts, as dark as they are, are all she has left of him; her other son.