For a generation of Israel’s amputees and other wounded soldiers, rehabilitation is just the start of a lifelong, personal struggle
ITtakes a few minutes to pinpoint precisely what’s disconcerting about the rehabilitation ward at Sheba-Tel Hashomer medical center outside Ramat Gan, where some of Israel’s most critically injured soldiers are in various stages of recovery.
It’s not the obvious, like the man with the Moshe Dayan eye patch who winces as he lowers himself into a chair. Neither is it the man who gestures vigorously across the lobby with his two stumps. Nor is it the one who sips a coffee, the cup held in his bionic hand.
What’s disconcerting — incongruous, even — are the smiles. Here of all places, where a war’s worth of trauma is confined within the sterile corridors, there’s a surfeit of positivity. Wounded veterans shuffle between rounds of therapy. They bond over stories of war and injuries. They politely decline the latest doughnut offer from an American tour group. And yet despite their life-altering injuries, they exude a surprising amount of energy and good cheer.
“Why shouldn’t I be happy?” asks Avishai Turgeman, as he dexterously wheels himself around the ward. “I survived, and so I’m grateful.”
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