An Atypical Facebook Chat

By Sarika Arya - -

Summer brings with it bad habits: namely, relapsing into Facebook time wasting. In the face of Facebook (Ba-dump ch!), my summer reading list appears daunting rather than enticing, the prospect of calling up old high school friends to see if they are in town becomes tedious (Why pick up the phone, when I can just stalk them online?), and the idea of checking out that one photo exhibition at that one museum less educational (and definitely less entertaining) than flipping through photo albums with titles like ‘What happens in Mexico stays in Mexico!’

Becoming easily bored with my friend’s album (Nothing happened in Mexico.), I scroll through the list of fellow Facebookers online … a-ha! Lior* is online! Lior is 18, and has just begun serving his compulsory time in the Israeli army. He is a good friend of mine, and I’m surprised to see he is on Facebook rather than at the military base. (*Lior is a pseudo name to ensure the anonymity of my friend, especially in light of his opinion being posted online.)


The conversation speaks for itself.

11:25am Sarika:
lior?

11:26am Lior:
hi

11:26am Sarika:
hey! how are you? im sorry we never got to meet up when you were in ny

11:27am Lior:
im ok… yeah, well that was a long time ago…what have you been up to?

11:27am Sarika:
im done with my second year in college, now im home in london i think im going to cairo how are you? in the army?

11:28am Lior:
you are so lucky… yes, i’m in the army

11:28am Sarika:
are you liking it?

11:30am Lior:
well, i finished basic training yesterday, which could’ve been a bad experience but i took it positively
and with humor
so it was actually kinda funny

11:31am Lior:
but i had a pretty serious breakdown in the course (which took place between november and april)

11:32am Sarika:
wow
what happened?
congratulations on being done with basic training!

11:34am Lior:
thanks… well I had a really big ideological crisis. the war in gaza didn’t really help as well…

11:35am Sarika:
the war in gaza was…
unbelievable
what kind of crisis?

11:45am Lior:
well, think of yourself now as you are…

11:44am Sarika:
yeah

11:45am Lior:
cosmopolite, free to change your views, not obligated to ideals, not responsible… and then you become part of something, part of an army, part of this army
you’re not just yourself anymore…

11:46am Sarika:
did you disagree with the war in gaza?
wow lior i think you’re one of the smartest people i know.
you have such an amazing sense of self-awareness
i think you would be a much better cosmopolite than me haha i don’t know what to do with my freedom
you know exactly what to do

11:48 Lior:
im sorry but i really have to go…
i didn’t agree with killing so many civilians
and im really sick of this never ending conflict that takes so much blood

11:49am Lior:
i really have to go now but i’ll be home tomorrow so we can talk about it… bye, please appreciate the fact you can just live your own life and go to college

11:50am Lior is offline.