To the Israeli Soldier Who Murdered Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi

I KNOW YOU. I met you in the dense canopies in the war in El Salvador. It was there that I first heard the single, high-pitched crack of the sniper bullet. Distinct. Ominous. A sound that spreads terror. I saw you at work in Basra in Iraq and of course Gaza, where on a fall afternoon at the Netzarim Junction, you shot dead a young man a few feet away from me. We carried his limp body up the road. I lived with you in Sarajevo during the war. You were only a few hundred yards away, perched in high rises that looked down on the city. I witnessed your daily carnage.

You targeted me, too. You struck down colleagues and friends. I was in your sights traveling from northern Albania into Kosovo. Three shots. That crisp crack, too familiar.

I know how you talk. The black humor. “Pint-sized terrorists” you say of the children you kill. You are proud of your skills. It gives you cachet. You cradle your weapon as if it is an extension of your body. You admire its despicable beauty. This is who you are. A killer.

In your society of killers, you are respected, rewarded, promoted. You are numb to the suffering you inflict. Maybe you believe the killing is a necessary evil, a way to make sure Palestinians die before they can strike. Maybe you are scared to die. Maybe your mind is so warped that you believe killing is righteous.

You are intoxicated by the god-like power to revoke another person’s charter to live on this earth. You revel in the intimacy of it. You see in fine detail through the telescopic sight, the nose and mouth of your victim. The triangle of death. You hold your breath. You pull slowly, gently on the trigger. You were the last person to see Ayşenur alive. You were the first person to see her dead.

This is you now. And now no one can reach you. You are death’s angel. But, I suspect, this will not last. I covered war for a long time. I know, even if you do not, the next chapter of your life. I know the hell you are about to enter.

It starts like this. All the skills you acquired as a military killer on the outside are useless. You can run, for a while, but there will be reckoning. And it is the reckoning I will tell you about.

You will face a choice. Live the rest of your life, stunted, numb, cut off from yourself, cut off from those around you. Descend into a psychopathic fog, trapped in the absurd, interdependent lies that justify mass murder. If this is you then you will never again truly live.

Of course, you do not talk about what you did to those around you, certainly not to your family. They think you are a good person. You know this is a lie. The numbness, usually, wears off. You look in the mirror, and if you have any shred of conscience left, your reflection disturbs you.

I have trauma from war. But the worst trauma I do not have. The worst trauma from war is not what you saw. It’s what you did. The names they have for it — moral injury, perpetrator-induced traumatic stress — seem tepid given the hot, burning coals of rage, the night terrors, the despair.

And then, one day, perhaps, you reach out for love. Love is the opposite of war. War is about turning other human beings into objects, into corpses. Corpses are the end product of war, what comes off its assembly line. So, you will want love, but the angel of death has made a Faustian bargain. It is this. It is the hell of not being able to love. You will carry this death inside you for the rest of your life. It corrodes your soul. Yes. We have souls.

Then one day, a young woman comes into your life. You see in her, it will come in a flash, Ayşenur’s face. The young woman you murdered. She’s come back to life. Israeli now. Speaking Hebrew. Innocent. Good. Full of hope. The full force of what you did, who you were, who you are, will hit you like an avalanche.

Yes. You killed Ayşenur. It’s harder now to dehumanize her. You know, you saw it through your scope, she was no threat. You will be overwhelmed with sorrow. Regret. Shame. You will have an existential crisis. There is a part of me that says you deserve this torment. There is a part of me that wants you to suffer for the loss you inflicted on Ayşenur’s family and friends, to pay for taking the life of this courageous and gifted woman.

You will, one day, not be the killer you are now. You will exhaust yourself trying to ward off demons. You will desperately want to be human. You will want to love and be loved. But that will mean a life of contrition. It will mean making your crime public. It will mean begging, on your knees, for forgiveness. It will mean forgiving yourself. This will be your only hope for salvation. If you do not take it, you are damned.