Right after Rabin was murdered, people automatically began saying that years later this would be one of those moments that people are going to ask about “where have you been when Rabin died?” I remember exactly when I’ve been when Rabin was murdered.
It was a little less then a week after I started my first year in Art school. I was young and fresh out of the Army and the future looked promising and exciting. I met the guy who later turned out to be my partner for 9 years that week, and though we didn’t even know what the other’s name were we already had our first argument in one of the classes. At that particular time, I was in my father’s design studio, where he no longer works, my room at my parent’s house was too small to work in so I used to go their to do my homework. I was trying to start on the first project we got in class a few days before. The project was to create different composition with one brush stroke and one splash of color, I just put down one piece of paper, and started on the other. It was a black piece of paper and I was drawing an enlarged brush stroke on it in white. My dad, also coming to work, left for half an hour to buy Falafel to the two of us. I was half listening to the radio, there was a big Peace rally in Tel Aviv, A city which at the time was still half alien to me, There was live music playing, bands I didn’t really like but still it was a big optimistic event.
Then as I started on the splash part of the painting, There was loud noises from the radio and breaking news announcements and some reporter said that Rabin was shot, it was so surprising and strange I didn’t quite understood what just happened, I just set there listening to the radio and going on with my work. Looking down at the paper, the white brush strokes on the black background looked like a barrel of a gun and the splash was red, like blood.