There was once a United Nations peacekeeping station in the Golan Heights. The station may still be there. I do not know. I have long since lost track of the mad rabbit warren that is the Middle East. The Heights at the time was occupied by Israel, but owned--at least as reported by stubborn maps--by Syria. I hear Israel has outright annexed the Heights and Syria is now a polyglot of armed interests, all intent on implementing the principle that everyone suffers. What of the U.N. peacekeepers? I do not know.

When I was there in 1995 things were comparatively stable. Looking backwards from today, the environment was positively plush. Even the idea of peacekeepers was not fully absurd, merely futile. Today, such an idea is bureaucracy alone, and I assume if there are peacekeepers, they are just measuring time in service, summing the benefits they will accrue for this assignment. I do not know. I could research it, but how useless would that be?

I was in Jerusalem to study a system for which my employers had no use, had no mandate to understand, and in fact were enjoined not to engage. The training and study went well. We had lunch in the classroom. There were about ten of us, from various entities, studying this product that the Israeli company holding the training and evaluation session wanted us to have faith in. We all got along, for the most part. We had long sessions. Evenings and weekends our hosts provided us a tour guide, who carried an Uzzi (in a huge purse so as not to scare us), a bus, and hauled us around like eager tourists, smacking us silly with the ponderous historical sites of the Holy Land.

Until a few years ago, I still retained the training manuals.

Thankfully, we were not billeted in the tall tourist hotels that smite Jerusalem's skyline. We were in a more European style accommodation settled in the back corner of a residential neighborhood clinging to a spit of hills just outside the old city.

The Golan Heights was not on the plan. But for some unknown reason, it was suggested that a few of us--not, for dreaded sake, the most of us--go to the U.N. compound. My employer (the U.S. Navy) might have recommended that we check in there. I do not know. Like most ideas notable for their genius or their stupidity, the details of why are long forgotten. I do not know if there was ever clear thinking surrounding the request, but there is no accounting for it now, and that is likely a good thing.

In one of the eddies of free time afforded us in this eighteen day junket, we took a taxi up to the Heights and met an Israeli guide--likely Mossad--who explained to us that there, down there, was the U.N. compound, and here, right in front of us, was a minefield. Who put in the minefield I do not remember--Israel, Syria, the United Nations, or some other free agent. The mines do not care, and neither did I. An exploding mine is the definition of democracy. Perhaps that is true as well of a mine merely waiting to explode. In any case, our guide told us not to worry: the sappers each morning come through, locate the mines, and string out a path through them.

Indeed, looking over the impressive minefield (actually, the idea of the minefield was impressive--the field itself looked like any slack of unused land stranded anywhere: between two houses or behind a garage or here on a scrub hillside), I could see white lines attached to removable poles, much like the crowd control lanes at a movie theater or any place people are expected to queue up and be treated like cattle. There were five or six lanes of them, leading from one side of the minefield to the other, zigging and zagging, like cracks in breached pottery.

Our guide advised us to select a lane, and follow along the white tape line of that lane, one person to a lane, and soon we would be safely on the other side. He seemed sure of it.

What I did not ask is: why don't they dig up and defuse the mines? Nor did I ask why they must re-establish lanes each day. Do the mines cluster at night and decide on new positions for the next day? Our guide seemed nonchalant about it. Perhaps out of practice. Everyone seemed set on the task, so I grabbed a paper tape and began gingerly to be guided by it.

We stepped slowly, each of us to his own uncopied, unique lane, perhaps combating less harshly with gravity than we otherwise would. Step after step.

And then, from the guide perhaps fifteen feet in, five more than any of the rest of us, we hear, "Oh shit!"

I cannot think of anything you would be less likely to want to hear from someone cautiously navigating you through a minefield than "Oh shit!"

At this point, the mind does not go through its normal thought-to-action processing stratagem. The body does not wait for it. My body stopped. I did not tell it to stop. By the time my mind had processed what my ears had harvested, my body was already stiff and was sending back in response to the brain's command "yeah, I got that, let's move on to panic response two".

Without any particular commands, my testicles clawed their way up my scrotum and made ready to cling to the intestines. The business end of those intestines had closed down to the point that air was being strangled out. Muscles I had not been aware of in years stiffened. My fingernails were asking, "What do you need us to do?" The ears were suddenly capable of hearing flies plotting in whispers half a mile away.

The guide said, "The locals have been in and moved the lines. Don't worry, just step out the way you stepped in." Easy for him to say. At this point, my approach became technical. Back out or turn around and walk out? Backing out, I can't see with ease any remnants of my footprints. But if I turn around, the shape of my foot does not mirror my footfalls going in. Then again, if I back out, it is more likely I could lose my footing. So many options, and the breath getting shallower all the time.

Lucky that the guide had been faster than the rest of us. We watched as he turned around, and headed out walking forward, trying to find his earlier footsteps in the dusty ground. I figured he most likely had been around more things that explode than had I, so maybe I would follow his lead. The others seemed to agree, though we did not speak to each other. Silence seemed appropriate at the time. Besides, all of our mouths were dry and we were wondering, anyway, if perhaps sound could set off a mine. In situations like this, mines become preternaturally capable, with some sort of metallic malice especially enabled just at our most profound point of stress.

Getting out was a lot slower than getting in. Did I step there, or there? Is that my previous footprint? Should I compensate for windage? In the end, we all got out. About three days later, my testicles took a look both ways, slowly dropped back to their normal position, and today resemble what you would expect them to for a man my age: two happy rocks suspended in a tube sock. For about two weeks my rectum suffered a clutching variety of PTSD. I watched where I stepped until my plane landed in New York.

We did not attempt to go to the U.N. compound again. We left the guide looking thoughtfully at the mine field, piled in our taxi, with the Palestinian driver happy to ferry us off the Heights and back to our suddenly safe and worthy hotel. There was a bar in the hotel. Separate from the restaurant one level down. Quiet. Excellent for self-reflection and evaluation of the day's unforeseen elements. Thankfully.