"It's nice here," she murmurs, oddly apologetic.

"Tfadalu-please," says the man, waving for them to sit down and offering a dish of pistachios.

"What is this here?" Ora asks as she takes a larger handful than she'd meant to.

"We're Ein Mahel," says the man. "There, up top, is Nazareth, the stadium. Where did you come from?"

Ora tells him. Surprised, the men pull themselves up into seated positions. "So far? Are you, ya'ani ya'ani, athletic?"

Ora laughs. "No, not at all. It worked out this way almost by accident."

"Coffee?"

Ora looks at Avram, who nods. They take their backpacks off. Ora finds a bag of cookies she bought that morning at Shibli, and a package of wafer biscuits from Kinneret. The man hands them slices of watermelon.

"But please, just don't talk to us about the news," Ora blurts out.

"Is there some special reason?" the man asks, slowly stirring the coffee in the finjan finjan.

"No, no reason, we just want a rest from all that."

He pours coffee into little cups. The man next to him, thick-armed and taciturn, with a kaffiyeh and agal agal on his head, offers Avram a puff from his hookah. Avram takes it. Then a young man, undoubtedly one of the three shepherds who had watched them from the hilltops, comes galloping over on his horse and joins them. He is the grandson of the older man. His grandfather kisses his head and introduces him to the guests. "Ali Habib-Allah is his name. He's a singer, and he pa.s.sed the first round for a compet.i.tion they're going to show on your television," the grandfather says, laughing, and pounds his grandson's back affectionately. on his head, offers Avram a puff from his hookah. Avram takes it. Then a young man, undoubtedly one of the three shepherds who had watched them from the hilltops, comes galloping over on his horse and joins them. He is the grandson of the older man. His grandfather kisses his head and introduces him to the guests. "Ali Habib-Allah is his name. He's a singer, and he pa.s.sed the first round for a compet.i.tion they're going to show on your television," the grandfather says, laughing, and pounds his grandson's back affectionately.

"Tell me," Ora asks with a sudden boldness that surprises her, "would you be willing to answer two questions for me?"

"Questions?" The grandfather turns to her with his whole body. "What kind of questions?"

"Nothing, just a little thing," she giggles. "We're doing-actually we haven't really started it, we were just thinking of doing-we met someone who was doing a sort of little survey, along the way." She laughs nervously again and does not look at Avram. "We thought, I thought, that every time we meet someone, we'd ask them two questions. Small ones."

Avram looks at her in astonishment.

"Which questions?" asks Ali, the boy, his cheeks flushed with excitement.

"Is this for the newspaper or something?" his grandfather asks, constantly stirring the coffee, turning the flame up and down under the pot.

"No, no, it's private, just for us." She blinks at Avram. "A souvenir from our trip."

"Ask away," says the grandson, and he spreads his legs out on the mat.

"If you don't mind," Ora says, pulling out the blue notebook, "I'll write down what you say, otherwise I won't remember anything." She is already holding a pen and looks from the old man to the younger one. "Very short questions," she adds, trying to retreat now, to shrink, to postpone the actual questioning, sensing the metallic taste of an approaching mistake. But all eyes are upon her and there's no way out. "Okay, so the first question, it goes like this, what do you most-"

"Maybe it's better if we don't," the grandfather interrupts with a grin. He puts a heavy hand on the upper back of his grandson the singer. "More watermelon?"

"Once every three weeks or so, he would come home on leave," Ora repeats the next day, threading her way back into what came unraveled on Mount Devorah in the afternoon. She remembers how she would fall on him in the doorway, set upon him with insatiable hunger. His giant backpack would block the doorway and Ora would try to dislodge it with both hands and give up. "Yalla "Yalla, come on, unpack now, before you do anything else. Straight into the washing machine. I'll thaw out some meatb.a.l.l.s for you, we'll leave the steak for tonight. There's a new Bolognese sauce I want you to try-Dad loves it, maybe you'll like it too-and I have stuffed vegetables, and we'll have a nice salad soon, and tonight we'll have a big meal. Ilan!" she shouts, "Ofer's here!"

She retreats into the depths of the kitchen, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with animal happiness. If she could, she would lick him all over-even now, at his age-and scrub off everything that had stuck to him, restore the childhood smells that still linger in her nostrils, her mouth, her saliva. A wave of warmth spills out to him inside her, and Ofer, without budging at all, moves a whole hairsbreadth away from her. She feels it, and she knew it would happen: he seals himself off with that same quick shift of the soul that she knows from Ilan and Adam, from all her men, who time after time have slammed their doors shut in the face of her br.i.m.m.i.n.g, leaving her tenderness fluttering outside, faltering, turning instantly into a caricature.

But she will not allow the hurt to bubble up. Not now. And here comes Ilan from his study, taking his gla.s.ses off, and he hugs Ofer warmly, measuredly. He is careful with him. Cheek touches cheek. "Stop getting taller already," he scolds. Ofer lets out a tired, pale laugh. Ilan and Ora move around him with a mixture of happiness and caution. "So what's new in the trenches?" "Nothing really, how are things at home?" "Not bad, you'll find out everything soon enough." "Why, did something happen?" "No, what could happen? Everything's just like it was when you left." "Do you want to take a shower first?" "No, later."

He finds it difficult even to let go of the stinking uniform and the dirt that has stuck to his flesh and that, Ora guesses, protects him a little. Three weeks in the field, on patrols, fixing tanks, checkpoints, ambushes. He has a strong odor. His fingers are rough and full of cuts. His fingernails are black. His lips look as if they are constantly bleeding. His gaze is distracted and vacant. She sees the house through his eyes. The cleanliness, the symmetry of the rugs and the pictures and the little knickknacks. He seems to find it hard to believe that such refinement exists in the world. The softness is almost unbearable to him. When she looks at Ilan, she feels clearly how he sees himself now in Ofer's eyes, all nonchalant citizenry, demilitarized, almost criminal. Ilan crosses his arms over his chest, juts his chin out slightly, and murmurs to himself in a deep voice.

Ofer sits down at the kitchen table and holds his head in his hands. His eyes almost close. Gradually, a casual conversation begins to hum among the three of them, crumbs of speech that no one listens to, whose purpose is only to give Ofer a few minutes to adapt, to connect the world he has come from with this world, or perhaps, she thinks, to detach them from one another.

She knows-she explains to Avram-that she and Ilan cannot even guess the effort it takes to erase, or at least to suspend, his other world so that he can come into the house without getting burned in the transition. The thought must pa.s.s through Ilan's mind at that moment too, and they glance at each other. Their faces are still full of joy, but somewhere deep in their eyes, they avoid each other like accomplices to a crime.

Suddenly Ofer gets up and stands there rubbing his shaved head vigorously. He slowly moves between the kitchen and the dining area, back and forth, back and forth. Ilan and Ora watch him with sidelong looks; he isn't here, that's obvious. He's walking a different track, one that is imprinted in his mind. They concentrate on slicing bread and frying food. Ilan turns the radio on loud, and the sounds of the midday news program pour into the room. Ofer revives immediately and sits back down at the table as though he had never gotten up. A young soldier from the Jalameh checkpoint is telling the interviewer how she caught a seventeen-year-old Palestinian boy that morning trying to smuggle explosives through in his pants. She giggles that today happens to be her birthday. She's nineteen. "Happy birthday," says the interviewer. "Cool!" the soldier laughs. "I couldn't have thought of a better birthday present."

Ofer listens. Jalameh is no longer in his sector. He served there about eighteen months ago. It could have been him who had found the explosives. Or not found them. After all, that's his job, to stand there so the terrorist blows himself up on him and not on civilians. Ora's breath is short. She feels something approaching. She recites to herself the names of the checkpoints and posts where he's served. Hizmeh and Halhul and Al Jab'ah, those ugly names. And all that Arabic, she thinks as she pads from one foot to the other, with the gurgles and grunts and yammers. Why were Ilan and Avram so into it in high school and the army? She riles herself up even more: I mean, almost every word in that language has something or other to do with tragedy or catastrophe, doesn't it? She shoves Ilan: "Look at how you're chopping those vegetables. Don't you know he likes his salad chopped really fine? You set the table, do me a favor!" Ilan throws his hands up with an obedient smile, and Ora attacks the vegetables. She grabs a sharp knife, swings it, and lands it down furiously to dice Abd al-Qader al-Husseini with Haj Amin al-Husseini and Shukeiri and Nimeiri and Ayatollah Khomeini and Nashashibi and Arafat and Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas and all their kasbahs and Qaddafis and SCUDs and Izz ad-Din al-Qa.s.sam and Qa.s.sam rockets and Kafr Qasim and Gamal Abdel Na.s.ser. She slaughters them all together: Katyushas and intifadas and martyr's brigades, and the sacred and the sanctified and the oppressed, Abu-Jilda and Abu Jihad, Jebalia and Jabaliyya, Jenin and Zarnuga, and Marwan Barghuouti, too. G.o.d knows where all those places are, anyway. If they could at least have normal-sounding names. She sighs. At least if their names were just a little nicer! Feverishly brandishing the knife, she finely chops up Khan Yunis and Sheikh Munis, Deir Ya.s.sin and Sheikh Ya.s.sin, Saddam Hussein and al-Qawuqji. All they bring is trouble, from the very first minute it's been nothing but trouble with them, she growls through gritted teeth. And what about Sabra and Shatila, and what about Al-Quds and the Nakba, and jihad and the shaheeds shaheeds and and Allahu akbar Allahu akbar, and Khaled Mashal and Hafez al-a.s.sad and Kz Okamoto? She pounds them all indiscriminately like a hornet's nest that must be destroyed, and she adds Baruch Goldstein and Yigal Amir, and with a sudden revelation she also throws in Golda and Begin and Shamir and Sharon and Bibi and Barak and Rabin, and Shimon Peres too-after all, don't they have blood on their hands? Did they really do everything they could so she could get five minutes of peace and quiet around here? All those people who razed her life, who keep nationalizing another one of her children every second-she stops when she notices Ofer's and Ilan's looks. She wipes the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand and asks angrily, "What? What is it?" As if they too are to blame for something. Then she quiets herself. "It's nothing, never mind, I just remembered something, something was getting on my nerves." She dresses the salad generously with olive oil and a quick dash of salt and pepper, squeezes a lemon, and puts the lovely bowl down in front of Ofer, a kaleidoscope of colors and scents. "Here you go, Ofer'ke. An Arabic salad, just the way you like it."

Ofer arches his eyebrows to express his opinion of her curious performance. He is still moving very slowly. His distracted look gets trapped by a newspaper on the table and he stares at a cartoon without comprehending it, without knowing the context. He asks if there was anything on the news this week. Ilan gives him a report and Ofer flips through the paper. He's not interested, Ora thinks. This country, which he is protecting, doesn't really interest him. She's sensed that in him for a while now: it's as though the connection between the outer layer, where he spends most of his time, and the interior one, here, has been severed. "Where's the sports?" he asks, and Ilan extricates the sports section from the recycling pile. Ofer buries his head in it. Ora asks cautiously if he hears the news over there, if he's been following what's going on in Israel. He shrugs one shoulder wearily but also with a strange bitterness: all those arguments, right, left, same difference, who can be bothered.

He gets out of his chair, kneels, unfastens the straps of his backpack, and starts emptying it out. His skull amazes her: so large, full of power, and solid. Such a complex structure of heavy, mature bones. She stands there wondering when he had time to develop bones like that and how this head could have pa.s.sed through her body. When he opens the backpack, a sharp stink of dirty socks fills the air. Ora and Ilan laugh awkwardly. The smell speaks volumes: Ora has the feeling that if she focuses on it, if she splits it into its filaments, she will know exactly what Ofer has gone through these past few weeks.

As though hearing her thoughts, he looks up at her with a pair of large eyes that are dark with exhaustion. For a moment he is very young again, needing Mom to read him. "What is it, Ofer'ke?" she asks feebly, alarmed at his expression. "Nothing is it," he answers habitually, and forces a tired smile. p.u.s.s.ycat, p.u.s.s.ycat, where have you been? p.u.s.s.ycat, p.u.s.s.ycat, where have you been? she thinks. she thinks. I've been to Halhul and the kasbah in Hebron. p.u.s.s.ycat, p.u.s.s.ycat, what did you there? I lay in an ambush and shot rubber bullets at kids throwing stones I've been to Halhul and the kasbah in Hebron. p.u.s.s.ycat, p.u.s.s.ycat, what did you there? I lay in an ambush and shot rubber bullets at kids throwing stones.

"I'm begging you," she'd said to him roughly a year earlier, even before the whole thing happened, maybe a month before. "Don't ever, ever shoot at them."

"Then what am I supposed to do?" he asked with a smirk. He skipped and danced around her, his broad chest bare and red, holding up a filthy khaki undershirt and writhing like a matador avoiding a bull. Every so often he leaned down and planted a light kiss on her forehead or cheek. "Just tell me what to do with them, Mom. They're a risk to people driving along the road!"

"Scare them," she said cunningly, as though she were trying out a new theory of warfare. "Slap them, punch them, anything, just don't shoot them!"

"We aim at the feet," he explained calmly, with that same amused superiority she knew from Adam and Ilan and the military a.n.a.lysts on television and the government ministers and the army generals. "And don't worry about them so much. The most a rubber bullet can do is break an arm or a leg."

"And if you miss and take someone's eye out?"

"Then that someone won't throw stones again. Let me give you an example: one of our guys shot three boys throwing stones at the pillbox this week, bang-bang-bang bang-bang-bang, broke their legs, one each, very elegantly done, and believe me, those kids won't be back there again."

"But their brothers will! And their friends will, and in a few years their children will!"

"Maybe you should aim so they'll never have any children," Adam suggested as he walked by, quiet and shadowy.

The boys laughed with slight embarra.s.sment and Ofer glanced awkwardly at Ora.

She grabbed his hand and dragged him into Ilan's study and stood facing him. "Now! I want you to promise me right now that you will never shoot someone to hurt them!"

Ofer looked at her and the anger began to rise. "Mom, khalas khalas, stop it, what are you...I have instructions, I have orders!"

Ora stomped her feet. "No! Never, do you hear me? You will never shoot to hurt a human being! For all I care, aim at the sky, aim at the ground, miss in every direction, just don't hit anyone!"

"And if he's holding a Molotov c.o.c.ktail? If he has a gun? Huh?"

They'd already had this conversation, or one like it. Or maybe that was with Adam when he started his service. She knew all the arguments, and Ofer knew them, too. She had sworn to herself that she'd keep quiet, or at least be very careful. She was always afraid that at the decisive moment of battle, or if he were taken by surprise, ambushed, her words would enter his mind and fail him, or delay his reaction for a split second.

"If your life is in danger then okay, I'm not saying that. Then you try to save yourself any way you can, I'm not arguing about that, but only then!"

Ofer crossed his arms over his chest in Ilan's broad, relaxed posture, and widened his grin. "And how exactly am I supposed to know whether my life is in danger? Maybe I could ask the guy to fill out a declaration of intent?"

She was trapped in the loathsome feeling she always got when he-when anyone-played with her, exploited her well-known lack of debating skills, the rickety a.s.sertions that came to her in such moments.

"Really, Mom. Wake up. h.e.l.lo! There's a war going on there! And anyway, I didn't think you were exactly crazy about them."

"What difference does it make what I think of them?" she screamed. "That's not the point. I'm not arguing with you now about whether we should even be there or not!"

"Well, for all I care, we can get out of there today and let them live their f.u.c.ked-up lives on their own and kill each other. But at this point in time, Mom, when I have the lousy luck of having to be there, what do you want me to do? No, tell me. D'you want me to lie there and spread my legs for them?"

He had never talked to her that way before. He was burning with rage. Her spirits fell. There must be a winning argument that would counteract all these claims of his. Her fingers spread in a mute scream next to her ears. Wait a minute. She exhaled and tried to gather her ragged thoughts. Soon she'd get it together and clarify to herself exactly what she wanted to say. She'd arrange the words along the right thread, the simple one. "Listen, Ofer, I'm not any smarter than you" (she wasn't) "or any more moral than you" (even the word scared her; secretly she felt she didn't really understand its true meaning, unlike everyone else, who apparently did), "but I do have-and this is a fact!" (she shrieked this in a slightly cheap way) "I do have more life experience than you!" "I do have more life experience than you!" (Really? Suddenly this too melted away: Do you really? With everything he's going through in the army? With everything he sees and does, with everything he faces every single day?) "And I also know something that you simply cannot yet know, which is-" (Really? Suddenly this too melted away: Do you really? With everything he's going through in the army? With everything he sees and does, with everything he faces every single day?) "And I also know something that you simply cannot yet know, which is-"

Which is what? What? She could see the flash of amus.e.m.e.nt in his eyes, and swore she would not react to it. She would focus on the main point, on saving her child from the barbarian standing opposite her.

"That in five years-no, not five: one year! One year from now, when you get out, you'll look at this situation in a totally different way. Wait! I'm not even talking about whether or not it's just, I'm only talking about how one day you will look back at what happened there"-she heroically ignored his sniffle and the smirk spreading over his lips-"and you'll thank me," she said stubbornly; she was a little stuck, and they both knew it, stuck and desperately searching for the elusive winning argument. "You'll see that you'll thank me one day!"

"If I'm still alive to thank you."

"And don't talk to me like that!" she screamed, her face turning red. "I can't stand those kinds of jokes, don't you know that?"

Dad's jokes, they both knew.

Tears of fury came to her eyes. She had almost grasped a brilliant answer in her mind, a logical, organized point, but as usual she lost her train of thought, dropped the st.i.tch, and so she just reached out and held his arm pleadingly and looked up at him: a final argument that was in fact a plea for mercy, if not charity. "Promise me, Ofer, just don't try to hurt someone intentionally."

He shook his head, smiled, and shrugged his shoulders. "No can do, Mom. It's war."

They looked at each other. Their estrangement terrified them. A memory flashed in her mind. That same cold burn of terror and failure from almost thirty years ago, when they took Avram from her, when they nationalized her life. She felt the same old story again: this country, with its iron boot, had once again landed a thundering foot in a place where the state should not be.

"Okay, Mom, enough. What's up with you? I'm just joking. Stop, enough." He reached out to hug her, and she was seduced-how could she not be? A hug of his own initiative. He even held her whole body to him, until she felt the mechanical signal on her back: thwack-thwack-thwack thwack-thwack-thwack.

And throughout the squabble, she tells Avram with her gaze lowered, she actually did have one crushing argument, which of course she didn't tell Ofer, and which she is never allowed to use. Because what was really raging in her was not the eyes or the legs of some Palestinian kid, with all due respect, but rather her absolute certainty that Ofer could not hurt a human being, because if that happened, even if there were a thousand justifications, even if the guy was about to detonate an explosive device, Ofer's life would never be the same. That was it. Quite simply, and irrefutably, he would have no life after that.

But when she took a step back and looked at him, at the strength of his body, at that skull, she wasn't even certain about that.

Now, in the kitchen, he tells them he hasn't changed his clothes or even showered for a week. His speaks tightly, hardly moving his lips, and Ora and Ilan strain to decipher his words. Ora watches Ilan surrept.i.tiously move to the balcony, to close a window or open a door, or just stand there on his own for a moment. She leans over the damp, sticky, greasy pile that has tumbled out of Ofer's backpack and gathers up uniforms, stiff socks, a military belt, undershirts, underwear. When she picks up the mess, sand leaks from pockets, and one bullet and a crumpled bus ticket fall out. She shoves the clothes into the machine and turns the dial to the most vigorous cycle. When the machine buzzes and the drum starts spinning, she feels the first sense of relief, as though she has finally revved up the process of domesticating this stranger.

And he sits at the table laid out for him, his head buried in the newspaper, and he can't find the strength to talk. He hasn't slept for thirty-some hours. There was lots of activity this week, but he'll tell them later. They quickly concur: "Of course, yes, the main thing is that you're here," Ora says, "we almost lost our minds waiting."

"Mom's been cooking for you all morning."

"Don't exaggerate! Dad's exaggerating as usual, I haven't had time to make anything at all. It's a good thing I baked the brownies yesterday."

"Oh come on," Ilan moans, and presents his argument for Ofer to judge: "She was out shopping all afternoon yesterday. Robbed the greengrocer, looted the butcher. By the way, how's the food over there?"

"Better, there's a new cook and we don't have rats in the kitchen anymore."

"Are you with the same guys from training?"

"More or less. A few new ones came from another battalion, but they're all right."

"And did everyone go home this weekend?"

"Please, Dad, let's talk later. I'm dead tired now."

A strange silence falls on them. Ilan squeezes oranges and Ora heats up the meatb.a.l.l.s. A strange boy with a strange smell sits at the kitchen table. Long threads untangle behind him all the way to a place that is difficult to see and hard to think about. Ilan is telling her something. Some minutiae about a deal he's been working on for two years between a Canadian venture-capital fund and two young guys from Beersheba who are developing a way to prevent drunk driving. Everything was ready to be signed, almost a done deal, and then at the last minute, when they took their pens out ...

The words fail to penetrate her. She cannot act out her role in this play, all of whose actors are real. Her lines are familiar, but the s.p.a.ce in which the play is staged-the sh.e.l.l of Ofer's tired, depressed silence-makes everything ridiculous and broken, and eventually Ilan also ebbs away and stops talking.

Standing over the sink, Ora shuts her eyes for a stolen moment, concentrates, and says her usual prayer-not to an exalted G.o.d, but the opposite. A pagan at heart, she makes due with little G.o.ds, day-to-day icons, and small miracles: If she gets three green lights in a row, if she has time to bring the laundry in before it rains, if the dry cleaner doesn't discover the hundred-shekel note she left in her jacket, then...And of course there are her usual bargains with fate. Someone rear-ends her b.u.mper? Excellent: Ofer just won immunity for a week! A patient refuses to pay a two-thousand-shekel debt? Penance! Another two thousand credits for Ofer are recorded somewhere.

From within the unpleasant silence a new round of domestic chatter starts up.

"Where's the onion left from the salad?"

"Do you need it?"

"I was thinking of frying some up with the meatb.a.l.l.s."

"And put black pepper on it, he likes black pepper, don't you, Ofer?"

"Yes, but not too much. Our cook is Moroccan, his shakshuka shakshuka sets my mouth on fire." sets my mouth on fire."

"So you eat shakshuka shakshuka?"

"Three times a day."

And the strand thickens furtively, slyly, weaving back and forth, and then Adam calls and says he's two seconds from home, he's just stopping to buy the paper and some snacks and they shouldn't start eating without him. The three of them exchange grinning looks-Adam, operating us all by remote control. Ilan and Ora blather on about everything that's changed in the house in the weeks since Ofer left. "He was always involved in all the goings-on at home," she tells Avram on a path near Tzippori that cuts through an open field covered with thousands of brown-orange woolly-bear caterpillars squirming in unison inside their silk coc.o.o.ns, so that the entire field seems to be dancing. "He always wanted to know about every piece of furniture we were thinking of buying and demanded that we report to him whenever an appliance broke and how much it cost to fix and what the repairman was like. He made us swear we would never, G.o.d forbid, throw out any broken appliance, or even the old parts, until he could examine them. When he started the army he even asked us to keep minor repairs for him to do when he was on leave-electrical work, plumbing, stopped-up drains, broken blinds, and yard work, of course." But it seems to Ora that he's a little tired of that now. The mundane defects of the house no longer concern him.

The table is set and the food is ready, and Ilan says something that manages to bring the first spark of a smile to Ofer's face, which they both treat as though it were an ember they have to breathe life into. Ofer tells them they have a cat with two kittens in the pillbox, and he's decided to adopt the mother. He blushes slightly: "I was thinking, you know, just so I'd have something maternal there." He gives an embarra.s.sed laugh, and Ora hovers over the frying pan odors, and here is Adam, finally home. "Everything's cold," she complains, but everything's still steaming hot, and the boys hug, and the sounds of their voices mingle, and they laugh together, a sound unlike any other. "Sometimes, here, on this journey," she tells Avram, "I dream about that sound, and I can really hear the two of them laughing."

Ofer's face lights up when he sees Adam, his eyes follow him wherever he goes, and only now does he seem to understand that he's home, and he begins to awaken from his three-week slumber. And when Ofer awakes, they do, too. The four of them come to life, and the kitchen itself, like a reliable old machine, joins them in tracking Ofer's movements, loyally running in the background, humming with the quiet commotion and the jingle of its unseen pistons and wheels. Listen to the soundtrack, she thinks. Believe in the soundtrack. This is the right tune: a pot bubbles, the fridge hums, a spoon clangs on a plate, the faucet flows, a stupid commercial on the radio, your voice and Ilan's voice, your children's chatter, their laughter-I never want this to end. From the pantry comes the rhythmic whirr of the washing machine, now augmented by the sound of metal clicking; probably a belt buckle, or a screw left in a pocket, but not, Ora hopes, another misplaced bullet, which will suddenly explode and fly at us all in the third act.

One day about a year ago she asked the secretary at her clinic to cancel her next patient. She'd had a rough day, hardly slept all night-"the stuff at home had already started," she says, and Avram listens tensely: there is something in her voice-and she thought she might pop over to one of the boutiques on Emek Refaim to buy a scarf or a pair of sungla.s.ses or something to cheer her up. She walked down Jaffa Street toward the parking lot where she left her car every day. The street was uncharacteristically still and the eerie silence disquieted her. She wanted to turn around and go back to the clinic, but she kept walking, and noticed that people on the street were walking quickly, without looking one another in the eye. A moment later she herself began to act the same way, lowering her eyes and avoiding people, except to steal secret glances, to scan and sort. Mostly, she looked to see if they were carrying anything, a package or a large bag, or if they looked nervous. But almost everyone looked somehow suspect, and she thought perhaps they saw her that way, too. Perhaps she should let them know that she posed no danger? That they could be calm around her and save themselves a few heartbeats? On the other hand, maybe she should not disclose that sort of information so casually here. She pulled back her shoulders and forced herself to straighten up and look right at people's faces. When she did, she saw in almost every person a note that hinted at some latent possibility-the possibility of being a murderer or a victim, or both.

When had she learned these movements and these looks? The nervous glances over her shoulder, the footsteps that seemed to sniff out their path and make their own choices. She discovered new things about herself, like symptoms of an emerging disease. It seemed as though the others, walking around her, everyone, even the children, were fitfully moving to the sounds of a whistle that only their bodies could hear, while they themselves were deaf to it. She walked faster, and her breath grew short. How do you get out of this? she wondered. How do you get away from here? When she reached a bus stop, she halted and sat down on one of the plastic seats. It had been years since she'd waited at a bus stop, and even this act of sitting on the smooth yellow plastic was an admission of defeat. She straightened up and slowed her breath. In a minute she would get up and keep walking. She remembered that in the first wave of suicide bombings, Ilan had gone with Ofer-Adam was in the army by then-to scout out safe walking routes from his school downtown to the stop where he got the bus for home. The first route was too close to where a terrorist had blown himself up on the 18 18 bus, killing twenty pa.s.sengers. When Ilan suggested that Ofer could walk up the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, Ofer reminded him of the triple explosion on the mall, where five people were killed and a hundred and seventy injured. Ilan tried to outline a slightly longer route, which would go around the back and come out near the Mahaneh Yehuda market, but Ofer pointed out that this was exactly where a double suicide bombing had occurred: fifteen dead and seventeen injured. And anyway, he added, all the buses from town to Ein Karem go past the central bus station, where there had also been a bombing-the bus, killing twenty pa.s.sengers. When Ilan suggested that Ofer could walk up the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, Ofer reminded him of the triple explosion on the mall, where five people were killed and a hundred and seventy injured. Ilan tried to outline a slightly longer route, which would go around the back and come out near the Mahaneh Yehuda market, but Ofer pointed out that this was exactly where a double suicide bombing had occurred: fifteen dead and seventeen injured. And anyway, he added, all the buses from town to Ein Karem go past the central bus station, where there had also been a bombing-the 18 18 again, twenty-five dead and forty-three injured. again, twenty-five dead and forty-three injured.

And so the two of them roamed from street to street-as she recounts the story to Avram, she has the horrifying thought that Ofer may still have his orange spiral notebook where he writes the numbers of dead and wounded-and the streets and the alleyways where there hadn't yet been a bombing seemed so foreordained and vulnerable that Ilan was amazed nothing had happened on them yet. Finally he gave up, stopped in the middle of a street, and said, "You know what, Oferiko? Just walk as fast as you can. Run, even."

And the look Ofer gave him-he told Ora later-he will never forget.

As she was contemplating all this, a bus stopped at the station. When the door opened, Ora dutifully got up and stepped in, and only then realized she had no idea what the bus fare was or which route she was on. She hesitantly held out a fifty-shekel note, and the driver growled at her for change. She dug through her purse but couldn't find any, and he hissed a curse, handed her a handful of coins, and hurried her in. She stood looking at the pa.s.sengers, most of whom were older and had weary, gloomy faces. Some were on their way back from the market, propping crammed baskets between their feet. There were a few high school students in uniform who were strangely quiet, and Ora looked at them all with bewilderment and muted compa.s.sion. She wanted to turn around and get off-"I never meant to take the bus," she tells Avram-but someone behind her pushed her farther in, and Ora padded a few steps ahead. Since there were no vacant seats, she stood holding the overhead bar, leaned her cheek on her arm, and watched the city through the window. What am I doing here? she thought. I don't have to be here. They pa.s.sed the jumble of shops on Jaffa Street, the Sbarro restaurant, and then Zion Square, where a b.o.o.by-trapped refrigerator had blown up in 1975, killing, among many others, the artist Naftali Bezem's son, whom she'd known in the army. Ora wondered if Bezem had been able to paint after his son's death. At the YMCA stop, a few seats opened up, and she sat down and decided she would get off at the next stop. She stayed on as they pa.s.sed Liberty Bell Park and Emek Refaim, and when the bus drove past Cafe Hillel she said, half out loud, Now you're getting off and going in for a cup of coffee. And she kept going.

It was amazing to her how quiet the pa.s.sengers were. Most of them gazed out the windows as she did, as though not daring to look at their fellow pa.s.sengers. Every time the bus stopped at a station, they all sat up a little straighter and stared at the people getting on. The new pa.s.sengers, in turn, scanned them with squinting eyes. It was a very quick exchange of glances, for a fraction of a second, but there was the wondrously complex labor of sorting and cataloging going on, and Ora stayed on the bus through the Katamonim neighborhood and the Malha Mall, until they reached the last stop and the driver looked at her in the rearview mirror and called out, "Lady, end of the road." Ora asked if there was a bus back to town. "That one over there," the driver said and pointed to the 18 18. "But run, 'cause he's about to move. I'll honk at him to wait for you."

She got on the empty bus, and her eyes refracted a split-second scene that was torn, shattered, and b.l.o.o.d.y. She wondered where the safest seat was; had she not been embarra.s.sed, she would have asked the driver. She tried to remember the many reports she'd heard about bus bombings and couldn't decide whether most of them occurred when the terrorist got on the bus, in which case of course it would be in the front part, or whether he went farther inside, and then, once he was standing in the middle of the bus, surrounded by most of the pa.s.sengers, he called out his Allahu akbar Allahu akbar and pressed the b.u.t.ton. She decided to sit in the back row and pushed away the thought of how the shrapnel and the metal studs would somehow be stopped before they reached her. But after a minute she felt too lonely, and she moved one row forward. Wondering if this simple switch might seal her fate in just a few moments, she met the driver's probing eyes in the mirror. "And suddenly it occurred to me," she tells Avram, "that he might end up thinking I'm the suicide bomber." and pressed the b.u.t.ton. She decided to sit in the back row and pushed away the thought of how the shrapnel and the metal studs would somehow be stopped before they reached her. But after a minute she felt too lonely, and she moved one row forward. Wondering if this simple switch might seal her fate in just a few moments, she met the driver's probing eyes in the mirror. "And suddenly it occurred to me," she tells Avram, "that he might end up thinking I'm the suicide bomber."

After an hour of traveling she was exhausted but afraid to let down her guard. Her eyelids drooped and she fought the urge to lean her head on the window for a quick nap. For the last few days she had felt like a child who discovers, unhappily and too quickly, the grown-ups' secrets. A week earlier, she'd sat down one morning at Cafe Moment when the place was neither full nor empty, and a short, stocky woman wearing a heavy coat had come in, holding a baby covered with a blanket on her shoulder. She was not a young woman, around forty-five, and perhaps that was what seemed suspicious, because suddenly a whisper of "It's not a baby" flew through the air, and the place turned upside down in an instant. People leaped up, overturned chairs as they fled, knocked over plates and gla.s.ses, fought one another to get to the door. The woman in the coat observed the commotion with a baffled look and did not seem to comprehend that it was all because of her. Then she sat down at a table and placed the baby on her lap. Ora, unable to move, watched the woman, transfixed. She unwrapped the blanket, unfastened the b.u.t.tons of a little purple coat, and smiled at the chubby, sleepy face that peered out. She cooed at the baby: "Ah-googoo, googoo, googoo." "Ah-googoo, googoo, googoo."

The next afternoon-Ora tells him on their way up to the Reish Lakish lookout point, as they step in the footprints of ancient Rabbinic sages on a glaring hot day; the level path winds comfortably through carob and oak trees, and plump cows graze in the distance-she asked her secretary to cancel her next session again, walked to the 18 18 bus stop, and took the bus to the last station. Since her afternoon was free and she didn't feel like being alone at home, she took the bus back all the way to the first stop, in the Kiryat HaYovel neighborhood, where she changed to another bus and took it back downtown. She got off and walked around for a while, watched the reflection of the street behind her as she window-shopped, scanned the pa.s.sersby, and forced herself to move slowly. bus stop, and took the bus to the last station. Since her afternoon was free and she didn't feel like being alone at home, she took the bus back all the way to the first stop, in the Kiryat HaYovel neighborhood, where she changed to another bus and took it back downtown. She got off and walked around for a while, watched the reflection of the street behind her as she window-shopped, scanned the pa.s.sersby, and forced herself to move slowly.

The next morning, before her first patient, she got the 18 18 at the central bus station, and this time she sat in front. Every three or four stops, she got off and changed to a different bus. Sometimes she crossed the street and rode the other way. She tried to sit in a different place every time, as though her body were a p.a.w.n in an imaginary game of chess. When she realized she was late for her third patient, she had a brief moment of fear that her clinic directors would call her in for another talk, but she postponed the thought to a time when she would have more energy. She was so tired during those days that the moment she sat down she would let her head droop, and sometimes she'd doze off for several minutes. Every so often she would drowsily look up at the people on the bus through a haze. Voices from conversations between strangers and phone calls penetrated her slumber. If they stopped at a station and no one got on, relief would immediately spread through the bus, and the pa.s.sengers would talk to one another. A heavyset elderly man adorned with Red Army medals who sat next to Ora on one of her journeys pulled a large brown envelope from his shopping basket and showed her an X-ray of his kidney, which had a growth on it. Through the X-ray, Ora could dimly make out two Ethiopian soldiers from Border Patrol checking the papers of a young man who might or might not have been Arab. He kept kicking at the sidewalk. at the central bus station, and this time she sat in front. Every three or four stops, she got off and changed to a different bus. Sometimes she crossed the street and rode the other way. She tried to sit in a different place every time, as though her body were a p.a.w.n in an imaginary game of chess. When she realized she was late for her third patient, she had a brief moment of fear that her clinic directors would call her in for another talk, but she postponed the thought to a time when she would have more energy. She was so tired during those days that the moment she sat down she would let her head droop, and sometimes she'd doze off for several minutes. Every so often she would drowsily look up at the people on the bus through a haze. Voices from conversations between strangers and phone calls penetrated her slumber. If they stopped at a station and no one got on, relief would immediately spread through the bus, and the pa.s.sengers would talk to one another. A heavyset elderly man adorned with Red Army medals who sat next to Ora on one of her journeys pulled a large brown envelope from his shopping basket and showed her an X-ray of his kidney, which had a growth on it. Through the X-ray, Ora could dimly make out two Ethiopian soldiers from Border Patrol checking the papers of a young man who might or might not have been Arab. He kept kicking at the sidewalk.

They stop and take a breath. Hands on waists. Why have we been running like this? they ask one another silently. But something is already kicking at their heels, stirring pins and needles in their souls, and they merely glance at the beautiful Netofa Valley and walk on quickly through a forest of terebinth, oak, and birch trees. Ora walks silently, her eyes on the path. Avram throws her a few cautious looks and his face constricts and closes up from one step to the next. "Look," she whispers, pointing. On the path, at their feet, a crowded series of hieroglyphics emerges, a crosshatch that flows and runs from all directions until it congregates in a cl.u.s.ter of snails on one branch of a bush.