firepower more decisive than the number of soldiers, and surprise much more effective than a fortified position.
Fifty kilometers per hour.
Fatima slowly wakes up. Fatima is our jeep. The name comes from the picture of the pretty girl that I "captured" in Deir Muheisin. Since then I have carried it with me. It wasn’t easy to choose a name for the jeep. There were many suggestions. Melech wanted to call it "Flash," I suggested "Devil," "Flea," or "Beetle." Sali Kreismann liked the sound of "The Merry Widow" or "Modest Rose." In the end we decided unanimously: our jeep is called Fatima.
Seventy kilometers per hour.
The speed is shaking our bones. The muscles of the face begin to tense. Without our noticing it, a smile of enjoyment spreads over our faces. We lean forward and urge Melech on. But he doesn’t need any encouragement. He is already drunk with speed.
Eighty kilometers per hour.
The jeep flies over the road. The wind tears at our faces and whis-ties like a thousand rifle bullets. Sometimes we get hit by small stones, which feel like bullets.
Ninety kilometers per hour.
Our eyes are watering. Melech is the only one with the necessary goggles. We blink and try ineffectively to recognize the landscape around us. In the distance a motorbike appears, coming in our direc-tion. It is dancing strangely up and down. A sharp voooom and it is behind us.
Everything is dancing - even the trees along the road. They are swaying like a swing boy1 in Tel Aviv, dancing his last rumba. We have to hold on with all our strength to the machine gun support, or we’ll fall out the back onto the road.
Ninety-five kilometers per hour.
It’s like being drunk. A wonderful intoxication. A conscious euphoria that wakes all the senses. The blood is buzzing in our veins. The jeep sings. The world around us sings. Fragments of verse appear in my head, only to disappear immediately. "The wheels roll to vie-tory," "the jeep races the wind ..." They appear and vanish like the clouds in the sky.
We are approaching a populated area. Melech takes his foot off the accelerator. Sixty, fifty, forty. We awake from our dreamlike state,