Rafi hesitated for a moment. "Moshe, take me with you" he said quietly, almost in a whisper.
Moshe looked at him for a long time, his eyes expressing some-thing like pity. "Listen to me," in an unusually gentle tone, "it would be better for you to stay here. You can’t make any friends at the front. That only causes problems. Particularly if you are talking about an Arab boy. It was a crazy idea from the start. I should never have allowed it. Now it can cost us lives ... if I find him near the front line, I will have to shoot him from a distance." Moshe was known in the battalion as a good shot.
"Still..." Rafi begged.
"Tfaddal.8 But don’t forget: I warned you. You are too sentimental for things like this."
* * *
When they were standing on the second hill, they saw the white don-key and its rider disappear between the houses of the village of Agija - the village that was cleared that morning by the jeeps. Moshe, him-self at the wheel, raced across the field at seventy miles an hour. The jeep was bouncing like crazy.
In the main street of the village they suddenly spotted the donkey Messiah on its own. Moshe stopped. Rafi jumped out and disap-peared between the houses. Moshe cut the motor and followed him. Rafi stood still and listened. From one of the windows he heard a rustling. He approached on tiptoe, holding the Sten at the ready. He stopped by the narrow window and looked in cautiously.
At first he saw nothing. Then his eyes slowly adapted to the dark-ness in the room. He could make out Hassan, on his knees before a figure lying in a dark corner.
"Abu Musa," he whispered, but his voice echoed in the little room. "Can you hear me? It is me, Hassan. Hassan Ibn Darwisch ..." The figure muttered something. It had probably not heard Hassan at all.
"You must be able to remember me. I am Hassan, you taught me to read and write ..." The figure stirred and raised itself into a sitting position. It was a very old Arab with a thin white beard. Old and blind. He smiled, revealing his two remaining teeth. His hands groped in the dark until they found Hassan’s head. "Hassan. Hassan Ibn Darwisch. God bless you."