cream. This was their last contact with the civilized world. Gedera was like a border post. To the north lay the Land of Israel and to the south, beyond the great roadblocks, lay "the Front."
As the soldier, sunk in reminiscences, gazed at the kiosk, an elderly woman got into the bus. She was one of those women whose faces are deeply marked by hard work. She bought her ticket and looked around for a place to sit.
All the seats were taken, which did not trouble her. Her eyes settled on the soldier. He woke briefly from his thoughts, glanced at the old woman, and returned his gaze to the kiosk. The bus drove off. The old woman squeezed in somehow. The soldier returned to his reverie.
In Rehovot a young woman got on. She was pretty or even more than that: and you could see that she knew it. She appeared very self-confident. A quick glance told her that no seats were free. But she also registered something else: that the soldier was the only young person on the bus. He looked at her discreetly through half-closed eyes. The way a man looks at a pretty woman. He naively thought she would not notice. Their eyes met, and she smiled at him. His face stiffened. He closed his eyes, let his head sink onto his chest as if in sleep, but his cheeks reddened.
The woman went further and soon found an elderly gentleman who offered her his place. The bus drove down the hill to the railway and then through the abandoned orange groves of Ness Ziona.
There a middle-aged couple was waiting. A respectable woman and a man with a stomach decorated with a golden watch chain. They were obviously Germans and it was difficult to make a connection between their appearance and the small, poverty-stricken settlement where the only attractive building was a minaret. Maybe they were visiting some new immigrants who had moved into the abandoned Arab village?
The woman got in and stood next to the soldier. He didn’t open his eyes. Maybe he had not seen her. She hesitated, and then coughed. He didn’t move. She got annoyed and said to her husband in German: "Nothing is more ludicrous than a young man pretend-ing to be asleep!"
Her high-pitched voice resounded through the bus, but still the soldier did not move. Maybe he didn’t understand German? "What