complications, we will be able to give you light food in, shall we say, a week or two."
"And in three months you’ll get a roast chicken," Rachel adds.
"And a cold beer," I dream.
"And potato salad with mayonnaise."
"Stop tickling his appetite." Doctor Kami smiles and turns off the ceiling light.
I stare at the lamp and dream about the first meal I will order as soon as I am back in Tel Aviv. First course: chicken soup with noo-dies. No, first, potato salad with chopped liver. Then the soup. A main course of roast chicken. A whole one. Well browned on all sides. Like that chicken ...
* * *
That chicken ...
It is roasting over a Primus stove. Four more butchered chickens are lying on the floor. Sancho, bloody and plastered with feathers, is in charge of the roasting.
It is a day to celebrate. First, because we have captured this village - without a fight. Twenty rifle bullets and two grenades did the job. After the terrible massacre in Latrun we needed an easy victory to improve our morale. Only twelve hours ago, when we climbed into the damned armored vehicles - those "mobile coffins" - we were expecting hard fighting with heavy losses. The intelligence reports suggested stiff resistance. These intelligence people. Because of them four companies had to be assembled for the "big operation."
And we have another reason to celebrate. It is the first day of the State of Israel. Yesterday evening we heard the news as we sat on the lawns in Hulda - young men, whose whole purpose in life for the last few months had been the fight for the state. Perhaps they understood that the declaration would change nothing in the real situation. The state was really founded on the day we marched off to the first battle. The battles between the politicians, who, if rumor was to be believed, were fighting right up to the day before about whether the declaration of the state was right or not, have become meaningless. After all it is not political declarations that will decide the future, but the facts. And these facts were established by us, the soldiers.
"There is a rumor that the Egyptians have invaded tonight," reports Zuzik as he comes back from a "reconnaissance patrol."