"We clear off through the hole in the fence in the afternoon, enjoy an evening in Tel Aviv, and come back tomorrow morning through the fence again. No one will notice."
"Tayeb."3He yawns. "Let me sleep."
Going home, going home, going home.
The motor roars. On both sides of the road trees are flying toward us and then disappearing behind us.
"What the hell! Drive faster!" These civilian drivers don’t know what a decent speed is.
Ness Ziona, Rishon LeZion.4 I am driving home - therefore I exist.
Three curious words: I exist! I exist! I exist! But why? Why me in particular? Why me and not, for example, Nino? If that Sudanese had aimed his gun a fraction to the right, the situation would be reversed. I would be rotting in the ground and Nino would be driving home. Strange.
In any case I am alive. That’s a fact. My body is uninjured. To think that only two days ago I was envious of Nehemia, when a piece of shrapnel ripped up his guts and sent him to the hospital for months!
I must do something. But what? Drink? No. Drinking is a kind of suicide, the senses are damped down. And I don’t want to damp down my senses. Quite the opposite. I want them to be at their sharpest today. Girls? That is it! I will find a woman. This very evening. Make love with her until two in the morning. Then four hours’ sleep and back to camp before anyone notices my absence.
A woman. Strange. I don’t feel any sexual desire. I want to have her to prove to myself that I am alive, that my body works, full of move-ment and sensation. I want to celebrate this wonderful idea, incom-prehensible, strange, surprising: life!
"And you really were not at the front?" asks my mother.
"I really wasn’t," I swear. "I was lucky. We were kept in reserve all the time, to protect HQ ..."
My mother would love to kiss me. But she knows that I hate kiss-ing in the family. In our family, feelings are not often displayed. She satisfies herself with my answer and wants to get me something special for dinner.
My father is leafing through a newspaper. I know that he doesn’t believe me and that he wants to ask me about the fighting. But he