Limassol Read Free Page A

as in the conversation with the publisher. “How do you feel?” she asked him with concern and warmth. “Still so much pain?”
    He told her he went to the seashore that afternoon, somebody drove him. There are families who live on the shore in tents all summer, he said, because it’s too stifling in the camps. Whole clans, the women dressed as in Saudi Arabia, go into the water with all their clothes on. He tried to get away from them all a bit, but it was very crowded. Not even the sea helped him anymore.
    â€œCome here, we’ll go down to the beach on Gordon Street,” laughed Daphna, trying to cheer him up. “You remember how we’d go into the water at night, when you’d teach us the songs of Abd El-Wahab?”
    â€œI want to come,” said the man from Gaza. “I miss you, Daphna. Have you got any news about my case?”
    â€œI don’t know who to talk to anymore,” said Daphna. “I sent letters to everyone I could, I don’t know anybody anymore. Once there was somebody in the army that I knew, but he was discharged. I called Shimon Peres’s office, they promised to give me an answer. I’m willing to move heaven and earth for you, Hani. I don’t know how. It’s not like it used to be. Is it my imagination or did it used to be better?”
    â€œIt was always shit,” he laughed, and he went on in a slow and precise Hebrew. “But at least we could laugh. Today they can shoot you like a dog, let you rot . . . Oh, it hurts, ya’lan . . . I’m sorry I curse, Daphna, it hurts too much.”
    â€œDon’t you have something for the pain?” she asked.
    â€œThere’s nothing they can give me. The situation is really bad. Can’t sleep at night for the pain. I tried hashish, but it didn’t help, just brings bad thoughts, and alcohol is forbidden. I’m waiting for the end now, Daphna. This isn’t a life.”
    â€œMy thoughts are with you,” said Daphna quietly. “And I’ll get you out of there, don’t worry. I’ll do whatever it takes. Call me in a few days.”
    I invested too much time in those literary conversations, suddenly I noticed that it was awfully late. I ran down to the parking lot and dashed onto the freeway toward Jerusalem. My cell phone was full of messages, they called me to come urgently, in the air there was a sense that things were spinning out of control: somebody with a belt of standard explosives and nails was walking around in the area, on lighted streets, in front of cafes, looking for a place with action to set it off, in a crowd of living flesh he would turn into dead flesh, and we couldn’t find him.
    After I passed Latrun, there was an enormous traffic jam, apparently there had been an accident. I put the blue siren on top of the car and drove up onto the shoulder, the cops at the wreck of the vehicles looked at me and waved me on with their flashlights. I dashed down the slope of Motsa. I opened the window because the heat of the Coastal Plain had dissipated and was replaced by the wind of Jerusalem. The square was empty when I got there, but the spires of the Russian Church were lighted beautifully for the tourists who didn’t come. In front of the area of the police station marked off with barbed wire, I got out of the car a moment, called home, asked Sigi to talk with the child. “He fell asleep a long time ago,” she said. “Where are you? When are you coming home?”
    I went into the human pens to spend the night.
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    I tried to persuade Haim to take me off that side job. He was one of the last holdouts of his generation in the service—almost fifty years old, one leg crushed in a screwed-up mission in Lebanon, a workaholic. When I first met him, he didn’t wear a kippa , even though he always was observant. In recent years he was wearing a black kippa again.
    â€œYou can put anybody on that file,” I said.