To The End Of The Land Part 8

"How long will he be there?" he asks.

She explains that there's no way of knowing. "He was already on his discharge leave, and they suddenly phoned from the army"-she elides-"and asked him to come."

"But for how long?"

"It's an emergency call-up. It could be a few weeks."

"Weeks?"

"It's something like twenty-eight days," Ora says quickly, "but chances are it'll all be over long before that."

They are both exhausted. She collapses from the armchair onto the rug, her long legs folded beneath her, head bowed, her hair falling on her cheek, her body unknowingly reconstructing her adolescent pose. This is how she used to sit when they talked on the phone at seventeen, nineteen, twenty-two, long hours of pouring their souls out to each other. That was back when he still had a soul, Ilan comments from afar.

A quiet rustle pa.s.ses through the line, interferences of time and memory. Her finger traces the curved pattern in the rug. Someone should research that one day, she thinks sourly: Why does running your finger over a woolly rug bring back memories and longings? She still cannot remove her wedding ring and may never be able to. The metal clings to her flesh and refuses to leave. And if it came off easily, would you? And if it came off easily, would you? Her lips sag. Where is he now-Ecuador? Peru? He might be hiking with Adam among the turtles on the Galapagos, unaware that there's practically a war here. That she had to take Ofer on her own today. Her lips sag. Where is he now-Ecuador? Peru? He might be hiking with Adam among the turtles on the Galapagos, unaware that there's practically a war here. That she had to take Ofer on her own today.

"Ora," Avram says strenuously, as if hoisting himself out of a well, "I can't be alone now."

She stands up quickly. "Do you want me to...Wait, what do you want?"

"I don't know."

Her head is spinning and she leans against the wall. "Is there someone who can come and be with you?"

Long seconds go by. "No. Not now."

"Don't you have a friend, some guy from work?" Or some woman, she thinks. That girl he had once, the young one, what about her?

"I haven't been working for two months."

"What happened?"

"They're renovating the restaurant. Gave us all a vacation."

"Restaurant? You work at a restaurant? What about the pub?"

"What pub?"

"Where you worked ..."

"Oh, that. I haven't been there for two years. They fired me."

I didn't tell him anything either, she thinks. About my dismissals, from work and from the family.

"I don't have the strength, I'm telling you. My strength lasted just until today."

"Listen," she says quietly, calculatedly, "I was planning to go up north tomorrow, so I could stop by your place for a few minutes ..."

His breath turns rapid again, wheezing, but he doesn't rebuff her immediately. She stands at the window with her forehead touching the gla.s.s. The street looks ordinary. No unfamiliar vehicles. The neighbors' dogs aren't barking.

"Ora, I didn't understand what you said."

"Never mind, it was a silly idea." She pulls herself away from the window.

"Do you want to come?"

"Yes?" she answers in confusion.

"That's what you said, isn't it?"

"I guess so."

"But when?"

"Whenever you say. Tomorrow. Now. Preferably now. To tell you the truth, I'm a little afraid to be here on my own."

"So you were thinking of coming?"

"Just for a few minutes. I'm on my way anyway-"

"But don't expect anything. It's a dump."

She swallows, and her heart starts racing. "I'm not scared."

"I live in a dump."

"I don't care."

"Or maybe we could go out and walk around a little. What do you think?"

"Whatever you say."

"I'll wait for you downstairs, and we'll walk around a bit, okay?"

"On the street?"

"There's this pub down the road."

"I'll come and then we'll decide."

"Do you know my address?"

"Yes."

"But I have nothing to give you. The place is empty."

"I don't need anything."

"I've been on my own for almost a month."

"You have?"

"And I think the store's closed."

"I don't need food." As she talks she darts around the apartment, punted from one wall to the next. She has to organize, finish packing, leave notes. She'll go. She'll flee. And she'll take him with her.

"We can...there's a kiosk around here-"

"Avram, I couldn't eat a crumb. I just want to see you."

"Me?"

"Yes."

"And then you'll go back home?"

"Yes. No. Maybe I'll go on to the Galilee."

"The Galilee?"

"Never mind that now."

"How long will it take you?"

"To get there or to get out of there?"

No response. Perhaps he didn't get her little joke.

"It'll take me about an hour to close up everything here and get to Tel Aviv." A cab! she remembers and her heart sinks. I need a cab again. And how exactly was I planning to get to the Galilee? She shuts her eyes hard. A distant headache is signaling, probing. Ilan was right. With her, five-year plans last at most five seconds.

"It's a dump here, I'm telling you."

"I'm coming."

She hangs up before he can change his mind and proceeds to charge around in a frenzy. She writes a note for Ofer, sitting down at first, but soon finds herself standing up, hunched over. She explains to him again what she herself has trouble understanding and asks him to forgive her, and promises again that they'll go hiking together when he finishes and asks him to please not go looking for her, she'll be back in a month, mother's word. She puts the note in a sealed envelope on the table and leaves a sheet of instructions for Bronya, the maid, written in simple Hebrew with large letters. She says she is going on an unexpected vacation, asks her to bring in the mail and take care of Ofer if he comes home on leave-laundry, ironing, cooking-and leaves her a check with a larger payment than usual for the month. Then she sends a few quick e-mails and makes some phone calls, mainly to girlfriends, to whom she explains the situation without exactly lying but without telling the whole truth-above all, without mentioning that Ofer went back today, of his own free will, to the army-and almost rudely intercepts puzzled questions. They all know about the planned trip with Ofer, and have been looking forward to it excitedly with her. They realize something has gone wrong and that a different idea, no less exciting and bold, a temptation that is hard to resist, has come up at the last minute. They think she sounds strange, dizzy, as if she has taken something. She keeps apologizing for being mysterious: "It's still a secret," she says with a smile and leaves a trail of worried friends behind her, who immediately call one another to a.n.a.lyze the situation and try to figure out what is going on with Ora. There are some colorful guesses and a few conjectures of pa.s.sionate pleasure, probably abroad, and perhaps the occasional lick of jealousy at this newfound bird-of-freedom who is their friend.

She phones the Character-phones him at home, despite the time and the explicit prohibition. She does not ask if he can talk, ignores his huffs of anger and alarm, informs him that she'll be gone for a month and that they'll see what happens when she gets back. Then she hangs up, delighted with his m.u.f.fled whispers. She records a message on the answering machine: "Hi, this is Ora. I'm going away probably until the end of April. Don't leave a message 'cause I won't be able to pick it up. Thanks and goodbye." Her voice sounds tense and too serious, not the voice of someone leaving on an exciting and mysterious vacation, so she records a new message, this time with the cheerful tone of a skier or a bungee-jumper, and hopes that Ilan will hear it when he finally gets wind of the situation in Israel and wants to find out how Ofer is, and that he will be filled with jealousy and amazement at the wild time she must be having. But then she realizes Ofer might call home too, and that sort of tone might rag him, so she records a third message, using the most toneless, formal pitch she can muster, although she is betrayed by her exposed and always slightly wondrous voice. She grows angry at herself for being preoccupied with such things, and in a state of distraction she dials Sami's number.

After leaving Ofer at the meeting point, she had sat down next to Sami in the taxi and apologized for the shameful mistake she had made by calling him. With utter simplicity she explained what state she had been in that morning and, in fact, for the rest of the day as well. Sami drove while she spoke at length, until she had completely unburdened herself. He said nothing and did not turn to face her. She was a little surprised by his silence and said, "What I'd like most now is to just scream about the fact that you and I have even reached this point." Expressionless, Sami opened her window with the b.u.t.ton on his side and said, "Go ahead, scream." She was embarra.s.sed at first, but then she put her head out the window and screamed until she was dizzy. She leaned back against the headrest and started laughing with relief. She looked at him with eyes tearing from the wind and a flushed neck. "Don't you want to yell?" she asked. And he said, "Trust me, it's better if I don't."

The whole way back he sat hunched forward, focused on driving, and said nothing. She decided not to pester him anymore, and was so tired that she dozed off and slept until they got home. She has replayed their conversation countless times since then-if it could be called a conversation; he had barely spoken-and concluded that she did the right thing, because even though he didn't say anything, she was really talking on his behalf too, loyally representing his side in the little incident without letting herself off easy. When Sami finally pulled up in front of her building she had said, without looking at him, that now, after today, she owed him a favor beyond any of their ongoing scores. In her fluttering heart she thought: a Righteous Gentile's favor. He listened gravely, his lips slightly parted and moving, as if he were memorizing her words, and when he drove away and she walked slowly up the steps, she had the feeling that despite everything that had happened, despite his strange silence the whole way back, their friends.h.i.+p had actually deepened today, having been tempered by a more genuine fire: the fire of reality.

BUT WHEN SHE CALLS, even before explaining that she has to make a very urgent trip to Tel Aviv, Sami answers with crus.h.i.+ng coldness that he isn't feeling well. He threw his back out right after getting home from their trip and he has to lie down for a few hours. Ora senses the lie in his voice and her heart sinks. The thing she has kept pus.h.i.+ng away since they parted, which has tormented her with regular bites of mockery and doubt, now solidifies and slams her, revealing her own naivete, her own stupidity. She wants to say that she understands and will call another taxi, but she hears herself trying to persuade him to come.

"Mrs. Ora, I need to rest now. I've had a rough day, and I can't do two big trips in one day."

She is deeply hurt by his "Mrs. Ora" and almost hangs up. But she doesn't, because she feels that until she clears up what happened between them today, she will have no peace. Patiently, without losing her temper, she says that she too, as he well knows, has had a difficult day, but Sami cuts her off and offers to send one of his drivers. At this point she pulls herself together and remembers that she has her dignity too, if only a little. She says haughtily that there is no need, thank you, she'll manage. The coldness in her voice must have alarmed him, and he asks her please not to take it personally, and then he pauses. Hearing the new acquiescence in his voice, she cracks and says, "But what can I do, Sami? I always take you personally." He sighs. She waits quietly. She can hear someone, a man, talking loudly and excitedly in Sami's house. Sami wearily tells the man to be quiet. And because of the fatigue in his voice, or perhaps because of a shadow of desperation that accompanies it, she suddenly feels a great urgency to see him again, immediately. She has the feeling that if she can just spend a little more time with him, even a few moments, she can straighten out everything that went wrong. What I did before wasn't really mending, she thinks. This time I'll talk with him about completely different things, things we've never talked about, the roots of my mistake today, the fears and the hatred we both drank with our mothers' milk. Maybe we haven't even started talking, she thinks oddly: maybe in all those hours that we drove and talked so much, and argued and jabbed each other and laughed, we never really started talking.

The yelling in Sami's house grows louder. There is a heated argument among three or four people, and a woman is shouting. It might be Inaam, Sami's wife, although Ora does not recognize the voice. She begins to wonder if it has something to do with her and what happened between them today, and if it is possible-a crazy thought, but on a day like this, in a country like this, anything is possible-that someone has informed on Sami for driving a soldier to the operation.

"Wait a minute," says Sami, and addresses the young man in sharp, quick Arabic. He shouts with a violence that Ora has never imagined in him, but instead of getting riled up, the man replies in an accusatory tone full of contempt, grunting his words in a way that sounds to Ora like a spray of poison. She hears the sobs of a small child, much smaller than Sami's youngest, and then there is a thud. Perhaps someone kicked a table or even threw a chair. She increasingly feels that the incident is connected to their trip and wants to end the call and disappear from his life without doing any more damage. He slams the receiver down on the table, and she hears his footsteps receding and almost hangs up, yet continues to listen, transfixed: the fabric of their privacy has been ripped open, providing a rare porthole, and she is drawn to it. This is what they're like when they're alone, she thinks, without us, if it really is without us, if they even have a without us. Then she hears a bitter, wild yell, and she cannot tell if it came from Sami or from the other man, and then there are two loud smacks, like hands clapping or cheeks being slapped, and then silence, broken only by the thin, desperate wail of the boy.

Ora leans weakly against the kitchen table. Why did I have to call him again? she thinks. How stupid. What was I even thinking-that after driving me to the Gilboa and back he'd be able to drive me to Tel Aviv? I just keep making mistakes. Whatever I touch goes wrong.

His voice comes back to her, frightened and cracked. Now he speaks rapidly, almost whispering. He wants to know where exactly she needs to go in Tel Aviv and asks if she minds making a stop in the south of the city, where he has to take care of something. Ora is confused. She was about to tell him to forget the whole thing, but she senses that he must need her very much, and his neediness presents an opening for mending, and she swears to herself she will only go as far as Tel Aviv with him and then take a different cab to the Galilee, no matter the cost. He asks urgently, "Is that okay, Ora? Can I come? Are you ready to leave?" The commotion in the background has started up again, and now it is no longer an argument. The other man is shouting, but he seems to be shouting at himself, and a woman laments in a desperate sort of prayer-Ora now thinks it probably is Inaam-a prolonged, defeated wail. For a moment the sound is suffused with a distant moan that Ora has heard once before. It has been decades since she's recalled the sobbing of the Arab nurse from the isolation ward, in the small Jerusalem hospital where she stayed with Avram and Ilan.

Ora asks Sami if they'll be delayed in South Tel Aviv for long. "Five minutes," Sami says, and when he senses her hesitation he implores her explicitly, which he seldom does: "I need this from you as a big favor." She remembers the promise she gave him only a few hours earlier and feels a twinge of poetic justice-Righteous of the Nations, my a.s.s. "That's fine," she says.

She carries her backpack down to the sidewalk and with a sudden impulse goes back and picks up Ofer's, too, which is packed and ready for the trip and now sits forlorn. She ignores the ringing phone, because she thinks it must be Avram, alarmed at his boldness and calling to beg her not to come. But it might also be Sami, with a change of heart. And quickly, like a fugitive, she goes down the steps, those very same steps up which-in a day or a week, or maybe never, yet she knows they will, she has no doubt-the notifiers will climb, three of them usually, so they say, quietly they'll climb up those steps. It is impossible to believe that this will happen, but they will, they will climb up the steps, this one and the next, and that one that's slightly broken, and on their way they will silently recite the information they are bringing her. All those nights she has spent waiting for them, ever since Adam enlisted and through all his stints in the Territories, and then for the three years of Ofer's service. All those times she has walked to the door when the bell rings and told herself, This is it. But that door will remain shut a day from now, and two, and in a week or so, and that notification will never be given, because notifications always take two, Ora thinks-one to give and one to receive-and there will be no one to receive this notice, and so it will not be delivered, and this is the thing that is suddenly illuminated in her with a light that grows brighter by the minute, with needle-sharp flashes of furious cheer, now that the house is closed up and locked behind her and the phone inside is ringing incessantly and she herself is pacing the sidewalk, waiting for Sami.

The more she thinks about it, the more exciting she finds the strange notion that descends upon her unexpectedly but with a blaze of inspiration-and it's so unlike me, she laughs, it's much more like one of Avram's ideas, or even Ilan's, not at all mine-until she has no doubt that what she is about to do is right, that it is the right protest, and it delights her to roll that word over her tongue and bite into it: protest, my protest. She likes the way her mouth grips the fresh, squirming little prey, her protest, and the new muscularity spreading through her tired body feels good. It is a meager and pathetic sort of protest, she knows, and in an hour or two it will dissipate and leave an insipid taste, but what else can she do? Sit and wait for them to come and dig their notification into her? "I'm not staying here," she declaims, trying to embolden herself. "I'm not going to receive it from them." She lets out a dry, surprised laugh: That's it, it's decided, she'll refuse. She will be the first notification-refusenik. She stretches her arms over her head and fills her lungs with sharp, refres.h.i.+ng evening air. A deferment-she'll get a deferment, for her and, more important, for Ofer. More than that she cannot hope for right now. Just a short protest deferment. Her mind is flooded with waves of warmth and she marches quickly around the backpacks. Undoubtedly there is a fundamental flaw in her plan, some obvious illogic that will soon be discovered and undo the whole thing and mock her and send her home with her two packs. But until then, she is free of herself, of the cowardice that has stuck to her for the past year, and she repeats softly to herself what she is about to do, and once again reaches the strange conclusion that if she runs away from home, then the deal-this is how she thinks of it now-will be postponed a little, at least for a short while. The deal that the army and the war and the state may try to impose upon her very soon, maybe even tonight. The arbitrary deal that dictates that she, Ora, agrees to receive notification of her son's death, thereby helping them bring the complicated and burdensome process of his death to its orderly, normative conclusion, and in some way also giving them the p.r.o.nounced and definitive confirmation of his death, which would make her, just slightly, an accessory to the crime.

With these thoughts her strength suddenly runs out and she collapses onto the sidewalk and sits between the two backpacks, which now seem to crowd in on her, protecting her like parents. She hugs the stubby, overflowing packs, pulls them to her, and silently explains that she might be a little insane at the moment, but in this wrestling match between her and the notifiers she must go all the way, head to head, for Ofer, so that she won't feel afterward that she gave in without even a flicker. And therefore, when they come to inform her, she will not be here. The parcel will be returned to sender, the wheel will stop for an instant, and it may even have to reverse a little, a centimeter or two, no more. Of course the notice will be dispatched again immediately-she has no illusions. They won't give up, they cannot lose this battle, because their surrender, even just to one woman, would mean the collapse of the entire system. Because where would we be if other families adopted the idea and also refused to receive notice of their loved ones' deaths? She has no chance against them, she knows. No chance at all. But at least for a few days she will fight. Not for long, just twenty-eight days, less than a month. This is possible, it is within her power, and in fact it is the only thing possible for her, the only thing within her power.

She sits down in the back of Sami's taxi again. Next to her sits a six- or seven-year-old boy-even Sami doesn't know his exact age-a thin Arab boy, burning with fever. "It's the kid of one of our guys," Sami says cryptically. "Just someone's," he replies when she presses. Sami was asked to take the boy to Tel Aviv, to a place on the south side of the city, to his family. Sami's family or the boy's? That, too, remains unclear, and Ora decides not to bother him with questions for now. Sami looks haggard and frightened, and one of his cheeks is swollen as if he has a toothache. He doesn't even ask why she's lugging two backpacks at this time of night. Without the spark of curiosity in his eyes he looks lifeless, almost like a different person, and she realizes there's no point bringing up the Gilboa trip again. Although the taxi is dark, she can see that the boy is wearing some familiar clothes: a pair of jeans that used to belong to her Adam, with a Bugs Bunny knee patch, and an ancient T-s.h.i.+rt of Ofer's bearing a s.h.i.+mon Peres election slogan. The clothes are too big for him, and Ora suspects this is the first time he's worn them. She leans forward and asks what's wrong with him. Sami says the boy is sick. She asks his name, and Sami says quickly, "Rami. Call his name Rami." She asks, "Raami or Rami?" "Rami, Rami," he replies.

If he didn't need me for this trip, Ora thinks, he wouldn't have come. He's taking out on me whatever he has against those guys who were making a scene at his house. She consoles herself with the thought that as soon as she has the chance, she will tell Ilan about the way Sami has been treating her-let's see him act so tough with Ilan-and she knows Ilan will chew him out, for her sake, or maybe even fire him, to prove to her how committed he still is and how protective of her. Ora sits up a little straighter and pulls her shoulders back-why on earth is she enlisting Ilan to help her? This is between her and Sami, and as for that kind of protection from Ilan, that knightly patronage, she can do without it, thank you very much.

Her body sinks down again, and her face trembles uncontrollably, because she is pierced by his desertion. Not the loneliness or the insult, but the amputation itself, the phantom pain of the empty s.p.a.ce Ilan left at her side. In the dark she sees her reflection in the window and feels the unfamiliar yet sharp sorrow of her skin, which has not been truly loved for a long time, and her face, which no one has looked at with the kind of love that has intensified over years. The Character, Eran, who got her the job with the museum in Nevada, is seventeen years younger than she, a meteoric computer genius full of entrepreneurial projects, and she doesn't even know how to define him: Friend? Lover? f.u.c.k? And what is she to him? "Love" is undoubtedly a generous term for what they have, she thinks, laughing silently, but at least he is proof that even after Ilan her body still emits the particles that attract another person, another man. She sinks deeper and deeper into her thoughts, and all the while they drive in a long snarl of traffic that moves with unnatural silence through the valley of Sha'ar HaGay and becomes even thicker around the airport. "Checkpoints everywhere today," Sami suddenly throws out. Something in his voice seems to signal her. She waits for him to say something else, but he keeps quiet.

The boy has fallen asleep. His forehead glistens with sweat, and his head rocks with strange ease on his delicate neck. She notices that Sami has spread out a thin old blanket under him, probably so he won't soil the new upholstery with his sweat. His wafer-thin right hand suddenly rises and flutters in front of his face, then above his head, and Ora reaches out and hugs the boy to her. He freezes and opens his eyes, which look dark and almost blind, and stares at her uncomprehendingly. Ora does not move, hoping he will not reject her. He breathes quickly and his gaunt chest moves up and down, and then, as though having lost the power to understand or resist, he shuts his eyes and falls limply against her body, and his warmth spreads to her through their clothing. After a few moments she dares to readjust her arm around him and feels his birdlike shoulders tense up at her touch. She waits again, presses his head gently against her shoulder, and only then resumes breathing.

Sami straightens up and looks at them in the rearview mirror. His eyes are expressionless, and Ora has the peculiar sensation that he is comparing what he sees to some imagined scene. She grows uncomfortable under his gaze, and almost detaches herself from the boy, but she does not want to wake him. She finds the embrace pleasant, despite the intense heat he emits and the sweat pooling between his face and her shoulder and the thread of saliva smeared on her arm-or perhaps it is because of all these things, because of the heat and the dampness, like a forgotten stamp of childhood that now returns to imprint her. She glances at him sideways: his hair is cut crudely, and through the short bristle she can see a long sickle-shaped scar from a hurt that did not heal properly. His small face, crowded against her, is stubborn. He looks like a tiny, embittered old man, and she is happy to see that his fingers are long and thin and beautiful. He places them unconsciously on her hand, and after a few minutes he turns his hand over in his sleep, revealing a soft, cherubic palm.

Ora feels a pang: Ofer. She hasn't thought of him for almost an hour.

She will not have Ofer's hands today. Not the large, broad hands with the prominent veins and the black lines of gun grease under bitten fingernails that even three months after his release-she knows from Adam-will not completely disappear. Nor will the hard calluses covering every knuckle and joint, or the channels of healed cuts, and the scars, and the layers of skin that have been grazed, burned, scratched, cut, torn, st.i.tched, grown and peeled, smeared and bandaged until they finally look like a brown, waxy coating. That military hand, still so expressive in its movements, in the generosity of its touch, in the fingers embracing one another, in the childlike habit of the thumb repeatedly smoothing over its brethren as if counting them, in the distracted gnawing of the skin around the little fingernail-You're wrong, Mom, he tells her as he gnaws, but she can't remember what they were talking about. Just a fragmentary image of his biting, furrowing his brow. You're absolutely wrong about that, Mom You're absolutely wrong about that, Mom.

Now, as the boy leans on her with amazing trust and sows modest but unfounded pride in her, she seems to be getting confirmation of something she herself had begun to doubt. "You're an unnatural mother," Adam had explained not long ago, before he left home. Just like that, so simply and almost without any color in his voice, he had crushed and refuted her with an a.s.sertion that sounded scientific, objective. A la.s.so of distant memory floats over and tightens softly around her throat, and she sees Ofer's swollen little fist right after he was born. They placed him on her chest while someone did something to her down below, digging, st.i.tching, talking to her, joking. "We'll be done in a minute," the man had said. "Time flies when you're having fun, huh?" She was too tired even to ask him to take pity on her and be quiet, and she tried to draw strength from the large blue eyes looking up at her with uncommon tranquillity. From the moment he was born he always searched for eyes. From the moment he was born she drew strength from him. And now she saw his tiny fist-fistaloo, Avram would have said had he been with her in the delivery room; even now she finds it hard to accept that he wasn't there with her and Ofer; how could he not have been there with them?-with the deep crease around the wrist, and the bold red of the tiny hand itself, which until moments ago had been an internal organ and still looked like it. The hand slowly opened and revealed to Ora for the first time its conch-like, enigmatic palm-What have you brought me, my child, from the deep, dark universe?-with the thicket of lines drawn all over it, covered with a white, fatty layer of webbing, with its translucent pomegranate-seed fingernails, and its fingers that closed up again and gripped her finger tightly: You are hereby betrothed to me with the wisdom of thousands of years and ancient epochs.

The boy gurgles and his tongue explores his lips. Ora asks Sami if he has any water. In the glove compartment is her bottle from the previous trip. She holds it to the boy's lips and he drinks a little and splutters. Perhaps he doesn't like the taste. She pours some water into her palm and touches his forehead lightly, and his cheeks, and his dry lips. Sami looks at her again with that same tensely observing gaze. It is the gaze of a director, she realizes, examining a scene he has set up. The boy s.h.i.+vers and his body burrows more deeply into hers. He suddenly opens his eyes and looks at her without seeing, but his lips part in a strange, dreamy smile, and for a moment he contains both poise and childishness, and she leans forward again and asks Sami in a firm whisper what his real name is.

Sami takes a deep breath. "What for, Ora?"

"Tell me his name," she repeats, her lips white with anger.

"His name is called Yazdi. Yazdi, he's called."

The boy hears his name and trembles in his sleep and lets out fragments of Arabic words. His legs jerk sharply, as though he is dreaming of running, or fleeing.

"He needs to see a doctor urgently," Ora says.

"The people near Tel Aviv, the family, they have the most specialist doctor for his illness." Ora asks what his illness is, and Sami says, "Something with his stomach, he wasn't born right with the stomach, digestion, something about that. There's only three or four things he eats, everything else comes out." Then he adds, as if in a forced confession, "And he's not right, here."