Hava has almost nothing to say. She knows about the telegram from Miami, as does Yolek, but neither mentions it. I don’t think they’ve spoken to each other since yesterday. Stutchnik told me that Rimona and young Gitlin are taking good care of Yolek. And Hava sat up with me all night. My Florence Nightingale. I am wiped out. In my mind I keep seeing Yonatan wandering about, but something tells me that he’s all right. I don’t know what makes me feel so sure. I also don’t know why I told her, my pen poised above this page, that Rimona might be pregnant and that either one of them could be the father. Have I gone out of my mind? The secretary of the kibbutz. I couldn’t have made a worse blunder. My fever is way up again. Perhaps I shouldn’t go on with this report tonight. I don’t trust myself. Everything seems so complicated.

13

But what, after all, is the magic of Chad? Maybe no more than spending a few hours of this bright, lovely winter day sitting in a cafe on some street in Beersheba without a care, and with all the time in the world. And ordering soda. And an egg sandwich and a cheese sandwich. And some Turkish coffee. And another bottle of soda. With everything you own beneath the table at your feet. Your beat-up knapsack. Your gun. And the canteen you just bought at the PX. And the sleeping bag you swiped without thinking twice from the dusty pile lying by an army truck on a corner of the main street. What’s one sleeping bag more or less? They can do without it. It’s amazing what you can do without.

Just sitting with your legs stretched and watching the customers come and go through a door that hardly ever stays closed. Without a thought in your head. Like Tia. In a place where nobody knows you and you don’t know anybody. Although everybody looks just like you. Tired, grizzled men in desert clothes, in army boots, in battle gear, with battered packs at their feet. Soldiers in khaki. Farmers in khaki. Quarrymen. Roadworkers. Surveyors. Hikers. With eyes red from the dust and a gray film of dust on their faces and in their hair. Nearly all of them with guns. And all of them, including yourself, belonging to the same distinct tribe, marked by chronic lack of sleep.

And what a relief. For the first time in your life you’re not being watched by a soul. A total stranger, not a blip on somebody’s radar screen, because no one in the whole world knows where you are. From the day you were born until this morning every single minute of your life was chartered, but that’s all over with now. No more timetables. No more zero hours. No more assembly points. Light. Loose. And a little sleepy too.