“Trouble with the girl?” he asked, and I nodded. Nabil took a drag and looked out at the red hill. “There’s nothing worse than a man standing helplessly in front of his children,” he announced. “Wallah, there really is nothing worse.” He turned his gaze to the B&B, watching Nelly opening the front door, folding her arms and looking out at the road. I heaved myself up. “Good luck,” Nabil said and smiled. “Or like they say, break a leg.”

She apologized before I even reached the doorstep. “I don’t know, I was hoping that if just one of us was there it would lower her resistance threshold,” she said, quoting yet another term she had picked up from the child psychology books she liked to read. “I couldn’t get anything out of her,” she sighed. “I don’t understand what’s going on with her, I really don’t.” She leaned her head against my chest, instantly dissipating my anger. “We’re in over our heads, Ofer. She needs to see a professional.”

“What do you mean a professional? A doctor?” I asked.

“A psychologist, an art therapist, I don’t know,” she said. “Someone who can figure out what’s troubling her.”

At “psychologist,” I thought Tel Aviv. An opportunity for a visit on the grounds that psychoanalysis had yet to find its way south.

“I’ll text Sagi, he sees a psychologist on Dizengoff Street, says he’s excellent.”

Nelly laughed. She said Dizengoff was a three-hour drive, but she could compromise on Beersheba. She said that since I was already going to be there, it might not be such a bad idea to get some therapy myself. “Having an intimate relationship with a city that boasts over seventy percent humidity is not normal,” she said, and I laughed. She was like that, could placate me with just a few words after days of estrangement.

5.

THE PSYCHOLOGIST STOPPED the session after half an hour. She came out into the waiting room, caught me napping with an eye half open, and asked if my child was on the autism spectrum.

“Of course not,” I replied before even processing the question, and quickly straightened my back.

“I think you need to take her to the hospital,” she said, explaining that there was no point completing the session since the child was barely responsive. That it wasn’t a psychological matter but a physical one. Neurological, in her opinion. “You haven’t taken her to a doctor yet?” she asked with subtle reproach.