“Yes. I thought I was going to New York. I had it all worked out. Nora, the baby nurse, agreed to look after her—”

“I liked Nora. You got her back?”

“For three days. But I don’t think she’d mind staying a week. My parents also agreed to stay in and look after the boys.”

Decker swooped up Hannah and threw her up in the air. The baby howled with delight. He held the baby to his breast and nodded to his wife. “Thank you, Rina.”

“You’re welcome, honey. And by the way, the ties go perfectly with the suits.”

PART 2

ISRAEL

25

After twenty-six hours of flight, they were greeted by quite a welcoming committee. Unfortunately, none of the crowd was for them. Decker was amazed by the number of people stuffed into the miserly allotment of outdoor space, making it that much harder for him to move their luggage cart. He knew Lod was an international airport but it had more of the feel of an airstrip. Someone bumped hard into his cart, almost toppled it over. But Decker was quick and prevented the spill. In fairness to the woman, she did help him upright the cart, but then she left without a word of explanation.

“Excuse me!” Decker muttered under his breath.

Rina smiled, “Reminds me of the classic joke.”

“Which is?”

“It’s long. I’ll tell you another time when we’re not so tired. Suffice it to say we’re in a Levantine country. Remember that. It’ll take you a long way.”

Sleep-deprived with a monster-sized headache, Decker was cranky. And still wobbly on his legs, having been compressed for over a day in an airplane filled to capacity. Lots of families and lots of howling babies. Plus, there had been a troop of Jewish Argentinian teenagers with beat-up guitars, who had never heard that hootenannies had gone out of style along with Nehru jackets and beaded headbands. The music never stopped. When he finally did manage to fall into a restless, sweaty sleep, some unknown Chasid woke him up and asked him if he would please make a minyan—a quorum of ten men needed to recite public prayer. It took all his control not to deck the guy. Rina had said it was because he’d been wearing a kippah—a yarmulke.

Decker’s response to that? Why hadn’t she warned him. She had known the ropes. He was a stranger in a strange land. Not that he hadn’t been in exotic locales around the world, but it had always been with the army, with other men—rather boys—who had been as confused as he.

But at this moment—at five P.M. Israeli time, as he lugged a cart through foreign-tongued people, he felt truly the ger. Ger had come to mean convert, but it also meant stranger. Never had he felt more gerish in his life.