Michael Shamir was the closest. He lived on Gadera Street, which was less than a ten-minute walk from my apartment. There was a good chance he'd be at work at this time of day, but I decided to risk it. In truth, I was curious to meet this man who had inspired such admiration in Mira.

I pulled on a white shirt, blue pants, and black shoes—the other pair I owned was brown—and headed out. The heat was back in force and the air was as still as a dead man's heart. The sun was ascending in the east, with not a cloud in the sky to muffle its scorching rays. I ambled so as not to build too much of a sweat. This worked only partially and prolonged the length of my hike to thirteen minutes.

Michael Shamir lived in a run-down three-story building with a facade that used to be a brilliant white but was now smudged black and gray from exhaust fumes and absorbed moisture. The front door was missing its handle and the corners of the lobby sported an accumulation of dirt and brittle leaves. The lobby smelled stale, as if it had not been washed in weeks. A dead cockroach lay on its back in the middle of the floor with its crooked feet sticking up, and a procession of ants were busy dismantling it. I stepped over both carcass and ants and went up the stairs to the top floor, my shoes making scuffing sounds against the dust on the steps.

I knocked on the door to apartment five and waited. No answer. I knocked a second time, a bit harder, with similar results. I had turned away from the door when I heard footfalls approaching on the stairway.

The first thing I saw was the top of his head. His hair was black and cropped very short. He was toting a grocery bag in each hand and climbed with his head bowed. Then, probably alerted by the landing light that I had flicked on earlier, he paused, eight or so treads from where I stood, and raised his head.

His face was familiar, and it took me a second or two to figure out from where. He was the second man in Mira's picture of the four young warriors—the other, Yohanan, had died during the prison raid. In that picture, he had been a youth of around twenty. Now he was thirty or so and showing the ten years that had passed.