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incredible, standing directly before her, real and cruel, body to body, and there was no going back. But the soldier grimaced as though he were tired of listening, and he shouted at her again to sit down with the others. However, the woman was already beyond warnings, she left him behind and started running heavily toward the site of the explosion. With a movement of his hand the boy grabbed her headscarf, and her hair was shamefully disheveled and exposed to view, something that startled everybody and enraged the woman herself. Snatching back her scarf with a wave of rebuke, in a single movement she covered her hair and wrapped up the child, who was bleating with all its tiny might, and hurriedly picked up the hem of her heavy dress and ran toward her ruined home.
    â€œLeave her alone,” said someone. “She’ll be back.”
    â€œ Khawaja ,” an old man stood up, apparently one of the most respected men of the village, and came forth from his people toward us, with one hand on his chest and the other extended in front of him in a gesture of courteous request, in a polite manner that both sides would surely recognize as the basis for dialogue, as appropriate to honored interlocutors, and advanced toward us looking among us for someone to open a discussion with. However the one he selected did not let him utter a single word but pointed to where he’d been sitting and said: “Stay in your place until you’re called.”
    The old man started to say something in response, or to rebuke him, thought better of it, shrugged his shoulders, and heavily returned to his place, aided by his cane and the several hands extended to him by those still seated. He sat down heavily and sighed: “ La illah ila Allah, there is no god but God.” Something ancient and biblical once again flickered for a moment, until some other prophecy of doom took its place and hung in the air. Anyone who had forgotten how all this was bound to end knew again what was before him.
    â€œWhat’s this place called anyway?” said Shlomo.
    â€œKhirbet Khizeh,” someone answered.

 
    7
    I N THE MEANTIME WE WERE CALLED to lunch, and never had a midday break been more welcome. Not just to provide a respite from all that stuff down below, and to enjoy the little warm sunshine that remained of this day and think about other things (and we needed to!), but also, simply, because we were, as could be expected, hungry. Before we got there, Shlomo had already started:
    â€œIts not okay what’s going on down there. And there’s gonna be more trouble.”
    â€œE-nough!” Yehuda squawked like a chicken. “That trash is gonna make trouble for us? No way!”
    â€œI just don’t like all this,” Shlomo repeated.
    â€œWhatever,” said Yehuda. “It’s not the movies.”
    â€œI just can’t stop thinking about those old women sitting there, such fear!”
    Since nobody took up the conversation, he continued on his own:
    â€œIt was just like the beginning, the first time I saw dead men, wounded men and blood. Do you remember? It was terrible. I thought then that it would haunt me forever. And now, corpses and blood and all that—it doesn’t affect me at all.”
    â€œYou get used to it,” Yehuda replied laconically, nodding his head in mock sympathy.
    We reached a field off to the side of the houses, next to a wide dirt track that connected this village to the main road, far away. Suddenly, for some reason, a thought crept into my mind, that this track compacted by thousands of feet over the generations would now grow grass, break up, bear fruit with no one passing by. Immediately the chords that had been moaning within me separated themselves, and a wave of bitterness washed through me. And I could sense that troublesome somebody inside me, grinding his teeth and clenching his fists.
    We tried to maintain our indifference and shake off everything that