the button and thumbed it down furiously. I sat up trying to recall the dream, to figure out what Trabulsi had yelled in the tank, but all that came was the image of the flames.
The last stars were fading, clearing the sky for a new day. It seemed a long time since I’d heard these early morning sounds, the dawn chorus. Daylight revealed the red kestrels on the tiled roof opposite, boosting my spirits a little.
The Orthodox woman came out on to her balcony, and this time she smiled and waved to me. Her latest baby began his early morning caterwauling, and I remembered that I’d missed his cries during those days of waiting. His mother calmly began to hang up washing, taking piece after piece from a big tub, until there was no room left on the line. Only then did she go inside to suckle the little screamer. In the meantime the water boiled in the kettle, and I poured in the remains of the Noumi Basra. It tasted stale. I ought to keep it in a ceramic jar, I told myself for the umpteenth time. The sound of piano playing came from the radio, then the voice of Michael Ben-Hanan: “Good morning everyone! And if you’re in the mood for calisthenics, take your places, get ready…”
I cut myself shaving and bled. The face in the mirror looked weary, overhung by a thatch of hair in urgent need of the barber’s scissors. Cheer up, union-man, you’ve come back safely. You have an appointment with the Minister, and Levanah is sure to be there. Then I managed a smile, at last.
4
The Minister in Charge
The door to the Minister’s office was open, Levanah was not in the waiting room, and before I could greet Shula, the secretary, the Minister gestured to me to come in, swung his legs off the desk, stood up and squeezed my hand hard, his lion’s mane shaking as he nodded vigorously.
The Minister in Charge was our cabinet minister, and this was our name for him because, though he didn’t have a specific portfolio, he was involved with everything and his office practically adjoined that of the Prime Minister.
“Welcome back. How was it?” he asked, as if I had been away on some kind of excursion.
I grinned uncomfortably, not knowing what to say.
“So, we went to sleep as a state and woke up as an empire! Now all of the Land of Israel is ours.” His eyes glittered under his bushy grey eyebrows. “This was the first war for your immigrant generation. I won’t deny that we were worried, wondering how it would go, how the immigrant settlements on the border would cope, and what would happen if the people abandoned them.” His frankness surprised me. “But I hear that you, the younger generation, proved yourselves in battle.”
My stomach tightened and I pressed it with both hands. Iwanted to tell him about the seventeen boys from Katamon who fell in battle, but kept my mouth shut.
“Tell me, since you know them, did you think that the Egyptians would run away, barefoot?” he laughed and glanced at a big photograph of a group of pioneers that hung on his wall.
“I don’t know…In my sector they fought honourably,” I mumbled.
“You’re tired. Well, it’s to be expected.” He told Shula to bring me a cup of coffee, but she didn’t know I don’t take it with milk. Levanah would have brought me coffee the way I like it. The Minister began to pace up and down. “It’s a new historical era for us,” he exclaimed, waving his arms. “Tremendous possibilities have opened up!”
“There is also the question of what the Arabs will do,” I put in, and felt right away it was the wrong thing to say.
“What can they do? Even if the era of wars is not yet over, it’s put off for many years, and we must take advantage of this time to build and develop. We’ll turn Jerusalem into a metropolis, Israel’s eternal capital,” he declared, settling in his armchair.
The Minister had embraced this settlement vision since he was a boy and had met the pioneers from Eastern Europe, enthusiastic young people with rumpled
The last stars were fading, clearing the sky for a new day. It seemed a long time since I’d heard these early morning sounds, the dawn chorus. Daylight revealed the red kestrels on the tiled roof opposite, boosting my spirits a little.
The Orthodox woman came out on to her balcony, and this time she smiled and waved to me. Her latest baby began his early morning caterwauling, and I remembered that I’d missed his cries during those days of waiting. His mother calmly began to hang up washing, taking piece after piece from a big tub, until there was no room left on the line. Only then did she go inside to suckle the little screamer. In the meantime the water boiled in the kettle, and I poured in the remains of the Noumi Basra. It tasted stale. I ought to keep it in a ceramic jar, I told myself for the umpteenth time. The sound of piano playing came from the radio, then the voice of Michael Ben-Hanan: “Good morning everyone! And if you’re in the mood for calisthenics, take your places, get ready…”
I cut myself shaving and bled. The face in the mirror looked weary, overhung by a thatch of hair in urgent need of the barber’s scissors. Cheer up, union-man, you’ve come back safely. You have an appointment with the Minister, and Levanah is sure to be there. Then I managed a smile, at last.
4
The Minister in Charge
The door to the Minister’s office was open, Levanah was not in the waiting room, and before I could greet Shula, the secretary, the Minister gestured to me to come in, swung his legs off the desk, stood up and squeezed my hand hard, his lion’s mane shaking as he nodded vigorously.
The Minister in Charge was our cabinet minister, and this was our name for him because, though he didn’t have a specific portfolio, he was involved with everything and his office practically adjoined that of the Prime Minister.
“Welcome back. How was it?” he asked, as if I had been away on some kind of excursion.
I grinned uncomfortably, not knowing what to say.
“So, we went to sleep as a state and woke up as an empire! Now all of the Land of Israel is ours.” His eyes glittered under his bushy grey eyebrows. “This was the first war for your immigrant generation. I won’t deny that we were worried, wondering how it would go, how the immigrant settlements on the border would cope, and what would happen if the people abandoned them.” His frankness surprised me. “But I hear that you, the younger generation, proved yourselves in battle.”
My stomach tightened and I pressed it with both hands. Iwanted to tell him about the seventeen boys from Katamon who fell in battle, but kept my mouth shut.
“Tell me, since you know them, did you think that the Egyptians would run away, barefoot?” he laughed and glanced at a big photograph of a group of pioneers that hung on his wall.
“I don’t know…In my sector they fought honourably,” I mumbled.
“You’re tired. Well, it’s to be expected.” He told Shula to bring me a cup of coffee, but she didn’t know I don’t take it with milk. Levanah would have brought me coffee the way I like it. The Minister began to pace up and down. “It’s a new historical era for us,” he exclaimed, waving his arms. “Tremendous possibilities have opened up!”
“There is also the question of what the Arabs will do,” I put in, and felt right away it was the wrong thing to say.
“What can they do? Even if the era of wars is not yet over, it’s put off for many years, and we must take advantage of this time to build and develop. We’ll turn Jerusalem into a metropolis, Israel’s eternal capital,” he declared, settling in his armchair.
The Minister had embraced this settlement vision since he was a boy and had met the pioneers from Eastern Europe, enthusiastic young people with rumpled
Similar Books
