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and drives the car by himself. His deputy with the young mustache sits in
the back seat.
He gets out of the car and talks with the gas station employee. He talks
at length with the owner of the restaurant, with the cook, with the diners
at a neighboring table.
"Eat Anna, eat. A wonderful fresh vegetable salad, and these fish, that's
the best kind-Barbunia.
Listen, my father was a simple peasant, he had one hundred and six
acres of farm land; they requisitioned them from us," and immediately his
young deputy becomes attentive, as if restraining a sigh. "They requisi–
tioned them from us when they built Upper Nazareth. We lived five sons
and four daughters and dad and mom in one room and a half, a simple fam–
ily. What family tree, who had the mind for that? But dad had a notebook,
and he used to write everything in it, with dates, every event, even when
he went to the hospi tal, three months before he died, at the age of eighty–
nine, he asked me to bring him the notebook.
You're right, it's a treasure. I have to find this notebook and do some–
thing with it. Not the children, me! What do you think, that I intend to
be mayor all my life?"
A woman holding a pen and a notebook directs the television cam–
eraman to shoot the passengers getting on-an elderly couple, a girl with
curly hair, a chubby man wearing a
kippah,
a
yarmulke.
"Get on, get on," the driver hurries them, "The 'express' is only in half
an hour. The roads are empty, we'll get there fast."
The television camera shoots the bus leaving and driving into the dis–
tance, and on the radio they are playing songs for the homeland, and the
bus passes through a green country; tiled-roofs appear in Qum EI
Fakhem, and in an intersection stand two young men, about eighteen
years old.
"The 'express' is in half an hour; I'm the 'local'," the driver answers the
young
kibbutznik,
"What difference does it make, are you going to wait half
an hour to save a quarter of an hour? Get on."
And the young man gets on.
Mter him comes the other, full eyes, worn-out trousers, a cheap
flower-patterned shirt.
He carries in front of him a faded green cloth bag, a solid erect cylin–
der coming closer in the aisle, facing you arabesque letters.
And he sits down behind the man with the
kippah,
near the exit door,
laying the barrel of his bag on the seat beside him.
The newscaster announces on the radio that the public must be
alert.
