As I left the house, they waved to me until I turned the corner.
Chapter 3
The Convoy
The next day I set off for Jerusalem with the convoy taking supplies to the besieged city. Trucks waited in line on the road. Great clumsy iron cranes protruded from them like masts. Soldiers wearing knitted woolen caps leaned against the armored car at the head of the queue. They gave me a casual glance and went back to their talk.
“Our armored cars aren’t worth a damn,” one of them complained. “The bullets cut through them like butter.” To me the gray armor plating of the waiting cars looked strong and powerful. But the soldier obviously didn’t think so.
“You’re wrong,” another soldier said. “Only really big shells can get through them.”
They gave me a questioning look. “Are you coming with us?” one of them asked. I nodded.
“You know,” another man said, with a wink at the others, “by the time we get to Jerusalem we’ll all be spitting blood.” They all laughed heartily. I forced a smile.
“Right, let’s move,” someone said. We all climbed aboard the truck.
The convoy set off. I felt uncomfortable. Above my head there was an opening. I stretched my hand out to it and let some cool air in. The winter wind eased the close feeling that made it so hard to breathe. I smiled at the five other fellows in the truck. They noted the expression on my face with sardonic interest.
“New?” asked the baggy-clothed soldier who sat next to me.
“More or less,” I answered.
“When you come to Sha’ar Hagai you’ll have a chance to learn something.”
“Yes, we’ll get a hot reception,” his mate added. Again, I forced a smile to my lips, taking a long, deep breath. The expression of peace and unconcern on their faces made me wonder if they weren’t trying to pull my leg.
I felt as if I was being held in a deep, dark, narrow cellar. The steel walls pressed against me. It was stifling. I could almost feel the air with my hand. Was that how the others had also felt when they traveled in an armored car for the first time?
I looked at my watch. Eight o’clock. I peered out through the open roof covering. The convoy was roaring after us: iron shapes groaning along and letting off streams of smoke behind. I turned my face the other way. A row of high mountains stretching as far as the eye could see, forming a gray, heavy mass. A continent of mountains towering up to the skies. Enemy territory. Breezy morning mists blew lightly over the peaks of the mountains, as if they wanted to hide what was happening there.
The cool wind burned my lips. I wrapped myself in my coat, but the cold still came through. For a moment it occurred to me that my mother was right when she insisted I take the coat. I wondered whether the sudden cold spell meant we were in for some rain. I glanced upward. Rough-edged clouds floated across the heavens. As they moved, their shapes changed. For a moment I tried to find some resemblance between the shapes of the clouds and the shapes of animals and objects: the face of a lion, a frog, a dragon. The brush of a malicious artist splashed its drops across the canvas of the skies.
“We’re not far from Ekron,” the radio operator remarked in his confident voice. Now the convoy left the tarred road and took the dirt track leading to the village of Ekron. We slowed down. The rains that had fallen there had turned the sandy soil into a viscous quagmire of squishy mud. The trucks slid to the side of the road. The armored cars rushed up to pull them from the mud, with the help of wire cables. We crawled along at a snail’s pace.
After two exasperating hours of hard work, the leading armored car announced a half-hour break. The trucks and cars gathered in the main street of the village. Through the open windows of the small white houses peeped the heads of boys and girls, while the men gathered outside in the street, next to the trucks.
The drivers made a hurried inspection of their motors and then went into the café at the corner. The boys who shared my armored car also went along. “Aren’t you coming with us?” they asked me as they went out.
“No thanks, I’ll stay here.”
I went out through the open door and remained standing in the street. My eyes strayed to the hills of Jerusalem. I had a strange feeling, as if somewhere far off in the peaks of those mountains the enemy was watching us.
The weather improved, and the sun emerged from the tattered clouds. I went on looking at the high mountain ridge; here rocks and green forests joined together in an impressive panorama. A spark of light flashed there and went off immediately. It flickered again, and then again. Heliograph signals. My feeling hadn’t been wrong. The enemy was watching us. I walked over to the leading armored car and reported what I had seen.
“Yes,” the report operator said, “we noticed the signals and asked for an aerial patrol. A Piper plane will pass over Sha’ar Hagai in about fifteen minutes.”
I went back to my place. The flicker of the heliograph stopped. Meanwhile everybody was getting ready for the next stage of the journey. The drivers and armored car men went back to their vehicles.
“What are you standing there for, like a bloody pole?” one of them jeered at me. I told him. “Oh, we know the Piper’s reconnaissance flights,” he sneered. “Those little one-horse planes. Every time, they go over and tell us the land’s clear and they can’t see a thing. Then later on we find out there’s an Arab behind every rock.”
Another soldier chimed in: “It’s not easy to spot their positions. They’re camouflaged. What can they do?”
“OK, OK,” the first one snapped angrily. “You can always find excuses. But meanwhile we’re getting the worst of it.”
The argument stopped when we heard the noisy voices of the returning soldiers, carrying oranges and bottles of squash. One even held a squawking chicken. They stuffed the goods into one of the cars.
“We’re leaving in five minutes!” someone called out from the leading armored car, which sped along the line of trucks. “Everyone load up at once!”
The soldiers clustered together in front of the cars. They were joined by several of the villagers, who waved goodbye warmly.
“Good luck!” came the voices of the women and girls, from the windows of their houses.
“Good luck!” whispered an old farmer who stood next to me, waving his battered old hat. I returned his greeting. He was the only person in the whole crowd who paid any attention to me.
The signal was given, and the convoy began moving toward the mountains. I opened the roof covering once more and looked out. On both sides of the road stretched green, verdant orchards and well-tended fields. I couldn’t see a soul about.
“We’re in enemy territory already,” the radio operator announced. His words sent a slight shudder through my body. I took a sharper look at the landscape. It looked the same as the countryside on our side of the border. The hum of a plane engine sounded far above us. The Piper patrol plane was flying overhead, its noisy motor chugging away and its squat, clumsy wings rocking from side to side.
“That Piper! Just a heap of scrap iron!” grumbled one of the soldiers. “I’m surprised it gets off the ground!”
It went on flying low over us, until it disappeared among the wadis that cut through the mountains.
“We’re getting close to Sha’ar Hagai!” the radio operator remarked. His thick, hoarse voice sounded faint and indistinct, as if he was talking to himself. Then he added, in a louder voice and a more definite tone: “I’ve got a feeling they’re waiting for us.”
“You’ll have to close the window just now,” the machine gunner warned me. “They can get you from those damn