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more, Boaz. I mention this analogy both in connection with your refusal (so far) to come home, and in connection with your generally stubborn attitude toward your mother, and also to hint to you not to react childishly to the information I have just given you concerning the source of the money. After all, I didn’t have to tell you, did I?
Which brings me to the second question you asked in your letter: how did I buy the Larousse in Paris when I was your age after my uncle refused to let me have a loan? The answer is simply that I did not buy it until a year later, but that uncle lost on the spot a cheap and willing assistant, because I felt so insulted by him that I left him and took a job cleaning stairs (after school!). It was in 1955, and you could say that I was definitely a mule. In any case I was still a child. I shall sign off now with friendly good wishes,
Yours,

Michel
     
P.S. If you really insist on repaying me the loan right away, in monthly installments, I have no objection. I’m actually rather impressed! But in that case let’s be quite clear that interest is out of the question.
     
    Three documents enclosed with letter from M. Zakheim, lawyer, of Jerusalem, to Dr. A. Gideon in London, dated 28.3.76:
     
    ITEM A.
: Report by Shlomo Zand (private investigator) of S. Zand, Private Investigations Ltd., Tel Aviv, on the case of Michel-Henri (Michael) Sommo. Drawn up on instructions from Mr. M. Zakheim of Zakheim & di Modena, Lawyers, Jerusalem, and handed to the client on 26.3.76.
     
Dear Sir,
Since we received your instructions on 22.3 and we were requested to effect a very rapid check and convey our report to you within a few days, the present material is not to be considered a full and thorough investigation but merely as preliminary findings, hastily collected. We would however point out that the material does provide a basis for various lines of investigation, including some that are potentially sensitive. If I am asked to continue working on this file, I could expect to submit a comprehensive report within a month or thereabouts.
Your instructions comprised the collection of information on the background of MHS and also on his present mode of life, including the professional, financial, and family aspects. Our partial findings were as follows.
     
    General Background
     
MHS was born in Oran, Algeria, in May 1940. Parents’ names Jacob and Sylvie. The father worked in Oran as a tax collector until 1954, when the family moved to a suburb of Paris. (Three brothers and one sister, all older than MHS, had previously emigrated to France and raised families of their own. The eldest brother lives in this country.)
MHS was a pupil at the Lycée Voltaire until 1958 and subsequently studied French literature at the Sorbonne for two years. He did not complete his studies and holds no academic degree. During this period he became associated with groups of the Betar movement in Paris (under the influence of his eldest brother) and also became an observant Jew (apparently under the influence of another brother, who underwent a return to religion and is still active in religious Zionist education in Paris).
MHS gradually abandoned his studies at the Sorbonne and devoted himself instead to Hebrew and Jewish studies. By the time he emigrated to Israel he had already mastered the Hebrew language. In late 1960 he emigrated to Israel and for a few months he worked as a construction laborer for a religious contractor in Petah Tikva. He then applied to the Police College and was accepted (apparently with the help of one of his relatives), but he left in the middle (we have been unable to ascertain the background), and went to study at the Sacred Lamp Yeshiva in Jerusalem. But he did not persevere with his studies here, either, and in the years 1962–1964 he supported himself through a part-time job as an usher at the Orion Cinema while he endeavored, unsuccessfully, to complete his course in the French Culture Department