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hours exploring the possibilities of the treasures I’d brought: marbles, dolls, trucks, airplanes, cards, Pick Up sticks, dominoes. I gave a detailed account of these visits in my essay, and concluded, In this way we contribute to people who are under occupation, we show them that we are not all horrible, and we help the State see what it’s doing wrong.
    My parents were called in, and my mother, who was not in the habit of keeping her thoughts to herself, had a huge fight with the principal. She called him an impotent, narrow-minded pimp, a poor excuse for an educator, a limp, spineless State puppet. She said she felt sorry for him and sorry that her daughter had to be exposed to his stupidity. Then she swept out of his office like a diva and slammed the door. I was sitting in the hallway outside, and I felt both proud and dismayed. I admired my mother but I took after my father, who was averse to conflict.
    I was happy about our move to the city; I had just reached the age at which small towns become irredeemably boring. My mother’s death two years later left my father literally speechless: for several weeks he walked around in a daze, confusedand unable to concentrate on anything. When he finally began speaking he was mostly incoherent, and he sat and stared into space for hours, a puzzled look on his face. I think he contacted Gitte because the only life he could make sense of was one that had not included my mother. Gitte was divorced, lonely, and excited to hear from him. Letters with foreign stamps began arriving at our place; shortly afterward my father flew to Belgium for a week, and when he returned he announced that he was going to marry Gitte, and that I would be happy in Belgium. I didn’t believe him.
    He became convinced, later, that his anachronistic flight into the arms of love was irresponsible and that, like Anna Karenina, he had made a drastic choice. For as a result of the disorder in my life after he left, I did not graduate from high school. I failed all my subjects apart from English, which didn’t require any exertion on my part. I was bilingual, not only because my parents spoke English at home, but also because I loved to read novels about the mystifying world of adults and the best ones came from my parents’ bookshelves: I was particularly fond of Iris Murdoch and George Eliot, but I was also a Miss Reed addict.
    He blamed himself, but I felt he’d made the right decision and I was happy for him. His letters suggested an ideal life: a two-hundred-year-old house with sweeping staircases and secret panels; a place in the local men’s choir; close friends who came over for dinner and chess. He often spent his evenings reading by the fireplace or, when it was warm, on a patio facing the tulip garden; his French was improving and he’d picked up some Flemish as well. As for Gitte, she had not disappointed him. He said she spoiled him, and his letters were full of cassoulet and soufflé à l’orange: his tone when he described these dishes was reverent. It was obvious that he and Gitte were generally compatible. They both liked theater and booksand conversation and, oddly, knitting; my eccentric father had taken up knitting, which he found “relaxing, touching, and spiritually satisfying.” This late romance was the inspiration for one of my novels, though of course I had to change most of the details. My father was transformed from a slightly overweight, myopic engineer to a young, dashing horse breeder (who obviously did not knit). My mother became delicate and innocent, a flower taken in her youth. As for Gitte, I had never met her, and so was free to invent her both in fiction and in life. My father sent me a photo of the two of them next to their large house, but the photo was taken from a distance, and Gitte is wearing a wide-brimmed hat which throws a concealing shadow over most of her face.

    Benny was sitting at my kitchen table when I came home from Ein Mazra’a. He lived