Read The Expelled for Free Online Page B

know is how much time has passed since the accident, if it was an accident, if I stayed in the hospital for a long time, one month, one year, you can't tell me that? And I'm hungry.”
    “What do you want to eat?”
    “Can't you at least tell me how long it's been since the accident?”
    “What do you want to eat?”
    “I want the following: a cabbage and watercress salad, and for the dressing virgin olive oil with a 0.3% acidity and balsamic vinegar of Modena, as a starter, and then for the main dish I want brown rice and beans, on one side of the plate, and on the other side fried tofu with onions, seasoned with tamari sauce, and if possible épeautre bread.”
    “Why is that?”
    “I'm a vegetarian.”
    “Look, we have tuna and cheese sandwiches here. So, you can choose.”
    “Two of each, I'm really hungry.”
    “We'll pass it to you from the small little door that's on the lower right side of the door that's on your left.”
    “You won't even let me see you. So much mystery... You could send me a photo of yourself, here are the sandwiches, thank you, and thanks for the mineral water.”
    So, we got off the bus and went to see that wall, it was a gray concrete wall. Right to the level of my hips, some funny guy had drawn a window through which you could see a field and a dairy cow, like in Switzerland. Then we heard voices on the other side. They said hey, hello, is someone there, things like that.
    “And who are you?” I asked.
    “We're from the bus.”
    “And what's that wall?”
    “It's something against terrorism, they announced it on the radio,” many of them responded, sometimes simultaneously, from the other side of the wall. But from our side I was the only one who spoke.
    “These sandwiches aren't bad, especially the tuna, although I don't know how I'll feel later, I haven't eaten fish for years, and mayonnaise even less. And thanks for the water.”
    “Well, I didn't know anything about that.”
    “I don't know, they said we had to quickly build a wall because there were a lot of terrorists on a bus, and it was dangerous. They have one of those huge machines that put a wall in a few hours.”
    “And what should we do?” I asked.
    “I think you have to go back.”
    “Yeah well, we already did that.”
    “You have to turn back twice and maybe you can get to the sea.”
    It was a woman who spoke, she had a somewhat whiny voice, like my aunt Esther's.
    “They say they're on the bus with an atomic bomb and that they've abducted the passengers.”
    “Oh, yeah?!”
    “Maybe it's you, are you on a bus?”
    “Yes, we came on a bus but they haven't abducted us.”
    “And how do I know that's true? Maybe you're the terrorist. Can I speak with other people?”
    “They are all a little upset from the sudden halt in front of the wall. And some are already praying, they say that they have to pray to the wall. And they pray to saint Cash. You can do it on the other side. Did you also come on a bus?”
    “Yes, we came by bus, we're going to the sea, from sea to sea, and land in the middle. The land only makes room for the seas...”
    “And we, the men and animals, are in the middle.”
    “Yes, how did you know how it went?”
    “It's from a poem I learned in school.”
    I returned to the bus and told the driver what was happening. The concrete walls were twenty feet high. I decided to go along the wall to see where it ended, it was difficult to walk because the wall was very close to the trees. I walkt, I mean, I walked over twenty minutes when I decided to go back, I saw another wall, perpendicular to the one on the road, but I didn't follow it from fear that the bus would leave me behind. When I got back there was a discussion going on with the people from the other side of the wall about the idea of jumping over it and changing buses, but to do that they needed a ladder, and the front people suggested that the others could perhaps be terrorists. So we asked them if they had any food.
    “Do