They kept leaving all the time. One from a town, two from a family, they fled the settled districts of the land of Egypt to join those who had left b… - Shulamith Hareven

Sara, attuned to the vibrating city, went back to work. Not to the hospital: the thought of that great dungeon of suffering oppressed her. She looked for, and found, a job as a field worker, visiting needy homes on welfare all over the city. The work came to several hours a day. She was usually paired with another nurse, a Christian Arab named Thérèse. Neither of them had known before what depths of misery there were in the city, what poverty holed up in burrows, buried in mildew, stirring amid the huge stones covered with slobber and moss. An age-old underworld of poverty. Holes in the walls. Stinking puddles on the ground. (chapter 7 p144)

The so-called Arab-Israeli conflict-that is, the problem of the territories and their population-is one of the last remaining conflicts, and one of the most superfluous. It can be resolved. Not by love: by accord.

The Hittite woman would not give up. Each time Salu came, she clutched desperately at the threads of his life as if at a garment she could pull him by. (p 171)