“We all fear when we are in waiting rooms. Yet we all must pass beyond them.”
– Katherine Mansfield’s last entry in her Journals
Prologue
Mother cuts my nails. The clippings fall into her palm and she places them on a tissue, careful not to drop any on the floor. She folds the tissue in half, then in half again, and walks slowly over to the fireplace. She stands two dead matches upright on either side of the hearth, taking her time, so they will not fall.
“Now, throw the tissue into the flames,” she says. “Do not spill a nail or you will have to come back after you are dead. You will roam the earth searching for every nail clipping you have ever lost. You will have to gather up each one, or else you will never get to heaven.”
Mother tells me I’m a good girl. I watch the tissue burn.
Haifa – May, 2001
Boker tov. Good morning to all our listeners. This is Radio Haifa. An alert has been issued for a possible terrorist attack downtown. People are advised to watch for suspicious packages. The weather will be partly cloudy today, with the chance of a light shower.
“Turn it off, will you?” Dina asks.
David doesn’t move. He is standing in front of the kitchen bench preparing sandwiches from leftover challah for Shlomi’s lunch. Dina spoons Nescafé into her cup. Nes means miracle in Hebrew, each sip like a shutter in her brain opening up one slat at a time. She adds cold milk, stirs, then pours in hot...
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