"Are you out of your mind?" he repeated. "What's wrong with you? What's the matter with you?" He was letting out all his frustration on me.

Ella was shouting at him but he ignored her. Finally one of the border guards, a short kid with an earring, came over and said something. The soldier stood up and lit a cigarette.

"You're completely insane," the kid with the earring told me. He used the plural form, as though I represented an entire race.

I dusted myself off and headed back toward the car.

"Hey." The soldier who had hit me pulled me back. "You're not going anywhere. What's she doing with you, anyhow?" he asked Ella.

"We're together. I have a permit for both of us."

"Yeah. Well, she's forfeited her permit. You can go. She's staying."

I looked at him with disgust. His small brown eyes emitted a dull, steady glow of stupidity. Stupidity was overall his most outstanding characteristic. I remembered a female soldier I had seen once at a new checkpoint that had been set up in a Palestinian neighborhood outside the capital. She was quite young, maybe even a teenager. She had round yellow-green eyes and her face was expressionless as she checked the IDs of pedestrians and let them through. Then three women wrapped up in black and white hijab came up to her, and for some unknown reason her face came to life. I don't know why; I don't know what it was about these women, two of them young and pretty, one much older, that roused her from her apathy. "Where are you going?" she asked, and her eyes widened and bulged out, so that the whites showed above and below her yellow-green irises. It was a look that challenged them to prove they deserved to stay alive, while asserting at the same time that they did not. I almost laughed, because I remembered the tactic from high school: there were one or two girls who always tried to make you feel small and inconsequential, and they had perfected that bulge. They had no idea how stupid their faces became when they looked at someone that way: like mechanical toys with defective wiring. And now here was this soldier with her uniform and slanted cap and weapon, trying out that look on these three women. The women didn't seem to notice. "We're going to school, to teach," they said calmly. They were impervious to her contempt; she could keep them from getting through, but she couldn't penetrate their equanimity. Their emotional lives were entirely inaccessible to her, and that was their saving grace. Defeated, the soldier had handed back their IDs and let them pass.

"I have to get through," I said. "Someone's expecting me."

That only made it worse, of course. "In your dreams," the soldier said.

"This is completely arbitrary!" Ella stormed at him.

He didn't bother answering her.

She drove her car to the side of the road and made a few phone calls, waited, negotiated, made more phone calls, but nothing helped, and in the end I persuaded her to continue without me. She had an important meeting to get to; people were counting on her.

"Go sit next to your friends," the soldier ordered. "Not too close, though. And no talking."

"I'm older than you," I said.

"Go."

I sat next to the blindfolded men and leaned my back against the wall. I turned my head to them and said, "I'm sorry." Then I repeated it in English.

"You are the brave," the one next to me answered in English.

There was nothing more to say. I watched as cars and people arrived at the barrier and were either let through without a search, or searched and turned away, or searched and let through. Some of those who were not permitted to pass pleaded and argued, but they didn't have a chance with the stupid soldier. I wanted to kick him in the balls.

I sat there for two hours. I tried calling Rafi on my mobile phone, but he didn't answer, so I left a message telling him I was under arrest. My back began to hurt and I was dying of thirst; I'd finished my small bottle of water. I could tell the men next to me were thirsty too and I asked the kid with the earring to give them water. He came over with a plastic bottle and brought it to their mouths as if they were handicapped and he was their nurse. I got up and stretched, then sat down again. The blindfolded men were much more patient than I was; they seemed almost to be in a meditative state. I wondered whether they were in fact praying, or whether they were just very patient. I'd often noticed how patient Palestinians were in general. They didn't get antsy the way we did.

Finally a police car arrived. I said good-bye to the two blindfolded men. "God send you good luck," one of them said.

An officer ushered me into the backseat of the car and drove me to one of the settlements, a closed-off suburban haven in the midst of hell. It was my first time in a settlement and I was terrified of being killed.

The police station was white and new and oddly silent. "This station looks like a sugar cube some giant dropped on the lawn," I told the officer. I could tell he liked the image, but he pretended he hadn't heard me.

The inside of the building was as neat and sterile as the outside. The police officer sat on one side of a desk and I sat facing him. It was a game, a ridiculous game with assigned roles, and I wondered how we hadn't all tired of playing it. I wondered how it was that we weren't bored to death. Well, I was bored. I had finally reached the point where I was bored to death.

"What were you doing here?" the police officer asked me. He was bald and he looked a bit like a toad. He had mild toad eyes and a squat amphibian body. If I kissed him he would turn into a handsome prince.

"I'm a terrorist, can't you tell?"

"Let's start over. What are you doing here?"

"I'm visiting my husband."

"Is this another joke? Don't push me, I'm not in a good mood."

"It's not a joke. I apologize, I'm just frustrated. I'm here to see my husband."

"Your husband, where?"

"My husband lives in Qal'at al-Maraya."

"You're married to an Arab?"

"No. He was wounded in the army and he went into hiding. I just found out. So I've come to see him."

"In the army! I can't make heads or tails of your story."

"Well, that's the story."

"What's he doing in a Palestinian city? Did he have a ...you know ...breakdown or something?"

"Yes. He lost his mind, so he went to live in Qal'at al-Maraya, and now I want to see him."

"You're better off without him! How come I never heard about this? An insane former soldier living in a Palestinian town!"

"I don't know. Check your computer. He's there."

"What were you doing trying to free a prisoner?"

"I wasn't trying to free him. Obviously! How could I? I just wanted to ...I just couldn't bear to watch it."

"Next time stay at home. This isn't a place for the softhearted. Do you think we're here to play Ping-Pong?"

"Aren't you bored? Aren't you sick and tired of all this?"

"Of course I'm sick and tired of it! You think you have a monopoly on that? You think only the left knows what's going on? If you think that, you have even less brains than I gave you credit for."

"This is Palestine. This isn't our land."

"You can say that about the whole country. All right, you can go. I'll get someone to drive you."

"Yes, yes, you can say it about the whole country. We don't even deserve the part we have. You can write that in my file."

"Believe it or not, Miss Hillman, this interview has come to an end. Someone will drive you to Selah. You can wait outside."

"A settler?"

"Yes."

"No, I don't want to get into a car with a settler. I want to live a few more years."

"The car is bulletproof."

"Just take me to the gate, I'll take a Palestinian transit. Or I'll walk."

"You don't have a choice. A car is going to take you to Selah. Once you cross over, you can take whatever means of transportation you want. We don't ever want to see you here again."

"You can't keep me out."

"Yes we can."

He told me to wait, and returned a few minutes later with a driver. The driver looked like an ordinary person, someone I might have seen on any city street. But we were enemies: he hated me for supporting the Palestinians and I hated him for living in a settlement. I climbed into the back of his luxurious, air-conditioned limousine; it was the most expensive car I'd ever been in. He drove me to Selah, which was in fact only minutes away from the settlement. Neither of us said anything, not even good-bye; we were both too angry.

Standing before me at Selah was a magnificent man. He had a close white and charcoal beard and small metal-rimmed glasses, very slightly tinted. He wasn't wearing the uniform of a border guard, and he wasn't a soldier; he appeared to be another sort of guard, sent here perhaps to fill in for someone. His navy bulletproof vest lay against his body like a baby carrier. He had broad shoulders and he stood with his hands in his pockets, looking relaxed, casual, and modest; he could have been a crossing guard at a school. His body and his thin mouth suggested a gentle soul, kind and good. He was almost certainly an immigrant, and this was probably the only job he could find in these hard times.

I knew at once that he would help me. I went up to him, showed him my permit, and said, "I need to get to Qal'at al-Maraya." I had no idea whether news of my arrest had reached him. In any case, he nodded and without taking his hands out of his pockets indicated with a movement of his head that I could pass through.

I turned around and began walking down the road toward Qal'at al-Maraya. I had no idea how I would pass the second checkpoint, the one with the violent soldier, but I'd find a way. Nothing could stop me.

A taxi slowed down next to me, and even though I would have preferred to walk, I couldn't refuse. The drive to the checkpoint was very short and the driver wanted to charge me half a shekel. It was a ridiculously low amount, even for a short ride. I gave him ten shekels and he was very grateful. As I stepped out he surprised me by saying, "Thank you for what you did. You were very brave." I wondered by what remarkable system of communication word spread so quickly in the strip.

I joined the long queue of bodies at the checkpoint. Everyone was dusty, miserable and fretful. They clutched documents; they were hot; some of the children were too tired to stand, and their parents held them until the parents were also tired. Many of the people in line were sick. One or two hobbled on crutches, and several sat by the side of the road, pale and feverish. I could have been at some nineteenth-century procession at Lourdes, except that no one here expected a miracle.

Progress was very slow and it took me an hour to reach the barrier. The kid with the earring stared at me in amazement. He couldn't believe I was back. He called over an officer, a huge man with a blank, narrow face and sunglasses that returned your own reflection when you looked at them. The officer kept gulping water from a canteen he held in his left hand.

He said, "Weren't you told that we don't want to see you again?"

"I need to get in. Please. I'm going to see my husband," I said. "He lives here."

The officer was confused. "You're married to a Palestinian?"

"No, he just lives here."

"Wait."

He disappeared into a little hut covered with rubbery camouflage. When he came out a few minutes later, he said, "You can't go in. Especially you. If you don't leave I have instructions to arrest you."

"I have a permit."

"Your permit is void."

"I want to see my husband."

"It isn't up to me."

"I won't leave until you let me through."

"You will leave."

"No I won't." I sat down on the ground.

The officer bent down and lifted me. "You're quite light," he said. He slung me over his shoulders, carried me to a closed army van, and came inside with me. The van smelled of rust, sweat, and rancid food; its floor and walls were filthy and the seats were covered with sticky black dirt. The man seemed much too big for the small compartment. Fe fi fo fum, I thought. I smell the blood of an Englishman. My father used to read me that story.

"Please let me through. Please. I want to see my husband. I haven't seen him in eleven years." I stared at his sunglasses, at my own distorted face in the silvery lenses.

"Maybe he doesn't want to see you."

"He does. He really does."

"What the hell is he doing living in a Palestinian city?"

"Hiding."

"What did you do to him?" he joked.

"It isn't funny."

"He must be a bit wrong in the head. What do you need that for? You're better off without him, believe me. Smoke?"

"No thanks."

He lit a cigarette and looked at me, or at least I assumed he was looking at me; I couldn't be sure because of his glasses. He smiled cynically. "So, Dana, Dana. What are we going to do with you, Dana?"

"I'm not leaving."

"We'll just have to take you back, then. It may take a while, though."

"Fine. Then I'll come back another time and I'll just sneak in and I'll get shot and it will be your fault," I said. "Because nothing is going to stop me. I've waited eleven years and if I can't see my husband I don't care if I live or die. And it's going to be your fault, yours personally. You'll see my picture in the paper and you'll know I died because of you."

He was upset when I said that. I couldn't tell by looking at his face, but I sensed it in his body, in the air between us.

"You can't sneak in."

"Yes I can. I'll just bypass the roadblock, or run through. And some guard will order me to stop and I won't and he'll think I'm Palestinian and he'll shoot me. Or else some militant will think I'm a settler and kill me. Either way, I'll die."

He paused, and I could see him trying to decide what to do. Finally he made up his mind. "Okay. okay, I'll let you through."

"Thank you."

"How long are you planning to stay?"

"I don't know. Not long."

"I'm trusting you."

"Do I look like a dangerous person?"