Free A Pigeon and a Boy by Meir Shalev

flock of pigeons passed by overhead on their way to the flour mill, which supplied them with residual grains of wheat. My mother tented her hand over her eyes and squinted to follow their progress with a gaze that only years later, when I had begun leading groups of bird-watchers around Israel, I came to learn was the gaze of one accustomed to observing birds as they migrate, fly to distant places, return. Then she pointed once again to the two strips of sea and shore far to the west, the one narrow, of golden sea sand, the other turning blue then gray, wide and melting into the endless heavens.
    “Over there,” she said. Then suddenly she thrust two fingers into her mouth and whistled loudly “You two whistle too—let them know we’re here.”
    Benjamin and I were taken by surprise. Such whistles were not part of the repertoire of virtues we credited her as having. But the moment she whistled, it seemed she had always been doing just that. Quickly she taught us to whistle: with two fingers from one hand, with one finger from each hand, and with one single finger. “Louder,” she said, “so they’ll hear us down there.”
    On occasion I still make that little trek of ours today, because even in Jerusalem I have my loitering walk, a very different loitering walk from the one I take in Tel Aviv, but just as fixed. I visit Yordad in his home, then my mother—first the home in which she lived, then her grave on the Mount of Repose—and then I try to re-create our two treks. At that lookout point, from where we glanced westward with my mother, new housing has been erected, so in order to take in the two distant strips, one narrow and golden, the other bluish-gray I must stand between the buildings, on a rise that has become a road, and then descend the slope slightly, stop, whistle, and look out. A cloud of pollution has been added to the haze and the distance, crouching there and obscuring the coastal plane. Now, however, I have an excellent and expensive pair of Swarovski 10 x 40 binoculars, bought for me— naturally—by my wife, Liora, which proves the truth of my mother’s statement and Benjamin’s error. After seeing them in the hands ofbird-watchers from Munich who could not praise their merits enough, I told Liora about them, then found a pair on my bed, wrapped with festive wrapping paper and a bow At the time I thought how nice it would have been to find Liora herself in my bed, with no wrapping at all (if I may be permitted one additional, humble request), but that is the way things are and a man of my age and position must run his life wisely, and with resignation.

Chapter Three
1
    I MET Tirzah Fried—Tiraleh, luvey the contractor who renovated my new house for me—when I was eleven years old. I remember the day well. Summer vacation. An afternoon. Suddenly a hush fell on the street. Boys lifted their heads from games of marbles. Girls skipping rope froze in mid-twirl. Men fell silent, licking their lips. Women became Lot’s wife, pillars of salt. From around the bend in the road there appeared the American car, the white convertible with the red interior that every person in Jerusalem knew: the Ford Thunderbird belonging to the contractor Meshulam Fried, a large and spacious car that would stand out in any place and at any time, but especially in the lightly automobiled Jerusalem of those years.
    The car parked next to our building. A short, thick man with black hair extricated himself from behind the wheel. Two children about my age, a boy and a girl, both looking very much like him, sat in the back seat. By chance I was standing at the window of our flat, and when I saw them I was overcome with trepidation. For a moment I thought my mother’s stories and Benjamin’s scorn were true: my real father and my real brother and my real sister had come to return me to my family
    The man took the boy in his arms and carried him into our clinic. I was surprised to watch Yordad come out to him, something he