The streets were narrow and crowded, and the stores along the route small and. compared to what he was used to in America, unattractive. They were like the stores he had seen in small New England factory towns, with merchandise in the windows that seemingly had not been changed since the stores were first opened. In narrow alleys or in the space between two buildings, and even spread out on the sidewalk where it widened slightly, there were men with stands, selling a large variety of small articles like pencils, combs, razors, wallets, umbrellas, cigarette lighters. At several points along the street, there were small kiosks where lottery tickets were sold. Here and there, in doorways and on the sidewalks, there were old men sitting, their backs resting against the wall of a building, selling newspapers. One or two had no papers to sell, nor anything else, but clinked a few coins in their hands at passersby.
Everywhere there were young men and women in uniform. Many of the men were carrying automatic rifles, short weapons with metal frame stocks. They carried them slung from their shoulders by straps, or under their arms like umbrellas, or dangling by the trigger guards like briefcases. It occurred to him that they did not look like soldiers, young and sturdy though they were. There was something civilian and matter-of-fact in their bearing, as though they were engaged in some civilian occupation that required a uniform, like a bus driver.
Here and there, too. he saw Chassidim, old and young, in their silk dressing-gown-like coats, their broad-brimmed felt hats, their pantaloons wrapped around their legs and stuck into their stocking tops, their ringlets jiggling as they walked. Once he was almost run over by a motorcycle that roared past him as he stepped off the curb at a crossing. On it were two young Chassidim, their beards and ringlets flying in the breeze, the one on the pillion clutching his broad-brimmed felt with one hand while he clung to his companion with the other.
The rabbi saw a hat store and thought to buy another yarmulke to keep in his jacket pocket. They were on sale in all the gift shops in red velvet and in blue, decorated with gold and silver braid, but he wanted a plain black one.
The proprietor of the hat store was a tall man with a long beard. His son in khaki, home on leave, was helping out. his automatic rifle conspicuous on a shelf behind the counter. There were several men. evidently none of them customers, talking about Arab terrorists and what measures the government ought to take against them. They were talking in Yiddish, in which the rabbi was not fluent, but which he could follow. It was the son who broke off after a minute to ask him what he wanted, put two piles of black yarmulkes on the counter, indicated that one was two lira and the other four, and went back to rejoin the conversation, interrupting it again only long enough to take the rabbi's money and give him the necessary change.
It occurred to the rabbi that there was something curiously simple and. by American commercial standards, even primitive about the transaction; a transfer of money and merchandise with no formality; no wrapping, no sales slip. There was no cash register; the young man had made change from a drawer under the counter. He had not even said the customary "Thank you." albeit when the rabbi did so. he answered automatically., "Bevakasha"— if you please.
Rabbi Small continued to stroll along the street, stopping to look in the store windows, automatically converting the prices in Israeli lira to American dollars. He followed the winding streets, none of which ever seemed to meet at right angles, and suddenly found himself in an open market district, an area of narrow lanes lined with stands of merchandise, largely fruits and vegetables, although here and there were fish or meat stalls and even an occasional dry goods or clothing store, all jammed together, presided over by Arabs, bearded Jews, women— shouting, dickering, gesticulating, prodding the merchandise. There were also stands, the precursors of the department store, where one could buy a comb or a notebook or a pack of needles or a box of facial tissues or an overcoat for that matter, if one of the half dozen hanging on a rack were the right size.
He wandered down a side lane and suddenly found himself in a residential district of old stone houses, one or two stories high, evidently occupied largely by Chassidim. The men were beginning to come home from their shops or their study halls to prepare for the Sabbath. In open courtyards children were playing, the little boys with heads shaved except for the ringlets that hung down the sides of their faces. They all wore skullcaps, which they were hard put not to lose as they ran or kicked at a soccer ball. The little girls played by themselves to one side. games like jump rope and hopscotch. Every now and then there was the drumming of the engine of a motorcycle, curiously out of keeping with the general atmosphere, and a dark, swarthy, truculent young man, clean-shaven, but with long hair in the mod style and dressed in flashy bell-bottomed trousers supported low on the hips by a wide fancy belt, would roar by and disappear around a corner.
The rabbi made his way through the district, uncertain of his direction but loath to ask any of the women sitting on the steps of their houses, not knowing if they would consider it improper for a strange man to address them. But finally he came out to a wide street with high modern apartment houses that looked familiar. Sure enough, at the next corner he saw by the sign that he was on Jaffa Road, which he knew ultimately led to King George Street. He was tired now and grateful when he spotted a small cafe where he could sit for a while over a cup of coffee.
It was a pleasantly restful place, at least at that hour, with a rack of newspapers and magazines in French and German, as well as in Hebrew. Only a couple of the tiny tables were occupied, and these by individuals engrossed in their newspapers. He gave his order and then selected from the rack a copy of the afternoon paper.
The lead story concerned the latest terrorist outrage, the explosion of a bomb in an apartment house in the Rehavia section of Jerusalem the night before. A man had been killed, a professor of agronomy at the university. Only because his wife and two children had spent the night with relatives in Haifa had they been spared his fate. The paper evidently had not had time to inquire into the victim's background too deeply but gave a short resume of his life, the kind that is kept on file in an administration office, together with a picture taken from the same source.
On an inside page of the paper they ran a map of the area. When the rabbi saw it. he sat up with a start. The incident had occurred only one street over from Victory Street. That must have been what had awakened him in the middle of the night— the noise of the explosion!
A government authority admitted that it was probably the work of the CAT group— Committee for Arab Triumph— which had exploded a bomb in the marketplace in Jaffa a couple of weeks before, killing two people. In that case. CAT had called the police a few minutes prior to the explosion. On another occasion, their call had come early enough, or their device had not worked as planned, so that the police had been able to find the bomb and disarm it. This time there had been no warning call, however.
A photograph showed the device used, a small, oblong box of black plastic that looked like a pocket radio. Indeed, on one side was a dial which, when pulled out. actuated the mechanism, exploding the charge approximately an hour later. A notice in bold type accompanied the article, explaining that anyone who came across such a device could interrupt the action and prevent the explosion by depressing the plunger. Although this would not render it harmless, it could be reactivated by reversing the process and withdrawing the plunger again— it would make it safe enough to handle.
Most of the paper was devoted to the story, and the rabbi read it all avidly. An Army demolition expert was quoted as disparaging the device. "It is not a very powerful bomb." he said with the objectivity of the professional "and the thrust is only in one direction."