89 For the first few years after the bombing it worried Rami that he was repeating himself. He sometimes had to tell Smadar’s story two or...
89
For the first few years after the bombing it worried Rami that he was repeating himself. He sometimes had to tell Smadar’s story two or three times a day. Once in the morning at a school. Once in the after- noon at the Parents Circle offices. Then again at night in a synagogue or a community hall or a mosque. To pastors. A’immah. Rabbis. Reporters. Cameramen. Schoolkids. Senators. Visitors from Sweden, Mexico, Azerbaijan. The bereaved from Venezuela, Mali, China, Indonesia, Rwanda, who had come to visit the holy places.
On occasion – early on, before he allowed himself to be comfortable in the repetition – he found himself pausing in mid-sentence, wondering if he had just said the same thing twice in the span of minutes, not just a general repetition, but the exact same words in a row, with the same intonation, the same facial expressions, as if somehow he had reduced the story to the mechanical, the rhythm of the everyday. It bothered him to think that the listeners might look at him as a broken- down reel, trapped by the sameness of his grief.
Afterwards he would realise he had left out whole chunks of what he truly wanted to...
