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on the line. She was crying. ‘I can’t stand it any longer. I want to see you. Come home. Yossi, come right home.’

‘Everything’s all right, Mom. I’ll be home soon. There’s nothing for you to worry about now.’

We all calmed down a bit, and I swore that I wasn’t lying.

‘Honest, I’m not injured, and I’m not sick. Everything is just fine. I’m sure that you had a worse time of it than I did.’

The old-folks’ home was practically deserted. The consul had given Kevin permission to stay there. Grandma looked over our papers and showed us to a room.

‘You don’t have to go through your spiel, Grandma. I know the rules.’

She obviously didn’t recognise me.

A letter had arrived by express mail. It filled in my story as experienced on the other side of the ocean.

Ramat Gan
December 23

... The consular section of the Foreign Office notified Mom and Dad that you had been involved in an accident with a raft on a river somewhere in the jungle. They said that your American friend reported the incident to the embassy only eleven days