She lay in the barracks beside him, the pulse visible in the skin of his neck, and her fear evaporated. Here she was at the center of things. Here she was, at last, where it was possible to lie naked and at rest, to look into the dark eyes of the man beside her and know they’d pledged each other the gift of truth. For the first time since childhood, she realized, she didn’t dread living in the world. She said it aloud in the still air of the barracks and listened to the two Hebrew words drop peacefully from her, like twin stones into the quiet desert: “I’m alive.”
