There's a man who lives in the flat bellow mine. The story goes that he fought in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and came back with post-battle shock. I saw him now, standing guard in the small garden at the entrance to the building. He has a metal stick, a thick pipe which he holds in two hands like a rifle. He normally wears an old baseball cap or an Israeli farmer's hat pulled tight, almost over his eyes. He doesn't speak.
He lives with his mother. She wears long colourless baggy dresses which almost drag of the ground. She moves slowly. When we meet on the stairs she mumbles and attempts to smile. She always gives way.
With them lives a dog. The dog barks loudly and incessantly. It barks constantly, for hours, often at night. I doubt it's been out of that flat in years.
In the same flat there is a parrot. I chirps loudly, imitating the telephone an a human cough.
