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meet someone who spent several months there a few years ago, and after that I’ll have a clearer picture of what to expect. But just a minute, before we go any further let me introduce you to my wife.”

    A woman walked into the room, a plump brunette of about forty-five, of medium height, her hair gathered into a rather untidy knot on top of her head, her eyes flashing me a frank, vivid smile behind her glasses. I stood up and her husband introduced me to her. She nodded affably and immediately sat down opposite me with a regal movement, crossing long legs that didn’t match the heaviness of her arms and shoulders, and began watching her husband, who went on drawing lines on the map of India and calculating times. As I tried to follow the route he was mapping out I sensed her appraising me, and when I looked up at her, her eyes suddenly lit up again in the same warm, lively, generous smile, and she nodded her head slightly in a gesture of approval. Then, as if she sensed my gnawing doubts, she suddenly interrupted her husband and addressed me directly. “Do you really think you’ll be able to leave your work at the hospital and go abroad for more than two weeks?” Her husband, who was very put out by this question, answered crossly in my place. “First of all, why do you already say more than two weeks? Where do you get that from? It’ll be less. I have to be back on the Sunday after next, don’t forget. And second, why shouldn’t he be able to leave the hospital? He can leave it for as long as he likes. Hishin gave him carte blanche—he can take it as leave due to him, if he likes, or as ordinary working days and we’ll find a way to make them up.” But his wife immediately protested. “Why at the expense of his leave? Why should he sacrifice his vacation for us?” And again she looked directly at me, and said in a clear, firm voice, which did not suit her plump, soft looks, “Please find out what payment you’re entitled to for your services on a trip like this. We will gladly compensate you for your efforts.”
    Suddenly I felt stifled in the elegant, spacious apartment. The two middle-aged people sitting opposite me looked powerful and influential. “It’s not a question of money”—I began to blush—“and it really is true that I’ve got a lot of leave coming, but if I go away now, even for two weeks, it’s as if I’ve already finished my trial year in surgery, and I don’t want to miss a single day there.”
    “In the surgical department?” asked the woman.
    “Yes,” I replied, “I started in surgery, and that’s where I want to continue.”
    “In surgery?” said the woman, looking at her husband in surprise . “We thought you were transferring to internal medicine orsome other department, because Hishin told us that you weren’t going to continue in surgery.” A tremor of real pain passed through me on hearing the final verdict on my future spoken so casually by this strange woman. It wasn’t even a question of a position being available, I now realized, but a clear professional judgment against me. And Hishin’s tall figure seemed to loom up behind the woman, who never stopped examining me with her smiling eyes. “Who said I wanted to be an internist?” I burst into a bitter snort of laughter. “Even if Hishin has reservations, I’m still not giving up surgery. There are other hospitals, if not in Israel then abroad—England, for instance—and you can get excellent experience there too.”
    “England?” repeated Mrs. Lazar, and her friendly smile disappeared. “Yes. My parents came here from England, I’m a British citizen, and I won’t have any problems doing my residency there.” Lazar, who was uninterested in the argument between me and his wife, suddenly beamed. “So I was right. I saw in your file that your parents were born in England, and I wondered if you were a British citizen too. That will help you on the trip to India. I suppose your English is