By Muriel Spark
To rendezvous along with her archeologist fiance in Jordan, Barbara Vaughn needs to first go through the Mandelbaum Gate--which divides strife-torn Jerusalem. A half-Jewish convert to Catholicism, an Englishwoman of sturdy and obdurate convictions, Barbara usually are not dissuaded from her ill-timed pilgrimage regardless of a really actual danger of physically damage and the nervous admonishments of staid British diplomat Freddy Hamilton.
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Example text
There were no other options. There seemed to be so few people around that I might just get away with it. But what then? My head started to hurt, thinking of the complications. I shut my eyes hard for a moment to block out those thoughts. I couldn’t afford them. They were too distracting. I realised this was one of those times when I’d have to make things up as I went along; me, who always liked things to be organised, who wanted life to be planned, who’d been taught by my father that ‘time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted’.
I looked to the right, I looked to the left, I looked to the right again. Then I stepped off the kerb. And nearly got run over. 49 All that road safety training in primary school could have cost me my life. I’d become so used to looking to the right, which normally would be fine, but in this case wasn’t. The soldiers had hurried off to the left, and that’s the way I should have looked. Fifty metres to the left two officers had appeared. You could tell they were officers. The morning sun glinted off their gold braid, but even without that you could tell.
Outside, the wind felt sharp, quite cold for summer. It was only a short dash to the barracks building, but I knew I had to use the buildings and shadows for cover, as much as I could. I bent over and scurried across the roadway. It was weird because I felt I wasn’t able to breathe, somehow. Yet here I was, running, so I must have been breathing. I felt really paranoid, too, certain someone somewhere must be seeing me. I didn’t know if it would be the people in the control tower or a helicopter overhead or a soldier still left in the barracks, but I felt I couldn’t get away with this: it was too outrageous, too much, thinking I could run around in this huge and vital enemy installation doing what I liked.