My daily routine, now that I’m finally over the jet lag: wake up at 6:00 A.M., write for four hours, get to Hummus Beit Lechem just when it opens. Order a hummus with egg, which is served with pita, pickled veg, and half a raw onion. Eat while reading Haaretz. Buy cigarettes and smoke my way back to writing by noon. I can choose between two routes; rather, between two sides of Herzl Street, neither of which gives any shade from the sun. One side has a store that sells birdcages. The other side has a store that sells birds. Both are run by Ethiopians and both are called “Song of Sheba.”

I quit by 7:00 P.M., and head out again for a shwarma or a falafel or a sabich, then wind down the day at a bar, reading the books I bought at Ha’Nasich Ha’Katan and Robinson, and drinking beer and arak until I’m sleepy (by 11:00 P.M.). The books, in Hebrew: Dolly City (Dolly City) by Orly Castel-Bloom, Hitganvut Yechidim (Infiltration) by Yehoshua Kenaz, and last but not least, Ha’Yored Lemala (The Acrophile) by Yoram Kaniuk, a great writer who was once very generous and kind to me, and whom I can’t avoid, or can’t avoid missing, not just because Tel Aviv was very much “his city,” but also because it’s been two summers now since he died.