She’s a scientist, a researcher in plant senescence. When I travel south to visit her, she gives me a tour of the labs and the experimental date palm plantations where she works just north of the city. I understand her explanation of senescence in an approximate way, as a metaphor for my own questions – what makes a thing die? It’s not so much a question of what process kicks in so that it stops regenerating, as what process ceases, and why. What about love – what makes it end? What makes it slow down and stop? Or what process stops, making it impossible to go on – a habit of denial, a loss of will? In her fifth-floor apartment she has dates in the fridge that are still fresh and edible long after they should have begun to deteriorate. I hesitate, uneasy, when she offers them to me to eat. The last time I stayed with Hamutal I was eighteen. It was late August, and I was heading back to England after eight months in Israel, but I wanted to go back with a tan, so for four days I burned myself in the desert sun, which at midday reached 50 degrees.
