"Palestinian commandos. Our part of town." Michel's part too, she thought proudly. You will find them an easy people to love,Joseph had told her. Charlie spent four nights and four days with the boys, and loved them singly and collectively. They were the first of her several families. They moved her constantly, like a treasure, always by dark, always with the greatest courtesy. She had arrived so suddenly, they explained, with charming regret; it was necessary for our Captain to make certain preparations. They called her "Miss Palme" and perhaps they really thought it was her name. They returned her love for them, yet they asked her nothing personal and nothing obtrusive; they maintained in every sense a shy and disciplined reticence, which made her curious about the nature of the authority that governed them. Her first bedroom was at the top of an old shell-torn house empty of all other life except for the absent proprietor's parrot, which had a smoker's cough and produced it every time someone lit a cigarette.
