And the sensation is of something having noiselessly exploded inside each of them. LAWRENCE DURRELL, Justine HELICOPTER DAYS The bomb went off downtown, near the entrance to the Haifa Carmelit subway, at 5:27 on a Friday morning in late June. It blew up a white Fiat and shattered the plate glass windows of the Bank Hapoalim branch across the intersection. It exploded a streetlight, two signposts, and part of the stone wall bordering the sidewalk on the subway side of the street. The lower branches of a eucalyptus tree were burned clear of leaves, and the trunk was singed with streaks of black, like a primitive drawing. The pavement was covered with bits of twisted metal and broken stone. The dawning light was gray as glass. Along the beaches, less than a kilometer away, waves folded over on the sand. Halfway up Mount Carmel, a muezzin called the faithful to prayer from a loudspeaker mounted on a minaret. In the cypresses that lined the steep slope of the Baha’i gardens, below the temple’s golden dome, jays woke and began to chatter, agitating the branches of the trees.
