My life here has developed a routine, a rhythm. Every morning I wake up at 6:15, stumble into the large hotel suite's drafty common area, turn on the little space heater and begin to read and answer the e-mail that's accumulated overnight for me, throughout the day at home. I call my wife and we chat for a bit, at the end and beginning of our day, respectively. After a while I prepare for the day at work and walk out to say hello to the same front desk man and wait for the elevator to take me to breakfast, the same copy of the New Yorker, half-read, folded in my hand. I'm usually the first one to arrive in the hotel restaurant, 10 or 15 minutes before breakfast is scheduled to begin, so I greet the wait staff as they bring in the same plates of buffet food, warm pita, hummus, yoghurt, two kinds of cheese, one flat and a little like Swiss, the other creamier triangle wedges, sliced cucumbers, wedges of tomatoes, a bowl of hard-boiled eggs, a plate of beef sausages, the same coffee that spills out of the urn and on to the floor if you try and pour it when it has finished percolating and is full, tepid milk for the coffee or the breakfast cereal if you prefer, a sliced loaf of chocolate bread, every morning the same. There is a young, single man who wanders in a little after the food is put down who always wears the same zippered, high neck sweater, blonde hair disheveled, who will eventually slouch in his booth while talking to the older single man, laughing about what they've discovered in Jerusalem that weekend; I imagine they, like me, are here on some sort of work, and it seems that they've met in the restaurant. For the past few days there's been a young, single Taiwanese man who's made a friend with a bald, burly looking guy; the Asian man's name is Lee, I know this because one morning the waiter calls over to our table, "Mr. Lee, telephone call for you, Mr. Lee," I didn't know he was addressing the back of my head, and the person sitting opposite of me looked at him and said, "that's Mr. Kim." Every morning, about 10 minutes after the plates are set on the banquet table, the same older, say, the other side of middle-aged, couple arrive, they look European, and I smile at them and say good morning, and they do the same back, and when they do the somewhat guarded looks on their faces melt off, "good morning, sir," says the one whom I presume to be the husband, his voice low and gruff, but pleasant, and these are the words we exchange. Shortly thereafter the other members of my party arrive, and we exchange pleasantries while we plow through our breakfasts, having been given only fifteen minutes or so before our transportation arrives. There is always cigarette smoke in the restaurant.

Every morning we arrive at the medical complex and semi-consciously do a brief walk-around because one entrance that was open the day before is now closed and we try to find which door is open now, we see where the registration desk has been moved overnight, what new puddles of rainwater have formed on the floor from the storm, the semi-present looks on the faces of the physicians and nurses who are just arriving for the new day. While we try to see if our office is still our office or the "doctors' rest-room" again, whether the piss-smelling bathroom next to it has been cleaned or not, what administrative curveball the minister has sent, whether it's to open the children's hospital next Monday despite the fact that there is no staff and no heat and water continues to leak everywhere. Every morning we settle in to hear about the night shift and how there were only three nurses and two physicians and how their multitude of calls to administrators overnight went unanswered, except their final, desperate, pointless call to me, the outsider, the consultant, at 10 PM, with the hope that I might tell someone about it, that I might write it in my report, my assessment and recommendations. Every morning it is the same, an older looking woman with a head covering and a velvety looking dress waiting for her hip x-ray, a middle-aged appearing man with a leather jacket that has shoulder tabs and a shirt with horizontal stripes holding a weeping toddler wearing spotless white tights on her chubby legs or standing at the bedside of an elderly parent who appears for all the world, dead, until they draw another quick breath. Every morning there is a new deficit, a new settlement, another building razed, and although the city is quiet now, and seems to be at peace, there were the sirens overnight, the same frustrations, only growing...