Summary

Jonah, another one of Friedman's friends, ends up in Mordecai's old unit not long after. Jonah spent his hours in the army memorizing poetry to stave off boredom and recites Edgar Allen Poe out loud in his tank. One night, Jonah gets spooked by something rustling nearby but it turns out to be nothing more than a plastic bag. Friedman tells this simple story to contrast many of the other kinds of stories he has to tell about life on the Pumpkin.

Back in Israel, Bruria and other people from nearby kibbutzim begin protesting and organizing "in favor of a pullout from Lebanon" (98). Many people still believed in the security zone as essential to defending northern Israel and saw protestors as traitorous and disloyal to the army. Bruria and her comrades would not be deterred; "the security zone was not the...