I made friends with an old couple, Holocaust survivors, who live in my building. Most people didn’t like them because the wife fed pigeons. I was the only one who would talk to them. I met the wife on the street. She was bent over wearing a gray jacket, feeding pigeons from a bag. She seemed as if she was a lone bird. We went to her house. She told me about herself when she was my age. She said: “My whole family was killed and I had to escape. I feed pigeons because I know what it is like to be hungry. Like every one else, pigeons have the right to live. Who are we to say who should live or die?” Her voice was soft as the flapping of a pigeon’s wings .As I started to shake, my watch glittered like a six- pointed star.

When her husband heard our conversation he got up from his chair. He had not been out of their house for fifteen years. As he got up he looked like a paper being unfolded. He seemed like a hidden document. He said: “The Nazis didn’t let me bring my sister with me on the train because she was too young. Later I found out …they murdered her.” Each of the sentences of the two conversations was like pages of a book being turned. He said:” When someone does something to you, it has more to do with them than it has to do with you.” He was like an old newspaper article you would find in an attic with the words still fresh.