sonic environment. He is Russian, I decide: how could he not be? The woman across the table from him, who, judging from the movement of her lips, speaks during the pauses afforded by her tablemate, seems Russian also: she knows the vocal protocols. The two hold hands across the tabletop and frequently lean back in their chairs and laugh heartily, he from the chest, she, one imagines, from a place above her head.

A few doors down along Tucholsky Strasse, young people sitting on the steps of the Pool Art Gallery drink champagne from plastic cups. They are attending the opening of an exhibition by a young woman named Michelle Jezierskyi, who, according to the program, was born and raised in Berlin by American parents and, as a resultcontain a restaurant: Israelisches Restaurant, reads the sign above the door. An armed Berlin policeman patrols the area behind the barricades, and young people move in and out of the doorway, laughing and talking in Hebrew. I have to stop because the easy, touristy movements my body has adopted, full of joie de vivre and calm pleasuring, have stopped working. The kids seem unaffected by the barricades and the cop: they open their packs for inspection without interrupting their conversations and seem unaware of the situation’s—well, for me—profound incongruity. Once, in Israel, I had experienced a similar moment: a group of Israeli soldiers, boys and girls as I thought of them, in a shopping mall in Jerusalem, leaned over an arcade video game. Their Uzis hung across the