Sunday, May 20, 2018 10:48 PM

On the night after Shavuot, more people are outdoors than usual. (On Shavuot itself, I worked and slept.) I hear large parties in progress behind stone walls on the pedestrian street. Televisions blare from open windows several stories overhead. Three teenage girls zoom past, chattering and laughing, riding electric bicycles on an otherwise quiet block. Boys on different bikes practice fancy maneuvers in the empty ground-floor space of the open-air mall. On a narrow darkened path, I approach a motorcycle facing away from me, revving up a few feet ahead. I stop to let it go first. The driver shuts down his engine to let me pass instead. I walk on, then he follows. Once we get to a wide enough point in the road, he speeds up, darts around me, and heads off into the night.