The chapter opens with Adil walking down a dim street accompanied by two other men. The three, half‑asleep, wait with hundreds of other laborers for the Egged buses that will take them west to the factories of Tel Aviv. Vendors shout their wares, but most men carry their own food in visible baskets. As the buses and covered trucks arrive, the workers jostle for the coveted seats next to the driver, believing those positions afford a more comfortable sleep. Adil and his companions board a dimly lit truck fitted with benches; sitting men rest their heads on each other’s shoulders while those standing cling to roof straps.

Inside the truck, Abu Sabir, a man in his sixties, launches a tirade about “kids like locusts” and the high cost of meat, lamenting his wife’s expensive cooking. Zuhdi, a dark‑skinned youth with an unshaven beard, counters with a defense of lentils, recounting his wife Saadiyya’s radio‑inspired lentil dishes and his desperate threat to divorce her over sleeplessness caused by the beans. Their banter is interspersed with crude jokes about “Free Palestine” and Adil’s dry observation that blessings are temporary.

The conversation shifts to wages. Abu Sabir recalls earning 135 qurush a day before the occupation, then being cut to 80 qurush after the war, and finally quitting when an employer threatened to replace him. Zuhdi adds a grievance about an olive‑oil factory boss who overcharged him for olive mash, forcing him to deduct the cost from his wages. He later recounts confronting the same boss on the street, mocking him with a “raspberry” gesture, eliciting laughter from the truck’s occupants.

The truck reaches Tel Aviv, and the workers disembark onto mist‑shrouded streets. The narrative abruptly changes to a construction site where the “noise of machinery” fills the air. Workers shout “Adil! Adil!” as they find a man (later identified as Abu Sabir) lying on the ground with four fingers severed and bleeding profusely. A youth from Gaza runs for help; a mechanic at a nearby garage is told that Abu Sabir cannot receive an ambulance because he lacks a work permit. The Jewish information officer confirms the legal restriction.

Adil, refusing to wait, runs to the injured man, asks which hand is wounded (right), and then to the information office. He returns, clears a path, and helps lift Abu Sabir onto a van. He tears his own shirt into strips, wraps the injured hand, and urges the group to leave. Adil promises they will be in Nablus within an hour, though Abu Sabir doubts he will survive. The van, driven by Zuhdi, races away, narrowly avoiding an Egged bus whose driver shouts anti‑Arab slurs. The cityscape recedes, smoke from factories tinges the sky, and Adil offers Abu Sabir a cigarette.

Inside the moving van, Abu Sabir, numb and in pain, realizes the injury is to his right hand, weeps, and laments his fate, recalling past charity hand‑outs and the hardships of occupation. He accuses Adil of never having known true hunger or unemployment. Adil, reflecting on his own family's loss of a farm and his father’s illness, offers a begrudging acknowledgment but insists he knows what it is like to be out of work.

The conversation turns philosophical: Abu Sabir declares that Adil, as a Karmi, will always have doors opening for him, while Adil counters that “people give only in order to take,” and he has nothing left to give but his arm. Abu Sabir’s bleeding worsens, and he begs Adil to take care of his children if he dies, wishing to discuss heroic Arab tales to distract himself. He mentions early readings from Shaikh Radi, Taha Husain, the Prophet’s biography, the Arabian Nights, and Les Misérables, skeptically debating whether hunger creates power.

As the van speeds on a nearly empty road, Abu Sabir’s condition deteriorates; his skin turns wax‑like, the shirt strips darken with blood, and a pool of blood forms near the van door. Adil shouts for Abu Sabir to stay alive; the wounded man mutters a wish for an Abu Zayd story before slipping into unconsciousness. The chapter ends with Adil’s apology and the bleak acknowledgement that the tragedy may repeat daily.