Only Yesterday by S. Y. Agnon

as the beverage entered his body it came out on his face. He held his glass and wiped his sweat, wiped his sweat and drank some more. At first that drink is sour and sweet and finally it scratches your guts and leaves an insipid taste in your mouth. His companions ordered black coffee to get rid of the taste.
    One of them asked Isaac, What’s new in the world? Isaac, who thought there was no world except for the Land of Israel, replied, I’m a new man in the Land and haven’t yet heard anything. On the contrary, perhaps I shall hear from you what’s new in the Land. One of them answered, News you want to hear. Well then, hear. This place what is it, a coffeehouse, right. And this man talking to you what is he, a laborer in the Land, right. And this day what is it, a day
    like any other day, right. If so what is the laborer doing in the coffeehouse on a weekday? Except that he pursued all the Effendis in the settlements of the Land of Israel and didn’t find any work. And why didn’t he find any work, because their work is done by Arabs. And why doesn’t he turn to construction work? After all a Hebrew school is being built here in Jaffa with money from a Jewish donor supported by the committee of the Lovers of Zion in Odessa, and they surely need workers. But the building supervisors turn us down and say that they have already given the construction work to contractors, and the contractors turn us down, because it’s easier for them to work with foreign laborers, since the foreigners cost them less. And since they won’t say that they’re turning us down because, by their accounting, we cost them more than what they need to make a profit, they slander us, saying that we don’t know the work. It’s not enough that they take away our livelihood, but they also dishonor our name. Why are you looking at me? Don’t you understand a human language?
    Isaac understood yet didn’t understand. He understood that they were building a Hebrew school, and didn’t understand the actions of the contractors. He understood that that man walked through all the settlements, but didn’t understand that he couldn’t find anything. And why didn’t Isaac understand, after all he did know He-brew, but that man spoke with a Sephardi accent, and mingled Russian and Arabic curses with words that had been invented in the Land. How much Isaac loved the conversation of that man, held in Hebrew and in the Land of Israel.
    Another man added, The officials of our national institutions, some of them get the salary of a governor, and complain about us laborers that we want a salary of two or three Bishliks a day. And they, who are no wiser than we are, think they have some superior wisdom and they made themselves patrons of the Yishuv, and they placed themselves in offices and write memoranda, while we pull the skin off our bones and take a leading part in all troubles.
    Someone pointed at Isaac and said, Why are you scaring him? Said the one who spoke first, Shall I compose an idyll of the Land of Israel for him? And the other one said, That I leave to the
    poets and the tourists, and I ask you all, are you the only ones suffering? Aren’t there people here who came before us, and if we tell all the troubles that befell them, time would run out. They came to a wilderness, a place of harsh malaria, and gangs of highwaymen, and harsh laws and evil governors. If they built themselves houses, the king’s officials came and destroyed them. If they sowed, their neighbors came and threw their beasts on the grain. If they drove them out, they went to cry to the government that the Jews attacked them. And if some of the harvest remained, they didn’t know if they should sow it next year or use it to bribe the clerks not to twist their laws against them. And what they rescued from humans was taken from them by Heaven. But they didn’t despair and they endured all the troubles and they maintained the Yishuv through their suffering and turned the