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My black 1991 Caddy-Deville reached the top of the Verrazano Bridge and rolled towards Brooklyn. It was misty as the sun rose from Coney Island's side. I relished the sight, for the upper deck of the Verrazano offered a magnificent vista. In front there was Brooklyn, looking so peaceful with the mellow blanket of red and yellow leaves welcoming this late September day.

On the right Coney Island; below, the calm blue water dotted with ships steaming in and out of New York Harbor. On the left I could make out the southern tip of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty, lit by the first rays of sunlight. And behind me was Staten Island, where I was awakened from a sound slumber about a half hour earlier.

It was a pleasant drive, unlike the routine rush-hour bumper-to-bumper morning crawl to Brooklyn. I tuned in the public radio station. It was too early for the morning news, but the classical music suited me just fine.

Driving is the only time I can think properly. Sometimes my thoughts embrace me so tightly I end up in front of the hospital without a clue as to how I got there. As I drove on, unimpeded by traffic, my thoughts drifted further and further into my memories...

...The outskirts of Johannesburg in a milky winter dawn, the smoggy air fed by thousands of wood fires on which early rising Soweto blacks cook their maize-meal for breakfast. Lady Mercy hospital with its casualty ward bursting at the seams; half-dead patients on woolen blankets groaning on bloodstained floors; knives, axes, screwdrivers, bicycle spokes still sticking out of their bodies.

Or the mist rising above Haifa's bay. The steady drumming of Israeli helicopters carrying in wounded from the northern front. They'd emerge from the black of night to land on the helipad by the sea and discharge their bloody and often noisy cargo... the nineteen year old boy shrieking as he tried to push his bowels back into his abdomen as we raced him to the trauma unit...

Brooklyn. I snapped back to the present. I took the Thirty Eighth Street turnoff and immediately started bouncing over the potholes anchored like land mines in the roadway.