Abed would hug me. Abed would spit at me.

I didn't see Abed coming.

Abed would say, I'm sorry.

Abed spoke three quick words.

Abed had said something remarkable.

The report finished and Abed spoke.

Be careful, Abed, look out. Slow down.

Abed then told me why he'd suffered.

Abed and I sat with our coffee.

Some, as had Abed, would forget the date.

But I didn't say these things to Abed.

There was much I wished to say to Abed.

I did not want to recap the crash with Abed.

It was then I understood that Abed would never apologize.

And as I approached the front door, Abed saw me, my jeans and flannel and cane, and I saw Abed, an average looking man of average size.

Abed said that I should call back in a few weeks, and when I did, and a recording told me that his number was disconnected, I let Abed and the crash go.

When we got her home she lay abed other two months, still as death.

Um, Abed, I said, I thought you had a few driving issues before the crash.

Abed had been less handsome than substantial, with thick black hair and a full face and a wide neck.

It was then that Abed resumed at once the tale of woe he had begun over the phone 16 years before.

Abed could still turn his wheel left so that I would see him whoosh by out my window and I would remain whole.

But Abed did not slow, and on that xeroxed piece of paper, my neck again broke, and again, I was left without anger.

And so I didn't point out that in his own testimony the morning after the crash, Abed did not even mention the bus driver.

Still, Abed was far from my mind, when last year, I returned to Israel to write of the crash, and the book I then wrote, Half Life, was nearly complete when I recognized that I still wanted to meet Abed, and finally I understood why to hear this man say two words I'm sorry.

It was then I read the testimony that Abed gave the morning after the crash, of driving down the right lane of a highway toward Jerusalem.

I decided to find Abed, and when I finally did, he responded to my Hebrew hello which such nonchalance, it seemed he'd been awaiting my phone call.

I stepped from my car and said Shalom, and identified myself, and she told me that her husband Abed would be home from work in four hours.

But I also saw in my reflection that, had Abed not injured me, I would now, in all likelihood, be a doctor and a husband and a father.

Mohammed Abed Al Jabri ( 27 December 1935 3 May 2010 Rabat) was a contemporary Moroccan critic and professor of philosophy and Islamic thought in Mohammed V University in Rabat.

And I was mentioning Abed and myself, noting deliberately that I was here in peace, to the people in this town, when I met Mohamed outside a post office at noon.

Abed then rose and turned on the TV so that I wouldn't be alone when he left the room, and returned with polaroids of the crash and his old driver's license.

Abed then showed me a picture of his mashed truck, and said that the crash was the fault of a bus driver in the left lane who did not let him pass.

I didn't have an exact address, but I knew his name, Abed, I knew that he lived in a town of 15,000, Kfar Kara, and I knew that, 21 years before, just outside this holy city, he broke my neck.

And so I got a cop to confirm that Abed still lived somewhere in his same town, and I was now driving to it with a potted yellow rose in the back seat, when suddenly flowers seemed a ridiculous offering.

Twenty one years later, he was now thinner than his wife, his skin slack on his face, and looking at Abed looking at his young self, I remembered looking at that photograph of my young self after the crash, and recognized his longing.