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THE WEST BANK, JERUSALEM, ONE YEAR AGO

Yusef Abahdi looked around the street nervously, more out of habit than any sensed threat. This was perhaps the most troubled spot on the planet, after all. Out of reflexive instinct to protect, his hand came to rest on his young daughter’s too thin shoulder. The street was as it always was, bright, dusty, and crowded, simmering with hostility under the everyday sounds and movements of a typical workday drawing to a close. Strange how the barrier in front of him had even become a normal part of their world. It sliced right across the street, cutting through buildings and concrete with complete disregard for architecture or function. The obscene, steel-barred fence and its razor-wire spiral blended into the landscape as easily as anything else in this unnaturally divided world.

Salima grabbed the fence’s bars with her bony little hands, her face pressed to the gap. Her expression was eager and he glanced through to the Jewish neighborhood on the other side to see what so excited her.

A birthday party.

A dozen boys and girls not much older than his daughter laughed and squealed while several harassed mothers scurried around the table trying to serve cake to the squirming youngsters.

“Daddy, can I have a piece of cake?” Salima asked him hopefully.

“No, sweetie. It’s not your party.”

“Can I have a birthday party?”

“It’s not your birthday.”

“But why can’t I ever have cake?”

Why indeed?A hot knife of impotence slashed into his gut, crystallizing into despair at his inability to provide for her, to even feed her adequately, let alone give her cake for her birthday. So many moments of despair like this piled one on top of another, crushing one another until, like carbon molecules compressed impossibly tight, they’d formed a kernel of diamond-hard rage within him.

“Come away, sweetheart. It’s nearly time for Mommy to come home.”

His wife, Marta, with a master’s degree in literature, worked as a domestic for a wealthy Jewish family in the Sheikh Badr Quarter.A maid. And he, with his doctorate in biochemistry, was unable to get any work at all. Who would hire a Palestinian man from Ramala—a hotbed of terrorist activity—to work around hazardous chemical or biological agents? No Israeli company was foolish enough to try. The Mossad would have something to say about it for sure. He would leave this place with his family if there were anywhere else to go. But they were Palestinians. The lost people. Stateless and dispossessed half a century ago, with no country nor home to call their own.

His daughter moved away from the fence reluctantly. Marta would ride theEgged#4 bus through the Silwah quarter to where the route ended, just shy of the Israeli checkpoint. He andSalima would walk the rest of the way home with Marta to their tiny flat in the Al-Izzariyya ghetto. And if Marta had impressed her employers with her diligence that day, perhaps they would send the remains of lunch home for her family to eat—a few stale sandwich halves, maybe some grapes or limp lettuce. If Marta had worked especially hard, perhaps there might even be an orange for Salima.

The area directly in front of the checkpoint was clear, kept that way by the threatening weapons of the IDF soldiers. The Israeli Defense Forces were surly these days. They always were when their government rumbled about new crackdowns. Or maybe it was rumbles from the Palestinian Authority threatening to turn its more violent members loose on the Israelis that did it. Either way, Yusef was careful to hold Salima’s hand tight and keep her well back from the crossing.

“Here comes Mommy’s bus,” he announced as the large green shape turned the corner two blocks beyond the Israeli guard house.

“Pick me up so I can see!”

He lifted Salima under her armpits and hoisted her up in front of him.

BOOM!

The concussion knocked him completely off his feet and Salima fell across his head, further stunning him. Dust filled the air, choking and gray, tasting of concrete. Screams erupted, and his daughter’s high-pitched keening made him frantic like no sound he’d ever heard before. He scrambled to his knees, oblivious of shards of glass and sharp rubble cutting his hands and knees.

“Baby! Salima! Are you hurt?”

“Daaa—deee!” she screamed.

The back of her head bled where she’d struck the ground, and Holy God, it was bleeding a lot. But he saw no otherobvious injuries. He ripped off his shirt, sending buttons flying, and wadded it against her scalp wound. He gathered her close, holding her so tight she struggled against him. He loosened his grasp just long enough to tie the shirt around her head in a rough bandage, then pulled her close again.

Salima’s voice was muffled against his worn cotton t-shirt. “Where’s Mommy?”

It was if another explosion detonated inside his head, a burst of blinding, searing light that made his eyeballs ache.

Marta.

Merciful God, that was her bus.

He scooped up Salima and began to run, rushing the checkpoint in blind panic. Later, he realized that probably the only thing that kept the IDF soldiers from mowing him down right there was the fact that Salima, bloody and sobbing, was clasped against his chest. But as it was, they grabbed him, wrestling him to a stop.

“My wife is on that bus!” he shouted in Arabic, too frantic to think in Hebrew. “My wife! Dear God, my wife!”