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this my nose?! they’d ask, pointing to their chin, eyes wide and incredulous. Naaahhh . He thought of the look she got on her face when she sensed something was a joke: a hilarious parody of slyness, eyes darting.
    They were climbing now; the driver shifted into lower gear and the van paused and then surged. The sky had become both bluer and more cloudy; they drove in and out of the shadow of pine forest. “Look,” Daniel said, pointing, leaning toward the window till his face touched Matt’s. “Memorials. From the battle for Jerusalem in the ’48 war.” Matt began noticing the rusty remnants of trucks and tanks scattered among the rocks and pines at the side of the road. “See? There’s another one.” Matt nodded, impressed by the somber and rustic memorial. They continued to climb; he yawned to pop his ears. In the distance he began to discern, on a series of forested and terraced hills, clustered masses of white stone buildings bathed in late-afternoon light. The van turned and then rose again, and the populous outskirts of Jerusalem began to spread before them. It was called Jerusalem stone, Daniel had told him. Draped over the hills like necklaces made by a primitive hand, the neighborhoods conveyed a sense of inevitability, a rugged majesty. “Wow,” Matt breathed, stunned. “Is that occupied territory?”
    Daniel raised his eyebrows and turned away. Matt’s stomach seized. He hadn’t intended the question to be controversial or insensitive. Hadn’t Daniel once told him that something like 75 percent of occupied territory was in the area of Jerusalem? His mind scrambled to remember what Daniel had said, and what he’d read, to reassure himself that it hadn’t been a stupid question. The van swerved one way and then the other, and a nauseous headache began to gather behind Matt’s eyes. They were engulfed by the noise of engines in low gear and the smell of gasoline fumes. They plunged into shadow as they rounded a curve, a towering stone wall on their right. They were rising to Jerusalem, the stench of death on their clothes and hair. His eyes smarted, and he felt profoundly alone, a pebble kicked along by a boot.
    They wound around a road on the edge of a hill, then through the twisting narrow streets, all one-way, of Beit Ha-Kerem. Joel and Ilana’s apartment building was at the end of a cul-de-sac circled by apartment buildings. Cars were parked everywhere, and every which way; laundry hung from windows, whipped by the wind; when they got out, two cats sprang out of a Dumpster and raced away. The Rosens ran into the dark hallway and up the stairs, while Matt and Shoshi and the driver lugged out the suitcases. The driver held the elevator door open by propping a suitcase against it, and they dragged in the rest of the luggage till the elevator was full, Matt pinned in by suitcases.
    He went up the slow, creaky elevator alone. When it stopped, he dragged all the luggage out, and straightened. He grabbed a suitcase and entered an apartment full of crying, huddled adults and a burnt coffee smell. Lydia and the woman he took to be Malka, Ilana’s mother, were hugging and rocking with high, keening cries. Daniel had Gal in his arms, her legs swung around his waist and gripping. His eyes were squeezed shut, his mouth pressed against Gal’s hair. Matt wondered if he should stand there until introduced; he waited awkwardly for a moment, and then began dragging in the rest of the suitcases. The apartment had tile floors throughout, and windows that slid open to the sun and wind and the dark flapping-crow sound of laundry on the lines. Its furnishings were the cheap hodgepodge of people whose main business is raising children; nothing on the walls but framed family photos, taped-up children’s drawings, and a few framed posters from museum exhibits of Impressionist painters. He figured out which was the master bedroom and dragged