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them at last made it to safety on Hasan’s strength and will, but without Ismael.

    The villagers sat on the ground in the valley. The land was as beautiful and peaceful as it had always been. Trees and sky and hills and stone were unchanged and the villagers were dazed and quiet, except Dalia. She was mad with anguish, questioning people and uncovering other women’s babies in hope of revealing a boy with a scar down his right cheek, around his eye. She searched with frenzied foreboding, even though Yehya tried to reassure her that surely someone had picked up the child and surely it was only a matter of time before they would be reunited. Surely, Yehya knew, you can’t hold on to words .
    Dalia spent the last of her energy on tears, replaying that instant, over and over and over. Little Yousef, not comprehending the sudden hell that had befallen the whole village, agreed to let go of his father and sat in his jiddo Yehya’s arms, both of them dazed and teary.
    Hasan shuffled restlessly between his wounded brother, Darweesh; his inconsolable wife; his terrified son; and his bewildered father, until finally he succumbed to exhaustion and slept on the ground among merciless mosquitoes, a stone to rest his head. But not even sleep could assuage the inadequacy he felt. He had failed to protect his family. He could not provide assurance, nor could he bring Ismael back.
    “Jiddo, can we go home now?” Yousef asked his grandfather.
    Yehya could not lie, nor could he tell the truth. He kissed his grandson, pulled him closer, tighter, to his chest, and said, “Get some rest, ya ibni, get some rest now, ya habibi.” My son, my beloved .
    They tried to go back the next day, but the guns behind them forbade a return home. For three days and two nights, they made their way up and down unforgiving hills, under the sun’s glare and the unseen but sure watch of snipers. A diabetic boy and his grandmother fell and died. One woman miscarried and the dehydrated bodies of two babies went limp in their mothers’ arms. Jenin was as far as they could go, and they rested wherever there was space among the flood of refugees converging from other villages. Residents of those towns helped them as much as they could, giving away their food, blankets, and water and fitting as many as possible into their homes in that time of crisis. Soon Jordan, Iraq, and Syria gave out a few tents, and a refugee camp sprang up in Jenin, where the villagers of Ein Hod could stand on the hills and look back at the homes to which they could never return.

    So it was that eight centuries after its founding by a general of Saladin’s army in 1189 a.d., Ein Hod was cleared of its Palestinian children. Yehya tried to calculate the number of generations who had lived and died in that village and he came up with forty. It was a task made simple by the way Arabs name their children to tell the story of their genealogy, conferring five or six names from the child’s direct lineage, in proper order.
    Thus Yehya tallied forty generations of living, now stolen. Forty generations of childbirth and funerals, weddings and dance, prayer and scraped knees. Forty generations of sin and charity, of cooking, toiling, and idling, of friendships and animosities and pacts, of rain and lovemaking. Forty generations with their imprinted memories, secrets, and scandals. All carried away by the notion of entitlement of another people, who would settle in the vacancy and proclaim it all—all that was left in the way of architecture, orchards, wells, flowers, and charm—as the heritage of Jewish foreigners arriving from Europe, Russia, the United States, and other corners of the globe.
    In the sorrow of a history buried alive, the year 1948 in Palestine fell from the calendar into exile, ceasing to reckon the marching count of days, months, and years, instead becoming an infinite mist of one moment in history. The twelve months of that year rearranged themselves and swirled aimlessly in