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Mother had asked for, and a clip-on pen that poked out near the colorless button. In my mind, I ran and held his hand tightly. I did not want to let go of him. And, suddenly, I understood what Mother meant by the word imagine . I, too, could imagine. Blink. Blink. Blink. I could see anything I wanted to see, anytime I wanted. I needed no one’s permission. And I could close my eyes and hide anywhere in my imagination, making the sounds of war more distant and less alarming.
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    In a short time, the shelter began to feel like a home, everyone in it belonging to one large family. Mother and Hamameh talked to each other all day long. My brothers spent their time playing with the crowd of shelter children. And Souma the donkey became my best friend; we were inseparable. The strangers of only days ago now remembered each other’s names, the cities they had fled from, and directions to particular neighborhoods. They told of their pain and illnesses, and cried to one another whenever their stories felt too heavy to bear alone. They gave one another messages to pass on if the shelter was attacked and they died. Since no one knew how long the war would last, they
decided that all would share the work and take turns sleeping. The women kept the shelter spotless, as if it were a home.
    Our drinking water came from a rain well in the backyard and was stored in a clay urn. The urn had a thin base and could easily be pushed off balance, so only adults handled it. They watched over it carefully, snatching babies who crawled by it or shouting to warn children not to race near it. The urn had a mouth and two ears on its sides. An oversize tin saucer on the top looked like the rim of a man’s hat, so the neck, round belly, and tiny base of the pot made it look like the only man among us.
    Trash was left near the door in a rusted metal barrel. Stubborn flies quickly formed a lid for it until a group of boys rolled the barrel away and set fire to its contents.
    The women who could do so nursed the infants of women whose milk had dried up. It was said, and repeated, that children nursed by the same woman would instantly become siblings and must never marry. Mother nursed only my sister, so we acquired no new siblings. But Mother gained a sister of her own—Hamameh, the driver’s wife.
    The two women agreed that if the war lasted a long time and their husbands did not return, they would help each other through whatever followed. But the war ended six days from the day it had started. For those of us at the shelter, it ended with two words, Behawenha Allah , spoken amid tears by an ailing man who leaned on a cane as he stood at the shelter’s door.
    All the faces cried, for Behawenha Allah meant “We have
lost so much that only God can ease our loss.” Our loss? I knew that days ago I had lost my shoes and our home. But had everyone else also lost their shoes and their homes? I did not know why all the women, and especially Mother, who warned me often not to cry, were weeping uncontrollably now, tears streaming down their faces.
    I, too, cried and held Souma close to me, because the words caused chaos in the shelter. Then everyone headed outside. I tried to go with them, but my feet, especially my right foot, made it impossible. The pain was too much for me, and I knew that, this time, if everyone left, I would not be able to run after them.
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    In the following days, everyone but Hamameh, her children, and my family left the shelter for good. Before departing, people shook their heads in sorrow and waved their arms as though to erase the memory of war. We, too, wanted to leave. We waited for Hamameh’s husband and Father to come for us.
    But no one came except a man and a woman whose wrinkled faces reminded me of my grandma. They were Um and Abu Muhammad, who had opened up their home to shelter us. They had spent the war days in Amman with their relatives, and now they had returned.
    Um and Abu Muhammad