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Never .
    That same night his mother had traveled to her cousin in Jerusalem and never came back. The police told Hassan that she had hung herself. Hassan knew why. His Bedu mother would rather endure death than the indignity of a barren life without a husband or an income. His brother, Nidal, and his sister, Fawzi, were inconsolable. Hassan too, but after the numbness wore off a fierce determination blazed inside him. He was not going to leave little Nidal and Fawzi to the fate of an orphanage. They were all going to stay together.
    First Hassan had buried his parents, and then he had buried his dignity, begging on the streets of Jerusalem, putting barely enough food in their bellies to keep from starving.
    He and Nidal and Fawzi had slept in filthy doorways, searched for scraps among garbage in rat-infested alleyways. In winter, he kept his little brother and sister warm by giving them his own filthy coat, while he himself froze from the cold.
    Nidal was always a weak child. Living malnourished on the streets had not helped, and his bouts of sickness had more than once brought him close to death. But somehow Nidal had survived, as if his small body had fire in its belly.
    All of it happened a long time ago, but what was it his father liked to say? We can never escape our past.
    Nor can we rewrite it , Hassan thought. But we can change our future. And in changing our future, we can right the wrongs of our past .
    Nidal touched his arm, taking him from his reverie. “We are late for our appointment, Hassan.”
    “Right now, this is our most important appointment.”
    Nidal noted his brother’s voice was very quiet, but as always infinitely dangerous, his dark eyes glittering with purpose. “Of course, Hassan. It is as you say.”
    “Go back to the helicopter. I’ll join you in a moment.”
    Nidal retreated without a word. Hassan watched his brother walk back toward the chopper. The sight of Nidal’s rake-thin body always brought out a protective streak in him.
    He heard a bird cry overhead, looked up, and saw a hawk circling. He tried to focus, knew that this moment was important. Not one to be rushed but savored. What happened in Rome had changed everything, he felt sure of it .
    Now Hassan turned to stare down at the graves of Robert and Margaret Cane. He stared for long time until a wave of fury exploded inside him. Without a word he violently crushed the lilies with his shoe until they were a trampled mess of green stalks and white flowers. He stamped and kicked, scattering the gravel chips. All control gone now, Hassan hawked a mouthful of saliva and spat upon the graves.
    Then he wiped his lips with his sleeve and strode back to join his brother.

8

    QUMRAN
    DEAD SEA
    ISRAEL
    “IT’S PRETTY INCREDIBLE. Take a look for yourself. I wanted you to be the first to know, Jack. You’re the one who found it, after all.”
    Jack Cane, wearing a pair of white latex gloves, steadied the magnifying glass in his hands. “Are you sure about all this, professor?”
    His excitement mounting, Jack studied the faded images on the two-thousand-year-old parchment. It lay partially unrolled on the table, the scroll edges sepia brown, fragile from centuries of lying buried in an earthenware jar. They were in Professor Green’s tent, a stand-up affair cluttered with boxes of reference books, a cot, a table, and folding chairs.
    Jack tried to read by the light of an overhead butane lamp and using the magnifier. Faded lines of ancient Aramaic characters had been exposed in the unraveling. “I mean, really sure?”
    Professor Donald Green frowned. “Sure about all what, Jack?”
    “Your translation.”
    Green’s delight was replaced by a tone that bristled with irritation. “Of course I’m sure. Yasmin and I stayed up working on it after everyone went to bed. Once I managed to unravel another three inches of the parchment, which was about as much as I could without causing damage, I went to work deciphering the exposed text. I