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you.”
    “You are my gift,” she insisted, but she smiled with delight.
    He produced a ring from his pocket. She raised the candle to inspect it. She could make out the words “Erasmus Hall” and the
     date 1998 inscribed on the inside of the ring, and some sort of crest on the stone in its center. “Never before have I seen
     such a ring,” Maali said. “Where did you get it?”
    “From a Jew named Erasmus Hall.”
    “You would have me wear a ring bought from a Jew?”
    Yussuf smiled. “I took it from him. He did not object because he was dead.”
    “Who made the Jew Erasmus Hall dead?”
    “I and my friends did. I noticed the ring on his small finger. When I could not remove it, I took out my pocket knife and
     cut off his finger.”
    Yussuf tried to put the ring on the fourth finger of her left hand, which was believed to be directly connected to the heart.
     When it wouldn’t fit, he took her finger into his mouth and sucked it. He removed her wedding band and worked the Jew’s ring
     over the joint and onto her finger, and then replaced the gold wedding band. “The ring of the late Erasmus Hall is so tight
     you would not be able to remove it even if you wanted to.”
    Maali held up her hand and inspected the ring. “You actually took it from a dead Jew!” she whispered.
    “I hate them. Killing them is not enough after what they did to me, to my family, to my people, to my religion.” He tightened
     his grip on her shoulders. “I cut off the finger and threw it to a dog in Abu Tor.”
    Maali declared with emotion, “I will wear this trophy of your victory over the Jews with pride.”
    Yussuf stripped and stood on a small Bedouin carpet as Maali sponged his body, and the healed bullet wound in the flesh of
     his shoulder, with orange blossom water from an enamel bowl. She fed him dates and wedges of apple to break the Ramadan fast.
     Then she took his hand and led him to the brass bed to break the marriage fast.

FOUR
    J UST AFTER MIDNIGHT, A TALL, LEAN MAN DRESSED IN A pinstriped suit hovered over the wounded boy on the gurney as he was being rushed toward surgery through the scrubbed, harshly
     lit corridors of Hadassah Hospital. A male nurse trotted along on the other side holding high a plastic container of glucose,
     which dripped through a tube into the boy’s forearm. The hair on the boy’s head was matted with blood; a piece of his scalp
     hung loose like a flap, exposing a section of skull the color of sidewalk. On the stretcher, the boy’s jaw worked, as if he
     were chewing on words but having trouble swallowing them. “… short … heavy-set … short cropped hair …” The man in the pinstriped
     suit leaned closer to catch the rest. A orderly materialized at the double door of the surgical theater. “The police are not
     permitted past this point,” he announced.
    Straightening, the tall, lean man backed away and turned to watch through a window as half a dozen doctors in pale green smocks
     and surgical masks, moving with the languid grace of people underwater, bent over the wounded man. Then a nurse inside the
     operating theater tugged closed the curtains, blocking the view into the room.

FIVE
    A S THE FIRST STREAKS OF DAWN STAINED THE SKY IN THE EAST, Maali came awake with a start to discover the candle sizzling at the end of its wick and Yussuf’s dark eyes fixed on her
     as if he never expected to see his wife again; as if the memory of her was all he could take with him. “You must be gone before
     it grows light,” she warned with a shudder. “The Jews come around every day or two asking about you.”
    “What do you tell them?”
    “My father says you are an outlaw and not welcome under his roof. I say that I am the bride of a holy warrior fighting a holy
     war.”
    Yussuf grinned at the spectacle of his wife facing down both her father and the Jews. “How do the Jews react when you tell
     them this?”
    “The one with eyeglasses and the insignia of an officer on