Mornings in Jenin

that though I was capable of great cruelty, so am I of great love.

Her tale sent Muna Jalayta calling the Colombian Sisters, crying, “Amal was killed in Jenin.”

“Take this,” he whispered to her body, “I owe your father my life. Tell him I never had a better friend.” And Sara watched Ari drop the eighteen-pearled brooch over her mother’s shrouded form.

It was the only body she could bury.

It was March 31, 2002

But I was the only survivor to live that moment with Ismael, our missing link, and I felt depleted by the wounds of others.

Love cannot reconcile with deception.

When Ammo Darweesh needed a wheelchair, she secretly sold the second of her twin ankle bracelets and laid the money on my uncle’s doorstep.

Amal read these accounts, never knowing that the blindfolded six-year-old boy was Mansour, the youngest child of her friends Huda and Osama.

Ariel Sharon remained free to pursue the politics of violence, until eventually he rose to the highest office of power in Israel, becoming prime minister of the Jewish state.