Bilal exhaled a cloud of cigarette smoke, watched it dissipate. “Then I heard laughing and clapping.

“Two other soldiers came up on them as they were undoing each other’s pants. They stopped close beside me but didn’t see me hiding. My heart drummed fast and hard in my chest. I had a khanjar knife and quietly pulled it ready. One of the laughing soldiers took a Polaroid of my brother and his lover as they scrambled to put on their shirts. That’s when I leapt, unthinkingly, stabbing a soldier, the curve of the khanjar sliding through his neck and back out. Two shots rang out. I thought I was dead, but I was standing. Itamar’s gun was pointing at me. My brother tackled him to the ground and another shot was fired. Then everything was still. The two laughing soldiers lay at my feet, one shot dead, the other dying from my knife. My brother and Itamar were also on the ground, stunned. Itamar began to cry. I just froze, leaving my body, until my brother shouted, ‘Run! Run away!’ So I did, without looking back, not realizing the khanjar was still in my hand, or that my clothes were bloody, until I came upon three women making bread on a taboon. They saw me, and for a moment we all stiffened with terror.”

Bilal blew out the last hit of his cigarette, fast and hard, his right hand shaking.

He wasn’t sure if the women recognized him. They were part of an embroidering club that spanned six villages. His mother had started it two years before, and they met once a month, often at his home. You’re Zareefeh’s boy, aren’t you? one finally asked. “I was both relieved and horrified by their recognition,” Bilal said. “I collapsed crying, but I couldn’t tell them what had happened. I wasn’t even sure myself.”

It was the first time I heard that Hajjeh Um Mhammad’s given name was Zareefeh. It means charming. Such a pretty name, I thought.

One woman asked if he had stabbed an animal or a person.