“Mhammad was calm as we stood over the barrel burning the evidence. He asked for the knife, warned me never to speak of what I had seen in the woods, and demanded that I leave for Jordan first thing the next morning. I assumed all the borders would be closed, but my brother assured me it would be a while before anyone found the bodies.

“That’s how I knew that he and Itamar … I knew they had a plan. That they were working together,” Bilal said. “I went inside our home, showered, and packed.”

Bilal had lain there that night, a young man waiting for the sky to fall, crying, replaying the last few hours in his mind. His brother and the Israeli soldier. Their aggressive lust for each other. The laughter of the other soldiers. The camera. The knife in and out of a man’s neck. He had to leave before his mother awoke.

“I went downstairs around four thirty a.m., feeling my way in the dark, and put my things by the door. Suddenly a small table lamp came on, illuminating my brother in a chair. He must have been there all night. His eyes were weary and dark. I could tell he had been crying and wondered if he saw the same in my face.”

Mhammad handed him a box. In it was a book containing several Polaroid photos embedded in the cover. The camera itself was also in the box. “He told me to find someplace safe to hide them, and to rescue the photos if anything ever were to happen. He didn’t say what. Just that I’d know.”

They were the Polaroids of Mhammad and Itamar together, taken by the laughing Israeli soldiers, which Mhammad had taken from the bloody scene as leverage to keep his family safe. Mhammad and Itamar had cooked up a plan that spared Bilal and his family, landed Mhammad in prison, and earned Itamar a promotion, putting him on track to becoming a high-ranking commander.

“It sounds like Mhammad sacrificed himself to save you and the rest of the family.”

“He did. But he’s not innocent either. Everyone’s hands are bloody and dirty in this place,” Bilal said. He continued, “I stayed in Amman for a few years. Went to college and then worked as a chemist for a plastics company in Kuwait.”

“What? You were in Kuwait?”

“Just for a couple of years.” He swept his arm through the air, indicating the green landscape before us. “Kuwait was all concrete and sand. I hated it. I’ve never been as lonely as I was there, not even when I was in prison.”

“My God! We could have passed each other in the streets,” I said.