Nadav, who was accustomed to whipping out pages of company reports in the blink of an eye, spent hours upon hours on these letters, laboring over every word before finally dropping them in the mail.

Months after Nadav sent the letters, though—months during which he continued writing to the five of them repeatedly, always the same letter, again and again—it became obvious that most of his efforts were in vain. From his mother’s three younger brothers (and, who knew, presumably their wives and children or even grandchildren by now, probably dozens of people in total, at least one of whom might have had the courtesy to pick up a pen and answer him) he received no reply. No offers of rescue, no letters sent on their nephew’s behalf to representatives in Washington, no wiring of emergency funds, no telegrams assuring him that they were even alive. Not even a postcard saying, “Yes, I exist, but sorry, I’m not in the mood.” For all Nadav knew, these American relatives were nothing more than products of his mother’s imagination. After some time, a bundle of Nadav’s letters, the ones he had sent to his mother’s older sister Rachel, were returned to sender, stamped “Deceased.” He stared at the envelopes, the only evidence he had that any of these people existed, and wondered: Couldn’t they have forwarded them to her children? This Rachel woman must have children somewhere. They would probably be Nadav’s own age, too—old enough to write back to him, even to do something for him. As the time groaned on with no replies, Nadav began to feel as if it were he, not they, who didn’t exist. As if he had never existed.