“WE WALKED NORTH, to Sidon. We spent the long, hot summer living in tents. Then the weather turned cold and the rains came, and still we were living in the tents. We called our new home Ein al-Hilweh. Sweet Spring. It was hardest on my grandfather. In Sumayriyya he’d been an important man. He’d tended his fields and his flock. He’d provided for his family. Now his family was surviving on handouts. He had a deed to his property but no land. He had the keys to his door but no house. He took ill that first winter and died. He didn’t want to live—not in Lebanon. My grandfather died when Sumayriyya died.”

5:25 P.M. Paris: 62 miles.

“MY FATHER WAS only a boy, but he had to assume responsibility for his mother and two sisters. He couldn’t work—the Lebanese wouldn’t permit that. He couldn’t go to school—the Lebanese wouldn’t allow that, either. No Lebanese social security, no Lebanese health care. And no way out, because we had no valid passports. We were stateless. We were nonpersons. We were nothing.”

5:38 P.M. Paris: 35 miles.

“WHEN MY FATHER married a girl from Sumayriyya, the remnants of the village gathered in Ein al-Hilweh for the wedding celebration. It was just like home, except the surroundings were different. Instead of Paradise, it was the open sewers and the cinder-block huts of the camp. My mother gave my father two sons. Every night he told them about Sumayriyya, so that they would never forget their true home. He told them the story of al-Nakba, the Catastrophe, and instilled in them the dream of al-Awda, the Return. My brothers would grow up to be fighters for Palestine. There was no choice in the matter. As soon as they were old enough to hold a gun, the Fatah started training them.”

“And you?”

“I was the last child. I was born in 1975, just as Lebanon was descending into civil war.”

5:47 P.M. Paris: 25 miles.

“WE NEVER THOUGHT they would come for us again. Yes, we’d lost everything—our homes, our village, our land—but at least we were safe in Ein al-Hilweh. The Jews would never come to Lebanon. Would they?”

5:52 P.M. Paris: 19 miles.