So that’s how we spent our schooldays. Once in a while, a bomb landed on the home of someone we knew, a person in our class, and they would stop coming to our school. We would either attend the funeral, or hear from one of the old people in town or from one of the young men who worked in the city, that our classmate was at a special school for orphans.

Let me interrupt again, Reema. Really, please be sure to go back and erase the curse word I said. Just say instead, “the meddling British”—not too easy on them, but not cursing either.

Philadelphia was strange at first. Their English here was different, and they did not put milk in their tea. I hated it, even though I was grateful to your grandfather, God rest his soul, for getting us to America. The West Bank had been swallowed up, and my father decided we couldn’t wait any longer to return to Palestine.

On my first day in the new school—that’s when the siren went off. In English class, the middle of the day. Mr. Emmitt was the teacher; he had black hair and thick glasses, and a gap between his front teeth, but I thought he was very handsome, even for a man without a mustache, but especially because all my teachers at the camp had been women. He seemed to smile especially at me—why are you groaning, Reema?—and my heart actually fluttered. I’m a woman, you know, God forbid your father should realize it. And I was almost a woman then, older than the other kids in the class. I’d missed so much school after the war that they sent me down to a lower grade.

As the alarm exploded in our ears, Mr. Emmitt stopped what he was saying about comma splices and sighed. Everyone around me laughed for some reason, and one boy even cheered. I was wild—it was not Philadelphia anymore to me. It was the UNRWA school in the camp, and everyone was frightened, but calmly scuttling underneath their desks, chests heaving. Huda used to chew on the end of her braid, and I wished I could do that now, realizing how it must have comforted her. But my hair had all been chopped off weeks ago. God save us, we actually used to think that this technique—hiding under the desks—would protect us from the bombs. But, y’allah, what did we know?