Instead, none of this happened because the boy soldier saw Pope Thomatzidis approach the fence and hand the cigarette through the slats to the Jew. The boy soldier whistled, and as Sarah said, “Mama,” as she ran to her family, a gunshot pierced the day’s blue-green idyll. Then shouts—commands—that she didn’t comprehend. She watched in mute horror as the Jew who had accepted the cigarette keeled to the ground, his head something bloody and terrible.

The boy soldier advanced toward a Jewish couple behind the fence, who had simply been standing in the vicinity of the fallen man. Sarah’s screams froze inside as her eyes locked on the woman in a black-collared dress, a little girl’s hand curled into her own. Her husband in a beautiful coat like the ones Sarah’s father made.

Sarah pinched her thigh, aware of the specter of Milos behind her. Do something, she pleaded in mute telepathy. Do something. Her eyes closed at the screams. This time no gunshots, but the sound of something heavy crushing bone. When Sarah peeked her eyes open, at first she couldn’t be sure if she was dead or alive. But her fingers fluttered and her toes curled, sending a message to her brain, that alive was indeed what she was. The couple now sprawled on the ground, and the boy soldier stood over them with his cane. The little girl was screaming Mama, Mama, Mama, in the most chilling shrill that had ever accosted Sarah’s ears. An older girl clapped a hand over her mouth and moved her back.

Sarah searched wildly for her family, eventually locating them again—her mother with her turquoise eyes like Sarah’s, so eerily still, with no bourekas to make or cucumbers to chop; her father with his ears that stuck out, that froze up as a child when his hat was stolen. And Benjamin—wise, kind Benjamin, who had longed to visit Odysseus’s Lefkada. Oh, but not in this horrific way!

Again Sarah’s attention was diverted as the boy soldier stalked back from the fence. Each stomp of his boots against dirt strummed the tenuous strings that connected Sarah to her parents and Benjamin. As the boy soldier passed Pope Thomatzidis, he yanked him by his beard and threw him to the ground. Sarah felt herself crumple down too, her ears thrumming with her heartbeat. She blinked open her eyes just in time to watch the boy soldier jump atop the pope’s prone body, yielding a sickening crunch.

The boy soldier screamed something in German. The only word Sarah gleaned was Juden. Jews. A rumpled man approached from outside the fence. He was the translator, a prisoner, Sarah later understood. In Greek, he said, “You must go. You may not give gifts to the prisoners. Otherwise he will hurt more of them.”

“She is frightened,” Milos said to him, crouching down beside Sarah. “We will go.”