Yehya's family lives peacefully in Ein Hod, harvesting olives on their ancestral land.

The Palestinian villages invite Jewish soldiers to a feast as a gesture of friendship and peace.

Ein Hod is bombed and destroyed, and the surviving villagers are forced to march toward Jenin.

Baby Ismael disappears from Dalia's arms during the chaotic evacuation from Ein Hod.

Yehya sneaks back to Ein Hod and returns to the refugee camp triumphant, carrying fruit and olives.

Yehya is shot and killed by Israeli soldiers on his second attempt to return to Ein Hod.

Amal and Huda hide in a hole beneath the kitchen floor as Israeli forces attack the Jenin camp.

Captive men are returned naked and beaten to the camp, but Hasan is not among them.

Amal is shot in the abdomen by an Israeli soldier as she flees the forbidden peach orchard.

Yousef leaves Jenin to join the Palestinian resistance, sending Amal a letter of farewell.

Dalia dies and Amal accepts a place at an orphanage school in Jerusalem.

Amal falls in love with Majid in Lebanon and they marry in a traditional ceremony.

Majid is killed when his Beirut apartment building is bombed hours before his planned departure to America.

Fatima and baby Falasteen are killed in the massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps.

Amal throws herself on top of Sara to shield her from an Israeli sniper's bullet and is shot dead.

The Abulheja family lives peacefully in Ein Hod until Zionist forces attack and expel them, driving them into a refugee camp in Jenin. Over the following decades, repeated Israeli military campaigns kill, wound, and scatter family members, beginning with the kidnapping of baby Ismael and the disappearance of patriarch Yehya. Amal grows up in the camp shaped by these absences and eventually leaves for Jerusalem, then America, in search of education and a future. She finds love and hope in Lebanon with her husband Majid, but both are destroyed by the Israeli invasion and the massacre at Sabra and Shatila. Returning to Jenin years later with her daughter Sara, Amal makes the ultimate sacrifice, throwing herself in front of a sniper's bullet to save her daughter's life. Through this arc of loss and courage, the novel traces the Palestinian experience of displacement, grief, and enduring love across generations.

The Palestinian family's journey from homeland to exile, loss, and sacrifice.

Hasan and Jewish immigrant Ari Perlstein form a deep friendship in Jerusalem, bonded by a shared love of poetry.

Basima dies of a heart attack when the first Israeli bomb explodes near Ein Hod.

Darweesh's horse Fatooma is shot dead and Darweesh is shot in the chest, leaving him paralyzed for life.

Moshe secretly brings kidnapped baby Ismael home to his wife Jolanta, who welcomes the child and names him David.

The UN mediator appointed to help resolve the conflict is assassinated by Zionists, dashing refugees' hopes of return.

Hasan reads poetry to young Amal in the early mornings on the terrace of their refugee camp home.

Sister Marianne defies an Israeli soldier and transports the injured Amal and Huda to a hospital.

Yousef tells a friend that an Israeli soldier during the fighting looked exactly like his lost brother Ismael.

David beats Yousef unconscious at a checkpoint, overwhelmed and enraged by their undeniable resemblance.

PLO fighters at the battle of Karameh force Israeli forces to retreat in a celebrated victory for Palestinians.

Amal graduates with top honors from the orphanage school and receives a scholarship to study in America.

Amal arrives in Lebanon and Yousef tells her that their brother Ismael is alive.

Amal gives birth to Sara after collapsing in the street upon learning of Majid's death.

The CIA questions Amal for ten hours after Yousef is accused of bombing the US Embassy in Lebanon.

Sara creates a public website publishing her letters to her dead mother, campaigning for Palestinian liberation.

While the main plot charts the family's greatest losses, a second layer of events reveals the smaller but equally decisive moments that shaped every life. The friendship between Palestinian Hasan and Jewish refugee Ari Perlstein shows that peaceful coexistence was possible before violence made it nearly impossible, just as a compassionate nun's defiance saves two wounded girls from being abandoned by soldiers. A UN mediator's assassination extinguishes early hopes of a diplomatic return to Palestine, while Yousef's growing certainty that a soldier at the checkpoint is his stolen brother simmers for years before exploding into violence. The PLO's unexpected victory at Karameh briefly restores hope across Palestinian refugee camps, and Amal's graduation on a scholarship opens a door to a new life. She is later accused of harboring a terrorist, gives birth in grief, and watches as her daughter Sara ultimately reclaims the family's story for the world.

The hidden connections and overlooked moments that shaped the family's fate.

Hasan defies his mother's strong resistance and insists on marrying Dalia, the spirited Bedouin girl.

Young Yousef drops baby Ismael, who is scratched by a nail and left with a permanent distinctive facial scar.

Rescued after the 1967 attack, Amal sees her mother's vacant, unrecognizing gaze and denies knowing her to the nun.

David visits Yousef recovering in a hospital and denies any recognition, while Yousef recognizes his lost brother Ismael in him.

Amal overhears a wounded Yousef tell a friend that the soldier who beat him at the checkpoint was his own brother.

Amal decides to accept her uncle Darweesh's counsel and leave Jenin to study at the orphanage school in Jerusalem.

Amal reinvents herself in America by abandoning her Palestinian past and embracing an unrooted hybrid identity.

Amal receives a phone call from Yousef after years of silence, learning he is married to Fatima and has a child.

Yousef, Majid, and Fatima persuade a reluctant Amal to return to America as an Israeli invasion of Lebanon approaches.

Amal sees a photograph in the Arab press and recognizes Fatima and baby Falasteen among the massacre dead.

Moshe confesses on his deathbed that he kidnapped Ismael, shattering David's understanding of his own identity.

David phones Amal and they arrange to meet, beginning a long-overdue reconciliation between lost siblings.

David admits to Amal that he beat Yousef at the checkpoint and breaks down with guilt and remorse.

Hiding with Sara during the attack on Jenin, Amal finally opens her heart and tells Sara the full family truth.

Yousef reveals in a letter that he did not carry out the Embassy bombing but allowed his name to be used.

Beneath the novel's headline events lie the decisive moments when characters confronted truths or made choices that changed everything. Hasan's determination to marry Dalia across cultural lines sets the family's whole emotional history in motion, while a small domestic accident leaves baby Ismael with a scar that will eventually unmask his hidden identity. The 1967 attack forces Amal to deny her own mother to survive, a rupture she carries for decades, and David's violent denial of Yousef at the hospital and checkpoint represents the deeper psychological wound at the story's heart. Amal's years of self-reinvention in America, her reluctant return to Lebanon for love, and her final nine days hiding in Jenin with Sara lead her to the greatest act of openness and sacrifice she has ever shown. The novel closes with Yousef's quiet revelation that he chose not to become a killer, preserving, despite everything, the love that conflict could not wrest from him.

The decisions, discoveries, and emotional turning points that defined each life.