“My son, there’s a body in your bedroom.”

Ala gripped Omar Yussef’s arms harder. “What? Dad, be serious. What’s happening?”

Omar Yussef gestured toward his son’s bedroom and lowered his head. The young man stepped into his room.

“May Allah have mercy upon him,” Ala mumbled. “It’s Nizar.”

“My son, I thought it might be you.” Omar Yussef shuddered as he came to the doorway.

“That shirt.” Ala’s voice, edged with tears, broke. “Those shoes, he was very proud of them. He called them his ‘Armani boots.’ They’re expensive. It’s Nizar.” He took Omar Yussef’s hand, still pink and warm from the scrubbing, squeezed it with tremulous fingers, then turned back to his dead friend with glassy eyes.

Omar Yussef let himself fall to the sofa and tried to find a way to sit that would hide the blood on his trousers. He covered his lap with a cushion. It was embroidered red on black with the geometric tribal pattern customary in Bethlehem. He ran his forefinger over the thick stitching and wondered if Maryam had made it for her son. He closed his eyes and tried to visualize his wife, but Nizar’s face came to him instead. My old pupil, he thought. My dear boy.

Ala came out of the bedroom. The tears and the trembling were gone. His face was stern. Omar Yussef thought he detected pity and hate in his son’s narrowed, hazel eyes.

“The son of a whore,” the boy said. “Rashid. He finally did it. He killed Nizar.”

“No, he was his best friend.”

Ala shoved the front door hard. While its slam still echoed, he shouted, “Things have changed since we were all together at the Freres School, Dad.”

“Even so, murder? What could’ve driven Rashid to something like that?”