The crime-scene technicians called out details about the body, its position and condition, its distance from the objects surrounding it. Their vowels were nasal and their tongues slapped distorted consonants into their front teeth, so that it was hard for Omar Yussef to understand them. Slumped in the corner of the couch, he wondered how he might explain to them why the dead boy had fled Bethlehem for Brooklyn. His hometown seemed distant and would surely be alien to these detectives. He feared they might misinterpret whatever he said for the worse, as those confronted by foreign situations usually do.

At the other end of the couch, Ala no longer appeared to be listening to the police. He stared at the scratches on the floorboards with his jaw clamped angrily. What is it that he knows? Omar Yussef thought. How can he be so sure this killing was the work of his roommate? He fought a resentful urge to lash out at someone for causing this disturbance to his visit. Despite himself, he blurted out, “Ala, what’ve you become involved in?” He instantly wanted to apologize, but Ala’s eyes were bitter and forbidding.

Omar Yussef tugged at his spectacles and sighed. “Do you remember,” he asked, “how Nizar used to tease Father Michel at the Freres School? How he used to imitate his accented Arabic?”

Ala touched his fingertips to his brow, covering his face and refusing to engage his father. But when Omar Yussef mimicked the shrug and pout of the Catholic priest who had taught the boy French as a teenager, his son giggled and joined in. “The Father used to say, ‘My boy, if I wished to offend you, I would call you a heretical Protestant, but instead I will stick to the facts and say you are merely a stupid child, eh?’ Nizar impersonated him perfectly.”