From the novel: The images flashed before her eyes: images of her mother, her father, Salem, her uncle, the soldiers, the rifles, and the shards of shattered glass. She screamed silently as she held Maryam and closed her eyes, "Enough..." She meowed like a cat that has lost its kittens, her throat absorbing the meow, for there is no room for loud sounds or outrageous crying. If need be, she will curl up and show her thorns; she will not let the rubble mock her, and she will embody its silence, for it is so masterful and eloquent in the language of the wise.

The commotion in the village subsided that afternoon, and the battle ended in a massacre. Bodies piled up in the streets and inside houses with no one to bury them. The gangs attempted to burn them, but it was a failed attempt, and the smell of blood mingled with the stench of scorched bodies. On embers of pain, some departed to the village of Ein Karem, and the village's orphans were left homeless in the streets of Jerusalem, weeping for a father and a mother, some for their entire family. Indeed, from some families, not a single living person emerged. The sun of that day had risen on a bleak, gray morning over a village caught in the jaws of a pincer: on one side, the Stern and Irgun gangs supported by the larger Haganah, and on the other, the depletion of ammunition. A village violated at the edge of rifles betrayed by their own bullets...

• Category: Novels
• Author: Badi'a Al-Nuaimi
• Publisher: Dar Fadaat for Publishing and Distribution
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Number of Pages: 176