BaalbekO
n the trip in the overcrowded bus headed south, Zana struck up a muted conversation with a woman who lived in Baalbek. Her husband was a grocer, and she’d been sent north to pick up and pay for a load of olives that were now jouncing around with the other freight on top of the bus. The grocer’s wife was sympathetic to the plight of refugees, claiming to have been one herself when she was forced to escape the fighting in Beirut many years ago. She was also not above earning a little independent cash and keeping her stingy husband in the dark about it. By the time the bus hit the outskirts of Baalbek, they’d struck a deal. If questioned—and the grocer’s wife was fairly certain they wouldn’t be—Zana would be introduced as a distant cousin, a widow forced by overcrowding to leave El
