CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Driver Mahmoud spoke English well enough. Sami guessed that Mahmoud was his age, or maybe a bit younger, despite his white sideburns. He hopped around with jovial energy and took Sami to his once-upon-a-time white Toyota, explaining they should have left hours earlier to catch farmers harvesting olives on the way—a sight not to be missed. He laughed as if he had delivered a joke, its meaning lost to Sami. Mahmoud’s cheerfulness and excitement contrasted with Sami’s heavy spirits and solidified his realization that he really did not fit in here. He was a Palestinian born in exile, an outsider who didn’t have to worry about the colour of his license plates to figure out which city he could drive to.
Weeding through Mahmoud’s Arabized pronun-ciation of some words, Sami li
