This is a historical novel about Palestine. The characters are fictitious, but the dates, locations and historical events are real. The story begins in the Shatila Refugee Camp in Lebanon in 1982, the year of the massacre. The main character is a schoolboy, Farres, to whom his great-grandmother, Miriam, hands over a string of 'worry' beads to remind him of Palestine, just before she dies. The story then reverts to life in a village of Northern Palestine, not far from the city of Haifa, wh