Part One: Returning: Chapters 1-2: What Silence Knows, Little Olive Summary and Analysis

In July 2006, Anthony Shadid is covering the latest attack by the Israelis against Hezbollah (an extremist and belligerent group of Shiite Muslims) in Lebanon, the country of his ancestry. The unexpected Israeli attack has left survivors picking up rubble and corpses. He travels from Qana to his ancestral town of Marjayoun, following the Israeli path of destruction, unable to drive in directly because the Israelis have destroyed the roads and still occupy the Marjayoun.

Shadid finally makes it on foot to his great-grandfather, Isber Samara's house, built in the 1910's but long abandoned. Shadid's family uprooted itself to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma to escape the instability created by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. On a previous...