Summary

Chapter 1 opens with an account of a man named Haj Hassan Hammad, a friend of Haj Taher Kamal who lived in Nablus on the property of the ruined castle of a legendary Crusader queen. On his way to Constantinople to help a friend persecuted in the Armenian genocide in the last years of the Ottoman Empire, he discovers this friend has died and he himself was now a wanted man. He went to the home of a Haj Taheer’s cousin Abu al-Kheir in Damascus, where he took refuge, married one of Abu al-Kheir’s daughters, and created a new identity. Over the years, he travelled south to visit his family in Nablus covertly, marrying other women along the way in exchange for shelter. When Nablus fell to the British and the Ottomans retreated, he was finally able to return...