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, where Miriam lives as a young girl. Alternate chapters unfold the life of Miriam in the early 1900s culminating with her exile into Lebanon in 1948. At the same time it unfolds the life of Farres, growing up in a refugee camp but with dreams of becoming a doctor and of one day seeing the land of his forefathers.
