Jerusalem, a city surrounded by thick forests and rolling hills, where the air was fresh and cool, where… — Ayelet Tsabari

Whatever resolve and certainty he had felt in the past few weeks had melted away. Strangely, there was some lightness in the unknowing, like a clenched fist had been unfurled. (chapter 34)

On bad days, I looked at the paleness of the sky, and all I could see was how deeply fucked up everything was, how much the pain radiated from the earth, fury bubbling up like hot lava underneath the surface.

Other days, mostly at the beach, I would breathe in the saturated air and be filled with gratitude. Despite everything, this was the only home I knew. Flawed, imperfect, but home. And though my sense of belonging was fractured, still I belonged here more than anywhere else. Maybe that's why I held on to this dream of peace so desperately. I needed to believe we were heading somewhere better. If peace came, maybe we would finally be able to let out the breath we'd been holding for forty-seven years, and exhale. (chapter 19)

Years later, when they are old, sitting on a porch somewhere overlooking the sea, someone would ask them how it all started, and he'd say, as soon as he saw her on the other side of the drinking fountain at the immigrant camp, he knew. (first lines of book)