For years after my brother left, he’d sent me picture postcards featuring some novel aspect of desert life: a camel, an irrigation line, a date palm. Since we were boys, Szimon—now Shimon—had felt more attuned to his Judaism, or perhaps, more put out by it, which was almost the same feeling. He was three years younger than I was, and smaller and darker. He had never done particularly well in school nor fostered many outside interests, although he was a keen football player and could drink more beer in one sitting than anyone I’d ever met.
