He gathered up his travel bag, then stopped in mid-stride and began to fish around in it, until he finally pulled out three wooden figurines—a lion, an elephant, and an ebony man in tribal dress beating a drum—and handed them to me. “Say thank you, Bar,” my mother said. “Thank you,” I muttered. My father and I both looked down at the carvings, lifeless in my hands. He touched my shoulder. “They are only small things,” he said softly.
