“You told us not to give you a phone, even if you begged for one in the middle of the night”

“Bernadine, get dressed and join them!” they urged her. Grandma’s friend Scarlett grabbed Bernadine with two strong hands and started smearing her face with yellow paint

“What do we have to give the bride’s family?” she would ask. “Animals? Money? What price did you agree on with her father, Joe?”

“He said more than that: He said that G-d is everything that happens to us and everything that will happen. He is the blood that flows in our veins”

“It’s unethical for us to give him his eyesight back, but it’s ethical for him to insist on being blind and make the whole village take care of him? Are we going to stand by and l ...

Maybe he ought to get those boys back together and start giving darbouka lessons again. He had all their phone numbers… he would call them

“It’s just not worth it, Sara’le. To give in to a momentary urge to dress up, here in this world, and to lose worlds you can’t imagine, for all eternity….”

“He’s religious. He eats only kosher food. Wait, I’ll call Itzik and ask him what we can feed this doctor”

“Now that you have an open ear among the media,” their e-mails clamored, “why won’t you speak up for your own people? Justice for West New Guinea!”