One day in April 1948 we were assembled in front of our boarding school, an old Ottoman building in Beersheba. We were twenty or thirty boys, aged ten to sixteen, sons of Beersheba sheikhs. ‘We have a grave situation,’ the headmaster announced. ‘The Jews are killing Palestinians in Jaffa and Jerusalem. There is a big massacre at Deir Yassin. I cannot protect you here. Go home.’ My home, al-Ma’in, was forty kilometres away. Transport was irregular and unsafe. The Haganah ran patrols with machine guns mounted on jeeps, shooting at will. The British were unable or unwilling to help. Sometimes they were among the culprits. Two cousins of mine, in their early twenties, were schoolteachers in nearby villages. They came to Beersheba to find means of transport to al-Ma’in and I met up with them. An acquaintance with a pickup agreed to give us a lift. The journey had to be aborted several times because of Jewish roadblocks. The British offered no protection. In the last attempt he was afraid to continue.…