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Rachel clasped her hands together and slowed her pace.

The soles of her sandals reported sharply on the cobblestones.

She pursed her lips, then clamped them together so tightly that I thought she was angry with me.

But she sighed and her face relaxed.

`` Trouble came into her life.

She had good friends here, people who liked her.

Who loved her.

But she had to go out and hurt herself.

There was a man here in town.

He helped her meet people so she could go out and do the work she wanted.

She worked very hard.

There was a refugee who was able to come here because of her.

He came with his son.

At first I thought they were relatives of your mother, but it was not so.

This refugee was a middle-aged man, a big, handsome man with a strut to his walk as I have never before seen.

He had the black numerals on his arm, so he had been branded in a concentration camp.

Yet he walked like a young man.

Often he was terribly despondent and talked to no one.

Then he would walk off for a few days alone in the direction of Europe.

All his family was dead, except for his son.

Your mother would always retrieve him when he wandered off, and she would send him home to his son.

He loved the son and was always glad to be sent back to him.

Then his son did something '' -- Rachel threw up her hands -- `` I don't know what, but something, to an official here -- it was during the Mandate -- and the son was imprisoned.

A few hours after the son was arrested, your mother was informed.

She ran from a little group of us.