Jamila, Juliet’s age, lives a simple, proper Arab life in a small village lost in the desert. She is always serious and focused, looking straight ahead with a furrowed brow. Jamila speaks little, attends a religious school, helps her mother around the house, and sincerely worships her father, Abdal, who is her role model in integrity and piety.
To help his family escape poverty, Abdal agrees to act as guardian for two kidnapped Israeli soldiers, Remiel and Moss, whom he holds chained in his barn. Jamila has never seen Jews and knows nothing about them. When her eyes meet Remiel’s through the barn window, she makes him a scary face and shows him her fists. Remiel imitates cow horns with his fingers and moos, then puffs out his cheeks and sticks out his ears, imitating a monkey. Jamila freezes in amazement, then, choking with laughter, lies on her bed for a long time, covering her head with a pillow, wheezing and shaking all over.
Jamila learns that Jews eat people and believes it. Of course, she believes this because her mother told her so. Jamila hates Jews, but not Remiel, for whom she has become imbued with something spiritual and honest. She understands that Remiel must be killed and, standing before her parents, renounces her Muslim identity. Jamila is ready to die for her beloved Jew, and even, literally, more than die. What could be “more than die?”