A sparrow alone

Mala walked to the far edge of Bethphage -- the end of the village that lay farthest from Jerusalem. As she had done a number of times through the years, she left the basket and its contents for the Nameless One. He was Bethphage's only beggar, a dark, large but physically twisted man. He darted from inside, convulsively seized upon the basket, and dragged it into his low hovel. Saddened by the death of her parents at the hands of soldiers in Roman-occupied Jerusalem, Mala, a seventeen-year-old Jewish seamstress, finds no comfort from her older brother Abdon, who is consumed with anger, until they each meet Jesus of Nazareth. - Publisher.