The Parable of the Night Heron

Sometime around 1916, my great-great grandfather converted to Islam. Five generations later, nobody in the family knew about it. It wasn't some diaphanous secret, whispered in the old language that none of the kids spoke, banished over the years to successive coffins. It was considered so trivial a thing that it was unworthy of secrecy; it wasn't discussed at all. Stories don't die if