Lost in the fire.

Can’t sleep.
Sometimes I feel as if Suhayeb doesn’t let me sleep. My thoughts keep coming back to the memory of his village, and by extension, his village’s memories of him. I’m brought back to the Olive Harvest Festival, where I first noticed the posters hung everywhere; muted-red banners plastered over the concrete, reminding me that [...]

“Martyrdom.”

It’s lunchtime in the quiet village of Asira al-Qibliya. I’m eating with some friends, both foreign and local, in the house of Muhannad and Linda, who hosted us on our last stay in the village for the olive harvest. In the middle of our meal, their son, three year-old Khalil, runs up to [...]

A response to “Anonymous.”

A reader recently commented on my last post with the following statement:
“Go to Israel, go to 2 malls in one week and get evacuated from both due to bomb scares. Israel isn’t aimlessly shooting Palestine from hillsides. You make it sound like Israel is terrorizing the Middle East, ignoring peace treaties, hell bent on killing [...]

“That’s where it happened.”

(Standing on the roof of a construction site at dusk, in the village of Asira, where nearby we had helped with the olive harvest earlier in the day.)
“Look, over there, you see those trees?”
I scanned the side of the hill and noticed a small gathering of tall trees in the distance.
“Yes, I see them.”
“That’s where [...]