Against the Loveless World

by Susan Abulhawa

Palestinians learned the first time in 1948 that leaving to save your life meant you would lose everything and could never go back.

But I know now that going from place to place is just something exiles have to do. Whatever the reason, the earth is never steady beneath our feet.

I find that reporters and writers who come here don’t actually want to listen to me or hear my thoughts, except where I might validate what they already believe.

She doesn’t consider herself Israeli. She’s Russian. Her family forced her to leave with them, and she desperately wants to return to her village. She’s not even Jewish. She said her father made it all up to get the state subsidies for Jews willing to emigrate to Israel.

Ayo semuanya pura² kaget

Bilal had been released under the Oslo agreement, but his freedom was conditioned on his never practicing his profession as a chemist in any capacity, not even teaching. He was forbidden to travel outside a specified radius without authorization from the local military authority, could not write or publish any political material, could not under any circumstances enter Jerusalem and, if he ever left the country, could not return.

We had to go through two checkpoints on the way to the shop. The first we crossed by car. Typically the wait was about half an hour, but it could be as little as ten minutes or as much as two hours, depending on the mood of the soldiers manning it. Then we would park the car in a lot by the second checkpoint, which could only be crossed on foot.

We could see them now, settler children throwing rocks. Behind them, their fathers pointed rifles at us while soldiers guarded their flanks.

“Only Arab-killers are Israeli heroes,”

Wtf?

To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.”