Native Quotes

“He wants to be your friend,” I said to my son, who now plucked up the courage to look the new boy in the eye.
“What language are you speaking?” the boy asked with a smile.
My son looked at me as though requesting permission to embark on a new relationship, already forgetting his former teacher, and I nodded, permitting him to take matters into his own hands.
“Arabic,” my son told the boy, smiling.
“Ichsa,” the boy said in response, and went on staring at my son for a moment before returning to his mother’s arms.
I will never forget the look that passed across my son’s face. It was a look that gave me the chills and made my hands shake as I went on drying his wet body. It was a look that passed rapidly from smile to stunned gaze, affront, and finally accusation. A look that I heard telling me, “Why did you lie to me, why didn’t you do something, it’s all your fault.”
― Sayed Kashua, Native: Dispatches from an Israeli-Palestinian Life