An instant can crush a brain and change the course of life, the course of history.

For if life had taught her anything, it was that healing and peace can begin only with acknowledgment of wrongs committed.

love is what we are about, my darling," she says. "Not even in death has our love faded, for I live in your veins.

Israeli occupation exposes us very young to the extremes of our emotions, until we cannot feel except in the extreme.

A persistent breeze lifted the thin curtains, fluttering a few moments of tranquility into the turbulent day.

the reverse side of love is unbearable loss.

Toughness found fertile soil in the hearts of Palestinians, and the grains of resistance embedded themselves in their skin. Endurance evolved as a hallmark of refugee society. But the price they paid was the subduing of tender vulnerability. They learned to celebrate martyrdom. Only martyrdom offered freedom. Only in death were they at last invulnerable to Israel. Martyrdom became the ultimate defiance of Israeli occupation.