Do you know, Mother, that Haj Salem was buried alive in his home? Does he tell you stories in heaven now? I wish I had had a chance to meet him. To see his toothless grin and touch his leathery skin. To beg him, as you did in your youth, for a story from our Palestine. He was over one hundred years old, Mother. To have lived so long, only to be crushed to death by a bulldozer. Is this what it means to be Palestinian?

I know she is crying. Her tears fall on the wrong side, into the bottomless well inside her.

Love cannot reconcile with deception

Do you know, Mother, that Haj Salem was buried alive in his home? Does he tell you stories in heaven now? I wish I had had a chance to meet him. To see his toothless grin and touch his leathery skin. To beg him, as you did in your youth, for a story from our Palestine. He was over one hundred years old, Mother. To have lived so long, only to be crushed to death by a bulldozer. Is this what it means to be Palestinian?

Would words shatter the immensity of life and death so close to one another?

We're all born with the greatest treasures we'll ever have in life. One of those treasures is your mind, another is your heart.

Nima Shirazi is a rare voice of rational analysis and political insight that provides an eloquent counter to the pervasive absurdities that make up popular political discourse.