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

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

Amal,I believe that most Americans do not love as we do. It is not for any inherent deficiency or superiority in them. They live in the safe, shallow, parts that rarely push human emotions into the depths where we dwell.

the reverse side of love is unbearable loss.

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?

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