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?
Susan Abulhawa
How fate is stubborn and holds to habit.
fate
You and I are the remains of an unfulfilled legacy, heirs to a kingdom of stolen identities and ragged confusion.
identity confusion
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.
mind heart
I feel sad for him. Sad for the boy bound to the killer. I am sad for the youth betrayed by their leaders for symbols and flags and war and power.
youth war
I grieved three thousand times. Then I grieved for myself, a lonely woman without the honor given to the wives of the fallen. The reverence for their loss, for their children's loss. It was eloquent and grand. So moving and charged with solidarity.. On September eleventh, I faced the last moments of your father's life. I saw him in every person who tried to jump and every body they pulled from the rubble. And I saw myself as I was never allowed to be, consoled, understood, and loved.
america americans september-11-attacks palestinians
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.
emotions americans palestinians
Israeli occupation exposes us very young to the extremes of our emotions, until we cannot feel except in the extreme.
emotions israel israeli-palestinian-conflict
For I'll keep my humanity, though I did not keep my promises... And Love shall not be wrested from my veins.
humanity humanity-and-society
The reverse side of love is unbearable loss.
loss
Death, in its certainty, is exacting its due respect and repose before it takes my hand.
death respect
Would words shatter the immensity of life and death so close to one another?
life death life-and-death
death mother palestine palestinians
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