Mornings in Jenin

Baba’s absence since the war had grown as big as the ocean and all its fishes. As big as the sky and earth and all their birds and trees. The hurt in my heart was as big as the universe and all its planets.

Now our waiting was for freedom. The original hopes to return home became pleas for elemental rights.

How was it that a man could not walk onto his own property, visit the grave of his wife, eat the fruits of forty generations of his ancestors’ toil, without mortal consequence?

Yehya had gone back to die where he was supposed to die, and when people spoke of Yehya’s passing, they said he had died from the malady of a broken heart.

Still, she was close enough to see that he wore contacts. She imagined the soldier leaning into a mirror to insert the lenses in his eyes before getting dressed to kill. Strange, she thought, the things you think about in the district between life and death.