Summary
Author of Chapter 3, “I couldn’t bid my apartment farewell”, of From the River to the Sea — a lament, first published in Arabic on the Palestine News Network website and translated by Meriam Mabrouk, for the Gaza apartment he built with his own hands and the adjacent apartments he built for his son and daughter, all destroyed by a single bomb (From the River to the Sea: Essays for a Free Palestine, lines 326-352).
Details
- “I apologize to my library, filled with the memories of many years, because the Apache pilot only gave me a few minutes’ warning to save myself before they sentenced my small apartment to death.” (line 337)
- “a single bomb from a murderous occupier stole this happiness in mere seconds” (line 339).
- His ceramic coffee cup accompanied the writing of four published books; his loss of appetite is traced to the absence of two favourite plates (lines 343-347).
- The destruction resurrects memories of “my first cradle, seized by the Israeli occupier” (line 347).
Related pages
From the River to the Sea: Essays for a Free Palestine, Gaza, Institute for Palestine Studies