Adania Shibli

It’s the barrier of fear, fashioned from fear of the barrier.

It’s been a long time since I’ve passed through here, and wherever I look, all the changes constantly reassert the absence of anything Palestinian

The existence of life here had already become a paradoxical joke.”

Bombing sounds very different depending on how close one is to the place being bombed, or how far.

All I can do without risking calamitous consequences is work at the office, or sit in my house at my table in front of the big window

Furthermore, one cannot rule out the possibility of a connection between the two events, or the existence of a hidden link, as one sometimes finds with plants, for instance, like when a clutch of grass is pulled out by the roots, and you think you’ve got rid of it entirely, only for grass of the exact same species to grow back in the same spot a quarter of a century later.

The absence of dust brings an awareness of how profoundly far I am from anything familiar

The borders imposed between things here are many. One must pay attention to them, and navigate them, which ultimately protects everyone from perilous consequences. This grants a person a sense of serenity, despite everything else. There are some people who navigate borders masterfully, who never trespass, but these people are few and I’m not one of them. As soon
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as I see a border, I either race towards it and leap over, or cross it stealthily, with a step. Neither of these two behaviours is conscious, or rooted in a premeditated desire to resist borders; it’s more like sheer stupidity. To be quite honest, once I cross a border, I fall into a deep pit of anxiety. It’s a matter, simply put, of clumsiness. Once I realized that I inevitably fail whenever I try to navigate borders, I decided to stay within the confines of my house as much as possible. And since this house has many windows, through which the neighbours and their children can easily

especially those who had recently joined the platoon, took good care of their uniforms and gear;