Qalandiya

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Observer:Tamar Fleishman Translator: Charles K.
Jul-30-2014
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Afternoon

Qalandiya:
I came to Qalandiya to grasp Mahmoud’s hand.
We stood facing each other, silently.
Mahmoud showed me, on his phone, the picture of his nephew who was murdered the night of Al-Qadr.
A seventeen-year-old boy who “was working in a Ramallah restaurant, training to be acook.”

 

Qalandiya bleeds.

 

And there are new child peddlers.
Isma’il, age 4, and his five-year-old brother try to sell Koranic verses to the few people crossing.

 

Shu’afat:
I sat with Hussein, Muhammad Abu Khdeir’s father, beneath the grape vine in the courtyard of his home.

 

The sentence: “They murdered him alive” that I heard after the murder from every member of the family kept echoing, drilling into my brain - it brought me back to their door.

“They burned not only Muhammad. They also burned me” said his father, Hussein.