A year ago, we woke up into a nightmare. What I still find hard to believe, what re-astonishes me even today, is that we are still living that nightmare. There’s no end in sight to the violence and prejudice and fear and trauma. The people I love have been taken hostages by leaders who spout hatred and fear to justify unspeakable violence in a neverending pursuit of power and messianic dreams of a single entity from the river to the sea.
There are ten days between the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. They are called The Terrible Days because, during those days, Jews are supposed to reflect on and confront the harm they have caused others over the previous year. From what I can tell, most people in Israel cannot do that yet. They are still in survival mode, thanks to the fearmongering of the Israeli government and several rocket attacks from Iran and Lebanon. When you fear for your life, it’s tough to see that others are dying, too.
It’s difficult to acknowledge that you are causing or have caused harm. We justify it to ourselves in all kinds of ways. We tell ourselves that we acted in self-defence. And it’s true. Any version of violence comes from feeling powerless, from a place of deep insecurity and fear. From my experience, I know I cannot look at the harm I caused others without first feeling safe. Once I feel safe, my preferred way of soul-searching is writing.
During the second lockdown, I started writing a book about this incredible place, full of contradiction, controversy, and convoluted logic. It went through many cycles and drafts, but the premise of a house that belonged to a Palestinian family and then to a Jewish family was always the kernel of the story. In the first few rounds, it was about an inheritance argument, invoking Isaac and Ishmael. On October 6th last year, I was about two-thirds of the way into writing the story in its current (and final) version.
After October 7th, I had to stop writing. For a week, I could do nothing but watch as the place I grew up in was engulfed in fire. Then, it took another month and all the tools at my disposal from years–decades–of therapy and psychology training to return to writing. I came back to this book and poured all my grief, my pain, my hope, and my love into it.
Amanda Gorman wrote that change is made of choices. For me, making choices out of love instead of fear is how I change.
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