Name: Wild Thorns
ISBN: 9781566563369

Sahar Khalifeh

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Wild Thorns

Macy HB

Mount sinai, that ‘peaceful land’ that had never known peace. No; perhaps it had, once. A land of milk and honey, the ‘promised land.

Yes, and poetry dies, along with passion. Everything becomes a link in the chain of the 'cause' itself. But... ‘Sad northern nights ...’ The words still sliced into him, into his sensitive, lonely soul.

They suck our blood and make our lives hell so we'll emigrate. ‘To think I waited two long years to rejoin my family,’ said Usama, ‘looking forward to this day as though it were my wedding night.’ But life inside the occupied territories is unbearable.’ ‘And I looked forward to it so much!’

As he got into the taxi, he glanced around him at the landscape. Yes, heaven was here beneath his feet and before his eyes. But he was now a prisoner in the genie's bottle.

Skilled hands had removed all the natural ground cover of spring to prevent anything undesirable from slipping across the border, to keep out anyone bent on challenging state security.

The land itself, the occupation, was a crime we ourselves perpetrated, he thought, and the people's strength is only a myth. We swallowed the rhetoric and believed it was a cause, a revolution. But one hand can't clap on its own, as they say, and I'm alone. I'm alone.

But occupation is still occupation. Dignity excised was still lost.

There's more than one dimension to the picture.' They walked on together, each contemplating his own dimension, and his own sorrows.

Those with seats promptly rested their heads on each other's shoulders and fell into a fitful sleep.

Blood gushed from four of his fingers, the red flow sinking into the sandy soil from which the roots of orange trees had recently been torn out.

'God will provide, Um Sabir,' Adil repeated, ashamed that he could think of nothing more to say.

The occupation! The word had so many meanings. Exile: a reality we experience in the heart of the motherland itself. Torture: a topic defined to perfection by the pimps of politics at the United Nations. Sink in the mud, Palestine, kiss the world goodbye!

"You can have my life, Usama, if you can only convince me that freedom means that people who can't defend themselves go hungry. And that there's happiness in hunger. Come on, convince me!'

Glories! Do you measure man only by his deeds of glory? What about his weaknesses ? The harshness of his life? The rotten system, the mutual hatred? I've forgotten the hatred, because I've enjoyed the blessings of legend. 

Just talk, my son? But where will it lead? What good will it do? We've been trading in words for twenty-five years. And that's a business guaranteed to fail one hundred per cent. Better be in the smoked fish trade than in the word racket.'

Since money, they said to each other, was the only language the West understood, they'd address the West in terms of cash and capital.

'Content?' Adil burst out. 'Contentment! That's a commodity nobody can buy on the West Bank any more, or in Gaza.

'The proof that I haven't forgotten my country is that I haven't left it.' Usama felt the knife twist in his heart.

'Hunger will make revolution explode. Usama stopped. "Why are you smiling? It's a well-known theory. Don't you understand?

Have you ever heard of a people that welcomes disaster with cries of joy?' 'Yes, I have. I swear I have.

Saḥar Khalīfah

A young Palestinian named Usama returns from working in the Gulf to support the resistance movement. His mission is to blow up buses transporting Palestinian workers into Israel. under military rule, Usama exchanges harsh words with friends and family. Despite uncertainty he sets out to accomplish his mission ... with disastrous consequences. offer a glimpse of social and personal relations under Israeli occupation. Featuring unsentimental portrayals of everyday life, its deep sincerity, uncompromising honesty and rich emotional core plead elegantly for the cause of survival in the face of oppression.

Wild Thorns

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