Sayed Kashua
Sometimes I wonder if there is any hope left for an Israeli-Palestinian discourse that is built on equality and liberty rather than a fruitless discourse of master and servant.Collection: Equality
Thanksgiving is the only day of the year when most of the stores here are closed during the day and reopen after midnight. Even restaurants shut down for the holiday, except for the fast-food chains.Collection: Thanksgiving
Sometimes I wonder: What are the children thinking? And sometimes I wonder why the hell I'm not buying a tree like the other neighbors. After all, there is no mention in Christianity of Christmas trees, and even if there were - is there any good reason why I shouldn't be buying some red stockings?Collection: Christmas
Christmas is relentless. It's around the clock. I sit with my little ones in front of the TV screen, and we watch movie after movie after movie.Collection: Christmas
Israeli independence - what we Arabs call al-Naqba, 'The Catastrophe' - it created Palestinian identity more than anything else.Collection: Independence
I couldn't lie anymore to my kids telling them that they are equal citizens in the state of Israel. They cannot be equal because in order to fit in and to be accepted and to be a citizen in Israel, you need a Jewish mother. So basically what I'm trying to tell my kids is just, it's their mother's fault and it's not my fault.Collection: Mother
I hope that one day I will gain power somehow, and somehow convince myself that there is still hope and go back and fight, people who's trying to make that place worth living for both Jews and Palestinians.Collection: Fighting
Here I am, a Palestinian Arab who only knows how to write in Hebrew, stuck in central Illinois.Collection: Writing
I tell you a joke to have you listen to me, and then maybe I will tell you another joke that we can laugh together and feel equal. And then I will tell you a story hopefully that will make you cry. So I think that's the way that I approach the columns, as a surviving tool in a way.Collection: Thinking
I use a lot of humor, and I follow the saying that if you want to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh first, otherwise, they will shoot you. So I can tell you a joke and maybe you will laugh at the beginning. But it's not about telling jokes.Collection: People
I always see my wife as the clever one, as the wise one in the family.Collection: Wise
I very much hope that when my wife reads my writings so she reads it as if she is a character and not the real one. Sometimes she takes it too personally.Collection: Real
I used to give her [my wife] to read the column every week before I sent it to the editors. And sometimes she was so mad - are you crazy? You're not going to send that, or, you're not going to write that about me. So I would go, OK. You have five hours. Go ahead, write the column yourself.Collection: Crazy
Probably also due to the political situation getting just worse and more extreme, but also this distance and this sadness of this feeling that I gave up - that I surrendered, that I felt that I lost my small war. So the whole column is different than the columns that I used to write back home, back in Jerusalem.Collection: War
I knew very well that I could not stay. Everything collapsed. Everything in my life just collapsed, and it started with the kidnapping of three teenaged settlers and then judging the life - the young Palestinian from Jerusalem. That was the day that I decided that I have to go now.Collection: Judging
I'm not sure that I recovered, but I also know that I cannot afford going back yet. I see how much the kids are happier, I guess, here and I think that they might have a better future not hiding.Collection: Kids