Book Lion

“I have always found it difficult not to be moved by Jerusalem, even when I hated it—and God knows I have hated it for the sheer human cost of it. But the sight of it, from afar or inside the labyrinth of its walls, softens me. Every inch of it holds the confidence of ancient civilizations, their deaths and their birthmarks pressed deep into the city's viscera and onto the rubble of its edges. The deified and the condemned have set their footprints in its sand. It has been conqured, razed and, rebuilt so many times that its stones seem to possess life, bestowed by the audit trail of prayer and blood. Yet somehow, it exhales humility. It sparks an inherent sense of familiary in me—that doubtless, irrefutable Palestinian certainty that I belong to this land. It possesses me, no matter who conquers it, because its soil is the keeper of my roots, of the bones of my ancestors. Because it knows the private lust that flamed the beds of all my foremothers. Because I am the natural seed of its passionate, tempestuous past. I am a daughter of the land, and Jerusalem reassures me of this inalienable right, far more than the yellowed property deeds, the Ottoman land registries, the iron keys to our stolen homes, or UN resolutions and decrees of superpowers could ever do.”
― Susan Abulhawa, Mornings in Jenin

“Just because you’re fighting evil doesn’t mean you’re good. And just because you’re doing evil doesn’t mean you’re bad. You end up with the conclusion that there is no ultimate right or wrong. It’s all shades of gray.”
― Wendy Pearlman, We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria

“The last paradox is that the tale of Palestine from the beginning until today is a simple story of colonialism and dispossession, yet the world treats it as a multifaceted and complex story—hard to understand and even harder to solve.”
― Noam Chomsky, On Palestine

“There’s nothing to protect us. No state, no government, no law, no human rights. Animals have more rights than we do.”
― Wendy Pearlman, We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria