umkahlil

For twenty-five years I've been coming home, only one time for Christmas, twenty-five times during the summer, one time in the fall, and one time in spring. For twenty-five summers my Godmother and I have been drinking martinis at four every afternoon (sorry for the mundane details, but internet time is limited for the next few weeks). How many books have been written about homecoming? How many issues unresolved from childhood are reconciled by a homecoming years later? It is easy for people to tell the Palestinians that they should get on with their lives.

Yesterday morning I picked apricots and took them to my godmother and her brother. Today they brought me some preserves that they'd made with the apricots. I made a couple pies today with the overripe apricots in the refrigerator. For breakfast this morning I picked about ten. I always eat at least one or two when I pick them just to ascertain that they are perfect. Whenever I eat fruit from my late father's trees, I think about him and how he planted those trees forty-three years ago.

The right to return home is an inalienable right that no government may legislate away. The right to return home is intrinsically bound with our very being. Each reader needs to return home, wherever it is, and then imagine what it would be like to be denied the right to go home.