Sumia Ibrahim

“Let me tell you about Palestine, the way it used to be,” my grandmother said in Arabic. “The thing I’ll remember most is my childhood in the city of Jaffa. Every day we would go to the beach and play in the sand. It was just one block from our home, the apartment building that my father owned. At night we would sit on the balcony and watch the big ships sail by, listening to them whistle.” Sumia Ibrahim writes from the US.

Last Wednesday’s state funeral in Ramallah for the revered Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, with its excessive military pomp, revealed how far the Palestinian people are from realizing the justice imagined in Darwish’s writing, and was a sad reminder of how the Palestinian Authority helps undermine his people’s struggle. EI contributor Sumia Ibrahim comments from Ramallah.

The young, dark-haired woman behind the glass stamped the American passport in front of her. “Welcome to Israel,” she said cheerily. The line in front of me receded quickly as passport after passport was stamped, and traveler after traveler admitted entry. I made my way to the desk and slid my passport under the glass. Sumia Ibrahim writes from Palestine.