Extraordinary Tales of Ordinary NeedsbyBassem NasirThe Tale of Insuppressible MemoryThursday. 6:16 AM. He was sleeping. The radio alarm sounded with unfamiliar music. With the music came the familiar memories. He pressed the snooze button. The music stopped. Not the memories.He was haunted by his memories. At times, they would be so vivid, that he would actually suspect whether the particular experience had actually happened. No memory could be that clear he reckoned; he had to have made them up. There were no happy memories; at least he was not aware of them and probably did not have the right temperament to realize, digest, and reflect on any delightful memories had they existed. His friend, Maher, had been killed by an Israeli army sniper as a group of them, amateur football players, got caught up in the crossfire of a gun battle between the Israeli army and Palestinian resistance fighters while waiting outside the gym for the janitor who had the keys to come and open the gym doors. The janitor had been ten minutes late and now Maher was dead. He often wondered what had delayed him. Had the janitor been in the bathroom with constipation? Had he misplaced the keys somewhere and finally found them in the pocket of his trousers that were in the laundry and which his mother had not washed yet? Had he been talking on the mobile phone with his girlfriend? They did not have mobile phones those days; at least not cheap enough for people like the janitor to afford. It was all pointless speculation. Maher was still dead. To this day, although many more people have been killed since, in more absurd and tragic circumstances, the Israelis still claim that Maher was actually shot by the Palestinians although he vividly remembers which side the lonely minute killer bullet came from. Or was this also a manufactured memory? It cannot be. He remembers the fall and then the absolute lifelessness. From hero to zero; from man to man-esque. He had cried much that day, but not after, and eleven years later, memories of that moment, mostly void of emotion, still popped into his mind at the most random moments, most lately five days earlier when he called his mother- he had moved to a separate apartment as befitting of someone who, although single, was 36 years old- to ask her how to make white sauce for the chicken fettuccine he was cooking for a French girl he was trying to impress. He was not a chef by any means of the word or even the letters that made up that culinary term. Unfortunately, he had not known that the French girl, or woman as befitting of someone who was 34 year old, was an ardent vegetarian. He had ended up eating the runny fettuccine while she nibbled on some homemade pickles. That was the last time he heard from her. Sadly, he was not too bothered about not falling in love with her although the thought had fleetingly crossed him. At his age, and after considerable failed experiences with women and the corresponding everlasting memories that remained, he had developed a certain immunity that protected him from love.As seemingly traumatizing the death of Maher and to a much lesser degree the botched French affair were, no incident was as defining as what had happened when he was about six years old. It was the first time he had consciously conceived the idea of death. It was in the bathtub when he realized that one day he was going to lose both his mother and father. He could not remember the order of the loss in that traumatic memory, although he could safely, what a funny word to use in this instance, assume that he was going to lose his father first, considering that he had been a logical boy who knew that his father was older than his mother and had extrapolated the conclusion accordingly. The realization of death was not an epiphany that took time to develop but rather like Death itself, came unexpected and out of the blue. On the day death introduced himself to him, he remembered tears had flowed into the soapy basin as his mother had walked in to the bathroom to brush her teeth. It must have been early evening because he remembered the pre-dusk blue colored sky outside the small bathroom window. He remembered his mother, who before she had a chance to put the toothpaste on the brush, had been taken aback by his sobs and had rushed towards him to reassure him that it was going to be OK and that neither she nor his father were going anywhere soon. He had continued to repeat, I dont want you to die. His words had been mixed with tears as he looked at her with complete despair. Interestingly, and to her credit, she had not even tried to deny the fact that they, and ultimately him, were going to die. It was much later on when he had conceived of his own death. He did not remember when or if it was an actual moment or random series of moments that resulted in the realization. What he knew was that ever since he had conceived of his own death, there was no erasing the fear it brought: a fear that permanently haunted his existence at varying degrees depending on the elements, within and from outside, and mostly at night. 6:19 AM.The silence of the snooze button expired. Suddenly, from the alarm radio, a beautiful sonorous baritone of a voice, alas in Hebrew, courtesy of 96.3 FM from West Jerusalem -the security wall built to block Palestinians from going to Jerusalem could not block the radio waves from leaving it- filled the open space of the bedroom which was built along with the family house in 1929. His great aunt, she wasnt that great, who had occupied the room before him only four and a half years before and who probably was still there in some different unseen form as evident by the random squeaks heard at odd hours would have been mortified at the sound of Shalom coming out of the tiny speakers. Surprised by the strange language, he figured that someone must have accidently changed the settings on the radio because in this house the language of the occupier was definitely not welcome. He was always amused by the not so peaceful reaction to the word Shalom he and other Palestinians had. The only other time that Hebrew was heard in the house was in 1967 when he was not even born then. Through the stories of his father, mother, aunts, great aunts, grandmother, he had constructed his own memories, in fine details, of when the village was taken over by the occupiers. As much as it bothered him hearing the words coming out of the radio, he was too sleepy to change the dial. His mind started working and he started remembering. Death, his mother, Maher, death, and much more. As he tossed in bed trying to block the noise and the memories, a harmonious mix of beautiful and ugly words continued flowing out of the radio: Boker, tov, then music. The sound of an oboe eased its way gently over the last remnants of the fading announcers voice. For an instant he had hope that the music would bring him back to the wonderful dream he was having. It was not to be; and soon he realized that the notes that followed and that flowed out of the radio were not Saturday sounds but rather Thursday thuds. One more day to go before the weekend where he could sleep as much as he wanted. One day too far away. This was an ordinary Palestinian who needed time to go forward 24 hours. To sleep,and forget.

The Tale of Little ToeTo his three older brothers he was simply known as Little Toe. That was on account of the disfigured little toe he had on his left foot which resulted from a football accident he had when he was seven years old. Eight years later, the only remaining memory of that monumentous day was the name. A year earlier, and on a dare from his friends, he had almost gotten his nickname tattooed on his right forearm if it not had been for the tattoo parlor owner who had called one of Little Toes older brothers. His older brother had rushed to rescue his little brother, with kicks and screams, from a potentially embarrassing lifelong mistake. Without going into too much analysis, one can only imagine the annoyance, possibly mixed with anger, that he had felt when he was being called this name. It was particularly embarrassing when it happened in front of girls, and later women. What he had not known was that most of them had actually thought it charming that his older brothers would still treat him like a little boy. It was a sign of endearment and a man that came from a family with strong bonds was more likely to be a good family man himself, and intrinsically, most women looked at a man with such qualities as a potential father to their children. (disclaimer: any words written in this piece are solely the words of the 38 year old unmarried author yet do not necessarily reflect his opinions, desires, or fears pertaining to the issue of marriage). One of the reasons he was so embarrassed by the name was that he had made a highly unfavorable association between it and what it could suggest about the size of his baby-making apparatus. As time moved forward, which in itself is a redundant expression, Little Toe, with the confirmation of a few women, would come to realize that the association between his moniker and his size were unfounded. Tuesday, November 16, 1989 had been an atypical autumn day in Nablus. At 12:08PM, the sun was vertically pointing its rays through a cloudless aqua sky down onto the cobbled street right outside the entrance of the old part of the city. Amidst two Israeli Army military Jeeps, walked throngs of Palestinian men, women, and children mostly heading into the old suq. They were on their way to get their provisions during the three hour daily lifting of the curfew that was imposed on this ancient city during the first Intifada. Coming out of the old city at the same time were also men, women, and children, in that particular order as was typical in a paternal society, who were mostly heading to the only hospital on the outskirts of the city to get the medical attention they required: a broken arm, kidney dialysis, a broken heart, cancer, a broken toe. The scene had been such a regular occurrence; the Intifada had been 709 days old officially, the curfews about 432 days unofficially, that there was a sense of relaxed coexistence between the occupying soldiers, about ten, and the occupied, more than ten, more than ten times ten times ten times ten time ten. The atmosphere was so nonchalant that a couple of soldiers, one of them a stunningly gorgeous teenage woman, not girl; because girls did not carry uzis, about nineteen years old, stood outside the jeep smoking cigarettes and chatting casually over the fuzzy sounds emanating from the radio sets attached to their vomit green army fatigues. Almost every man that passed her stared at her outward beauty which was so contrary to the visible and invisible ugliness surrounding her. However, even the bravest of men did not dare approach her or her fellow soldiers. An unannounced buffer zone of approximately ten meters in diameter existed between the two adversary groups that ensured that the three hours when the curfew was lifted would pass by without any incident that would disrupt the harmony. Ironically, in a land where irony was not in short supply, once the curfew was imposed again, that buffer zone would disappear, and everyone, on both sides, was a target- the word legitimate to describe the targets is intentionally avoided in this account because legitimacy is subject to such a variety of personal, moral, and legal opinions that discussing them might stray us off from the focus of this tale and its hero, Little Toe.On that day, Little Toe was walking into the old city to buy the days supplies. He was the only one living in the house with his mother and thus was the one assigned with the task. His father had left his mother three years earlier after thirty three years of marriage because he fell in love with the daughter of his best friend, thirty three years his junior and interestingly thirty three years old. His oldest brother was living in Jordan, the next one was married and living in Ramallah, where a curfew, not so unsimilar to the one in Nablus, was imposed, and the third was in an Israeli prison, sentenced to six years in prison for belonging to the Palestinian Communist Party, which, at the time of his arrest, was as useless as its counterpart in the Soviet Union; and had since continued to grow in irrelevance. As Little Toe marched into the old city, he clenched in his fist a crumpled piece of paper with a list of things to get; one could not afford complacency with such a short time allowance. There were about twelve items on the list. For him the most important item was the hair gel for him. He was very conscious about the way he looked although his exposure to any females was limited to those three hours when the curfew was lifted. Later in life, and in true genetic fate akin to his father and three brothers, he would probably no longer need the hair gel because he would not have the hair to apply it to. On that day also, he needed to buy two heads of cauliflower because his mother wanted to make cauliflower maloobeh. He detested the dish ever since, four years ealier, he had found a dead cockroach in the maloobeh masquerading as bud of fried cauliflower. The third item on the shopping list worthy of mentioning was not to be bought, but in fact retrieved; Little Toe had to go to the house of old family friends, the Murads, and get back the set of twelve juice glasses that the Murads had borrowed from them the day before to use on the occasion of the engagement of their youngest daughter, Jida. The fact that Little Toe, for years, had a secret crush on Jida, who was eight years his senior and thus unapproachable, meant that the task at hand was going to be painfully heartbreaking since Jida herself was the one who was probably going to give him back the glasses. In his mind, however, as long as she was not married yet, there was hope that he would make her his wife.Funnily, yet predictably enough, he had bought the hair gel before going to the Murads and had even managed to apply a handful to his black curly hair rendering it slick and shiny akin to one of the movie stars in those black and white Egyptian movies his mother was so addicted to watching on Rotana Classics while secretly romanticizing about her husband coming back to dance with her as the actors did in the movies and to later on eat his favorite dish, cauliflower maloobeh. Deliberately, Little Toe had decided to get the cauliflower on the way back because no person, regardless of their charm, looked charming carrying cauliflower and he needed to look at his best in front of Jida. Moreover, by delaying the purchase of the cauliflower, there was a better chance that the greengrocer would have run out of cauliflower for that day, which would mean that he could get another day to convince his mother to make eggplant maloobeh instead. As he stood in front of the Murad household, calm apprehension rushed into his heart (appropriately, the central organ at the core of this tale). Immediately, and as if life could not be harder, he was faced with two choices: Either ring the doorbell which was attached to the wall right next to the door and which had a Israeli bullet hole on top of it ; or use the golden knocker, in the shape of a lions head, which was attached loosely to the brown door. He did not remember ever having to make that choice. Was the importance of the impending encounter causing his subconscious to transform into silly consciousness? Without going into the thought process, Little Toe knocked three times, the standard norm in knocking, and after about three seconds rang the door bell for what must lasted another three second, a lifetime in the standard norm of bell ringing. Yalla, Yalla, Im coming, wait a second, he heard Jidas voice approaching the door. As she opened the door and saw him, a worried look came upon her face, Is everything alright? she asked. His heart was still in awe of her rapturous beauty, I just wanted to come a get the juice glasses, he replied in the monotone voice of a boring accountant. Jida looked at him and smiled as she reached her hand towards the little boys hair and tried to unsuccessfully subdue a lock of hair that had resisted the gelling process and had gone frizzily rogue atop his head. Why do you put this junk on your hair? It will make it fall off, she chided him as she would a little brother and invited him in. I still need to wash the glasses, she apologized, Did you have lunch? she asked him. Not yet, he answered. Sit down; Ill bring you something to eat while I wash the glasses. I made the best cauliflower maloobeh. She walked towards the kitchen and he followed her docilely like a lamb being led to the slaughterhouse; and not unlike the lamb whose meat was used to make the cauliflower maloobeh, with the only difference being is that Little Toe was fully aware of the looming fate. As he approached the kitchen, the fetid smell slowly penetrated his nostrils, through his arteries and vein, and finally into his heart; the same heart that love Jida. He held his breath and started breathing through his mouth in short gasps. With dread, he observed Jida generously spooning the stinky concoction into a bowl, I put extra cauliflower for you, its from our garden, youre going to lick your fingers after eating it. As Jida turned her back to the sink and opened the tap and started washing the glasses, Little Toe sat calmly facing his culinary foe. I will do this for Jida, he thought to himself. With resolute stoicism, he held the spoon, dipped it into the dish, scooped a large spoonful and ingested the rice, lamb, and cauliflower mixture. With every bite that he swallowed, his love for Jida withered, and his dislike for cauliflower, his mother, and the occupation grew. This was an ordinary Palestinian teenager who needed love, Freedom,and eggplant maalobeh.

The Tale of Comic Intention

This account is written with the intent of being a joke. The fact that it starts in Hebron, a city whose people are the inspiration for all Palestinian jokes is purely coincidental and in no way is intended to further the stereotype of Hebronites being jokeworthy although theoretical and empirical evidence to support the stereotype is abundant.It had all started when Asa, a Swedish student who had come to Palestine for one year to study Arabic at the University of Hebron, was arrested in the old city of Hebron. She was demonstrating against the eviction of a Palestinian family from their ancestral home where generations of the family had lived for the past one hundred and forty three years. The evictors, a Jewish family, who had recently immigrated to Israel from Russia, and with the support of over twenty soldiers, had claimed that their ancestors had lived in the house over one hundred and forty four years ago and had been illegally evicted by the Arabs. The Israeli judge had tried to call witnesses to testify on the veracity of the account, but since, unfortunately, all the witnesses, their children, and grandchildren had been deceased, there was no choice but to believe the plausible account presented by his fellow citizens. In his written decision, the judge indicated, The Zaslavsky family, a pious and devoted Jewish family, has no reason to make up this account, which would result in the tragic eviction of twenty three Palestinians. The documents of ownership which date back to 1848 and that were written in ballpoint pen (authors note: ballpoint pens were invented circa 1945) show credible evidence that the house/or a similar house built nearby was populated by the Levy family whose patriarch Avi was married to Esther Freedman; nee Zaslavsky, in 1901 in Hebron. During the melee of the eviction, Asa had been arrested while in a shoving match with one of the Zaslavsky teenage girls and had been taken straight away to the police station in Kiryat Arba, the major Israeli settlement in Hebron whose name in Hebrew translated into the Village 4. The naming was a betrayal of the culture of innovation that Israel has prided itself with. It was akin to a man naming his cat cat, or his baby boy son. Nonetheless, there was practicality and expediency in the naming, which genuinely reflected Israels essence from its vision to the way it operated: occupy the land and populate it with Jews as fast as possible.Asa had been put in a room with white walls whose only decoration was a poster by the Israel Tourism Board promoting Hebron as a religious destination. Surprisingly, she had not been surprised by the existence of the poster but was more annoyed at the fact it was breaking the peace of the white walls. Her annoyance had been a bit more complex; as all annoyance is. A barrage of past and future possibilities slowly nibbled at her composure: I should have punched the bitch? What if my family finds out? Will they put me in jail? Why the hell is this poster there? Hebron is Palestinian and not Is Concurrently, and as Aba, the interrogator, walks into the room, The Author of this account receives a text message from an ex-girlfriend, who is not Swedish, who informs him that she needs to talk to him about something important. Most of men know there is no good news when ex-girlfriends suddenly reappear out of the blue needing to talk. Twelve minutes later and after a string of seven text messages with the ex-girlfriend, the only tangible piece of information that was clarified was her desire to meet up to discuss getting back together with him because she still was in love with him. He had no intention of getting back to her before. He did not love her the least bit. However, being the unassertive type, The Author agreed to meet her in one hour at the caf they used to frequent together. Annoyed anxiety overtook him as he returned his focus on the joke he was trying to write.As soon as Aba had seen Asa, he had smiled as only a man could in the face of such beauty. Predictably, the words coming out of his mouth next where nuanced with idiotic normalcy. Asa, he had said mispronouncing her name; Is this how you pronounce your name? She had not answered him back but had looked straight into his eyes, ironically with disgust, in the tradition of Scandinavian Ice Queens; a tradition whose most common attributes were: beauty, blue eyes, and cold silence. What happened next in the interrogation was so uninteresting and predictable that it is hardly worth writing about. He had accused her of helping terrorists and she had called him a terrorist himself: a sad and silly variation on the pot calling the kettle black. She had been vociferously nastier than he had been while he had continued trying to be nice to her, solely yet subconsciously on account of her beauty, while explaining to her that while he had understood why she had protested; her truth was all muddled up. In the end, the kettle remained black and the pot became blacker. The encounter had ended with her being released around midnight of that day after spending many hours alone in a holding cell and finally agreeing begrudgingly to sign a pledge not to be involved in such incidents any more. At this stage, one must wonder, where the joke in all this is. Sure, the similarity of the names of the two protagonists: Asa, and Aba makes for a bit of levity; especially for palindromists. Yet this levity hardly deviates the story from its traditionally non-comedic nature very much in line with most stories coming out of the region going back to the days of Ada mand Eve through to the numerous wars that had occurred regularly and up to the current Israeli occupation. However, and at the risk of revealing the punch line too early, we urge the readers to give us exactly 763 words to finish the joke (how fast these words will be read is not in our hands which explains our use of the atypical determinant of words rather than minutes). Another wave of anxiety creeps into the gut of The author as he thinks of the impending meeting with his ex-girlfriend. He really does not want to go to face her and the drama that was to ensue. He takes a heavy breath continues writing.Fifteen days after Asa had been jailed, and totally unencumbered by what had happened to her in Hebron, Asa had ventured out to West Jerusalem with Anna, her best friend whom she had met three weeks earlier. (When one was nineteen, the best friend title was not bestowed according to a rigorous process but more typically redefined every month or so). Anna was Danish. She completely unresembled Asa in body type, Anna was short and heavy, and looks, Annas face was rounder, and even hair type, Anna had curly hair. Nonetheless, everyone in Palestine though they were sisters, more likely because of the gleaming blonde hair they shared, but most likely because they were almost inseparable. Fortunately for Anna, she had been sick after eating some bad humus and had not been able to go to the demonstration in Hebron with Asa fifteen days earlier. Otherwise, she would have been arrested too. To the typical Westerner, the West Jerusalem nightlife was the closest thing one could get to home. There were nightclubs, bars, and restaurants with outdoor patios. Drunken people embarrassed themselves in public while amorous couples showed their affection openly. The only glaring difference one would notice between the night life of West Jerusalem and a city like Stockholm was the abundance of machine guns, of every shape and form that were carried out in public by both males and females. Asa and Anna had been shocked and disgusted the first time they had observed this revolting phenomenon; but after a few weeks of regularly visiting West Jerusalem, the guns had disappeared from their eyes but not their hearts. They loved the city but hated the people. Anna and Asa had walked into a nightclub called The Underground off Jaffa street and proceeded to the bar where in the span of two hours each of them downed an undetermined number of Maccabi amid the rowdy crowd, a mix of Westerners, Jews, and Western Jews. Unbeknownst to them, Aba, strangely unarmed, was among the crowd. The next events in this account are a blur to Anna, Asa, Aba, and even The Author himself. We suspect that copious alcohol consumption had a major impact on the ability to recall; but more importantly we believe the forgetfulness was a result of repressed memory or motivated forgetting. According to psychiatrists, repressed memories may sometimes be recovered years or decades after the event, most often spontaneously, triggered by a particular smell, taste, or other identifier related to the lost memory, or via suggestion during psychotherapy; none of which had happened at the time of writing this tale. Nevertheless, as much as the events that had occurred were potentially interesting, it was their culmination that was relevant. At 9:02 AM, Asa had woken up completely naked, completely alone, in a queen size bed. While still intoxicated, she had slowly gotten out of bed and explored the small studio apartment she was in. Her head was throbbing with pain and her throat was parched. She had gathered the four randomly strewn pieces of clothing from the floor: red panties, a white shirt, and a brown skirt, and blue flip-flops. She carelessly looked for her white bra but could not find it anywhere. She clumsily got dressed and observed her surroundings. There had been clearly no one in the very tidy studio apartment. Whoever had lived there must have been very neat and tidy; for everything in the studio apartment had been clean and in impeccable form, including a small bathroom with alternating navy blue and white tiles. As she looked around for a clue to explain the situation she was in, she found the damming evidence in a picture inside a silver picture frame positioned neatly on a coffee table near the bed. As if reacting to the absurdity of what had just happened and what would happen next, there was a picture of Aba, in full army uniform, laughing at some unknown event. Numbly, Asa had stared back at the picture, headed straight to the door, opened it, closed it, descended the nine steps, walked down the street, and took the first taxi she saw and headed to Ramallah. Her actions had been deliberate yet instinctive. This was the last time she would enter Jerusalem. The umbilical cord was finally cut from the city she lovedor so she had thought.Any successful comedian would tell you that there is a point in a joke, when the punch line has to be revealed. Going beyond that point usually has the risk of transferring the potential good laughs that would result from the joke to bad laughs of ridicule directed towards the comedian. The author realizes that this virtual point had probably arrived in this account without the major punch line being revealed. He takes full responsibility for this impasse yet relinquishes his culpability in this matter: the simple reason being that, in reality, the ultimate punch line had not yet occurred in reality and thus would be hard to convey truthfully. Of course, and since there is little the readers can do to verify the actual accounts told herein, it might have been appropriate for The Author, the wannabe comedian, to have used some artistic liberty and imagination to reveal the final punch line and be done with the story once and for all. However, in his gut, The Author had a strong feeling that no amount of creativity would be able to trump the funniness, or absurdity, of what was actually going to happen considering that Asa ended up getting pregnant as a result of the one night stand with Aba; and that the resulting child, a boy named Jacob, who at age eighteen, always thinking that his father was a Swedish man named Jonas Johansson, had decided to go traveling around the world, with Israel being one of the countries to visit, where a certain Major Aba Ableman, was responsible for the security at Ben Gurion Airport. The author has thus decided to stop writing and let nature runs its course and hope that he might be fortunate enough to learn whether Jacob and Aba had met..or if Jacob ended getting an Israeli soldier pregnant In the meantime, he wishes to truly apologize to you, the reader, for wasting your time and for not being funny. With this sense of disappointment, he puts down his pen and heads to the caf to meet his ex-girlfriendThis was an ordinary Palestinian writer who needed to write a joke, Be freed from his ex-girlfriend, and forgiven by his readers.The Tale of PossibilitiesThree men are seated on white foldable plastic chairs set around a foldable plastic white square table in a square room with white walls. There is a fourth chair on the Western side that is unoccupied. Their names, the men not the chairs, in descending order of age are Him, Little Toe, and Jacob. The three men do not know one another and even more importantly, do not know how it came to be that they were in that room together. Before they had time to discuss their situation, a white door, camouflaged in the North West corner of the room opens up, and in walks The Author, carrying three books of different sizes, and proceeds to sit at the fourth chair. The Author, a tall and lanky man, is wearing a white tuxedo, a red bowtie, and black and white two-toned shiny shoes. Genetically, he was a mix between his mother and father. Emotionally, he was a mix between the characters he had created and the characters he had known. There was an aura of serene agitation around this man; probably the result of the painful realization that there was little he could control in life. Even the words he had written and will write were out of his control. For one thing, neither had he created any of the words himself, nor had he summoned them deliberately into being written. The only thing he did control was whether to make accessible, as in this case, the letters and words that described his thoughts and feelings to the senses of his readers, few as they might have been.It pained him more knowing that putting his words on paper was no big accomplishment for he was convinced that only a few books were more influential on the reader than on The Author: case in point, The Bible, The Quran, The Origin of Species, or War and Peace. However, such literary works have been too far and few in between and The Authors writings were definitely not of the ilk that left a resounding and lasting impact on the reader. Sure, his use of imagery was interesting, unique at times, and at times the impact of his words on the reader could last for a few days. Unfortunately, the power of his writings failed the test of longevity as shown by the poor sales of his writings beyond the first week of their publishing. He was fully aware of the fact but fortunately, and as any patient with a chronic disease would attest to, he coped, sometimes very happily, with the reality of his limitations and did not let that knowledge deter him from writing. Not until now.The Author sat down. Little Toe and Jacob looked at one another hoping the other might provide a visual clue pertaining to the nature of the gathering they were in. The third character, Him, feeling scared of the strange surroundings, was busy fiddling with his Blackberry phone trying to get a signal to phone anyone for help. Strangely, none of them said anything. The Author spoke. I am so sorry to have brought you here so suddenly. The tone of his voice was steadier than one could imagine from someone with his average physical features. I know youre all wondering why youre here and so as not to waste your time and because I know youre all busy men, I thought I would make it easier. Please read.With growing composed confidence, he grabbed each of the books he had with him and slid each of them smoothly to the three men. The ease with which the books slid down the table was a sight to behold and was the perfect beginning, in his mind, to quite a difficult endeavor ahead of him.The three men took the books and opened them and in a split second were engrossed in the words they were reading. Five minutes later, The Author continued, I think you have ample reason now to listen to me. Yes, these are the accounts of your lives so far. I had them with me because I wrote them. I created them. I created you.He looked each of the three men in the eyes and continued compassionately. I am your God. Please understand; I do not say this to exude my power over you or to ask you to worship me. In fact, it is the opposite. If you turn to the final pages of each of your books, you will notice that they are blank pages, and therein lies my predicament. As your God, I am naturally tasked with determining how your life will progress and end. I dont wish to do that anymore.Jacob got up from his seat and jumped towards The Author and grabbed him by his bow tie, Who are you and where did you get all this information about us? This is not true.The Author remained calm and steady in the grip of the powerful young man. Im sorry. This is the truth The Author asserted himself. Jacob let go and returned to his seat. The Author composed himself and continued, The only common thing between us besides the fact that we are all men is that in one way or another we are all connected to Palestine, even you Jacob, as you probably would have read. As a Palestinian writer I was not gifted or imaginative enough to be able to separate any of my characters from Palestine. Of course, one could view this as being focused and true to the things one knows. I used to view it this way but of late I have started to view it as a curse. It has limited me and left me sleepless on so many nights. For the past odd forty years, I have been struggling with the same themes: identity, displacement, freedom, and oppression. I have exhaustively explored every single angle on each theme, you are the latest example of this, and yet I am no closer to comfort brought on by this exploration.In a display of animated desperation, The Author got up from his seat, and in the style of semi-trained actor, paced around the room, Neither you nor I can stop being Palestinian or being connected to Palestine; but thats were our limitations stop I hope. Yesterday, and as a result of being unable to finish your story Jacob, I have decided to stop being a writer. This is why I have brought you in here in a hurry. My writing will end as of the moment our encounter ends.With resolute determination he continued, This decision, however, is not totally under my control because as much as I have to realize my own wants and needs, I cannot abandon you, my characters, my children, without your consent and blessing. I have tried to contact all the characters that I had previously conceived to bring them here. Unfortunately, the ones that I hadnt killed with my own hands, time and irrelevance has killed on the dusty shelves of old bookshops or in unpacked boxes in abandoned warehouses. This is why you are the only ones here and the only ones who now control my fate. You are my Gods as much as I am yours. Our fates our intertwined. My freedom is your freedom. I ask you to set me free and give yourselves the freedom to finish those blank pages on your own. In fact, please feel free to tear the pages or even burn them. What do you say?After the final plea, he went around the table, patted the left shoulder of each of the men with his right hand, sat down on his chair, and looked each of them in the eye with the outward confidence that he had gotten through to them but with inward apprehension that the refusal of any of them would mean that he would be eternally shackled to his past. The first person who started to talk was Him. His answer was brief and to the point. Thank you for creating me and giving me a relatively decent life so far. The only thing I wish you hadnt done is for you to endow me with a powerful memory. I still cannot get over the pain of everything. I will let you go in the hope I can forget.With that, he held his book and tore out all the pages that were written, leaving only the blank pages in his hand. Befitting of a work of fiction, Him disappeared into the book he was holding. Slowly, words began to appear on the empty pages.Next came Little Toes turn. You allowed Jida to break my heart and as funny as you had thought it might have been, I did not appreciate the cauliflower maaloubeh twist. Still, you gave me a loving family and a safe home. I will let you go and hope that I can leave this forsaken place. Good luck to you. I will keep the book as a reminder of who I was. Can you please sign it for me? He handed the book to The Author who, rather than inscribing the inside cover, bid Little Toe farewell with a thoughtful inscription in the last empty page. These were to be his last written words ever. He handed the book back to Little Toe who read the words. He was so moved by the words he read that tears started pouring from his eyes. With every tear that fell, Little Toe became more transparent until he and the book finally disappeared from sight leaving The Author and Jacob alone. Unfazed by what he had just witnessed, Jacob finally got up from his seat and headed over to The Author. I dont believe any of this nonsense. But lets imagine if I did. I really would like to understand why you have created me in such an obscene fashion? The bastard child of a drunken mother and a despicable father. Why do I deserve this? What did I ever do to deserve this? What kind of deranged man are you? I hope you rot in hell. The Author had no words to explain and instead looked down to the ground apologetically. Leaving the book on the table, Jacob walked towards the end of the room and through the walls leaving The Author alone in the room. The new found emptiness brought instant joy to his soul. Instantly, he started exploring the possibilitiesThey all did..That is all they needed.