Kashua Sayed 1975- - Native: dispatches from an Israeli-Palestinian life

Its been about a year since I left Jerusalem and came to Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, with my wife and three children. We celebrated the anniversary by preparing homemade hummus and frying falafel. By now we know where to buy the right products for making food that approximates the taste of home. My younger son, who arrived here at the age of three without knowing a word of English, asked for another portion of falafel. I sliced a pita in half, stuffed it with a few falafel balls, added a slice of tomato and cucumber, and dampened the contents with some tahini sauce. Wow, Daddy, he said after biting into the pita avidly, and added, in English, with a midwestern accent, This taco is really good. And I knew I had an idea for my weekly column.

When I started to write a weekly column in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, more than ten years ago, I was still living in Beit Safafa, a Palestinian neighborhood of Jerusalem, with my wife and my firstborn daughter. Since then, I have become the father of two more children; I moved from the eastern to the western part of the city; governments have come and gone; wars have broken out, died down, and erupted anew; and I churned out a column every week.

Writing a weekly column can be a real nightmare. Some days I found myself wandering the streets of Jerusalem and mulling aloud, What will I write about this week? If I was apprehensive that I had nothing to write about, or felt that the last column Id written was not very good, I sank into depression. When I knew Id written a good piece I was delighted, even if it was about missiles being fired into the country.

Writing the column became a way of life for me. As soon as I sent one column to my editor at the newspaper, I started to think about the next one. I didnt look for a thought or an idea; I looked for a feeling. The method I adopted was to write about what had moved me most that week. I honed my senses and pursued emotionsfear, pain, hope, desire, anger, happiness. My promise to myself was that I would convey those feelings to the reader by means of personal stories. I tried to be honest and to tell the truth as I perceived it, even though what I wrote was sometimes complete fiction.

During the past decade Ive written about almost everyone I know. I have very few friends left: people started to keep their distance from me or went silent in my company, for fear that what they said would end up in the paper. I made my wifes life a misery, and the lives of others in my family, by exploiting them shamelessly if I thought it would help me write a better column.

Mostly, though, I think I tried to survive the reality around me through words, to create order out of the swirling chaos and find an inner logic in what I saw and experienced. The column gave me space to apologize, cry out, be afraid, implore, hate, and lovebut above all to look for hope and make my life a little more bearable. Thats why I went on writing it: in the hope that in the end all would be well and that all one has to do is write ones life as a storyand find a happy ending.

Sayed Kashua
June 2015