They do not like that you wondered
The wee hours of the morning. Another morning, another sunrise, where my father would find me crouched on the balcony, shivering in a mix of terror and curiosity. I was 10 and 11 and 12. Dealing with regular early teenage matters like two new chestnuts on my chest, and a school unrequited crush. And what I thought was also a regular teenage matter: deciphering the sound of the Israeli jets.
The sound of the Israeli jets, made the rest of the worries, take a seat back. I would track their altitude, their direction, their numbers, by the intensity of the sound. Where they would bomb next remained the mystery to be resolved. On those nights and early mornings, going to sleep was useless, for the jets would come in my dreams too. My mother, on the other hand, seemed to sleep through them.
My father would light up a Marlboro cigarette in one hand with a Turkish coffee in the other hand, and turn up the akhbar (the news). The akhbar are a staple in our part of the world. Always in the background, on at all times like the white noise machine in my white therapist’s office. I like to claim that us Arabs invented the 24 hour news cycle.
The sound of the Israeili jets haven’t left me. They still intercept my days. Sometimes disguised as fleet week in San Francisco, others as mere SFPD helicopters roaming the skies looking for a thief, they…
