Monday, July 23, 2007

The Land of Sad Oranges


When we set out from Jaffa for Acre, there was nothing tragic about our departure. We were just like anybody who goes to spend the festival season every year in another city. Our time in Acre passed as usual, with nothing untoward..
.In the afternoon, when we had reached Sidon, we had become refugees.
.
Things dragged past extremely slowly after that. The communiqués deceived us, and then the truth in all its bitterness cheated us. Despondency found its way back to people’s faces. Your father began to find enormous difficulty in mentioning Palestine and talking of the happy past spent in his plantations and houses.:
:
The Zionists have long claimed the Jaffa orange as their own, a result of land reclamation ‘turning the desert green’. The facts tell a different story.
for the memory of
Ghassan Kanafani

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