Soundtrack for the apocalypse is silent. We felt the weight of that total absence of sound when we arrived in the devastated neighborhoods of Altadena and the Palisades after the January 2025 firestorm. There was no sound of cars or children or people or pool pumps or electricity across the lines. Even the birds were gone.
I went to the library and I looked everywhere and talked to the research librarians for books about families coming through cancer, and it just wasn't there. This is 1977. You didn't say the word cancer.
My father got sick with a metastasized melanoma in his brain when I was 23, and he was still the center of our family. My brothers and I just adored him. He was like our higher power.
We are never above a laugh. There's nothing that's grave enough for us not to laugh about because that's how we process our pain. It's like we laugh through death and sickness and sadness.
It's hard to tell people about grief. It's hard to talk to people about poverty... and so I'd got very used to the silence in my own life, and my writing is the only thing that allows me to connect with myself.
by revenging the death of our parents, we are not going to bring them back to life. That's it. They are dead. And by avenging their deaths, we're only going to escalate the cycle of bloodshed, of pain, of suffering that we, we Palestinians and Israelis, have been trapped within for a century.
The depth of our emotions and our commitment and our love for someone and how much they love us is directly correlated to the grief you're going to feel.
6mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
