Palestine Remembered: A Story of Land, Loss, and Identity

Palestine tastes like figs. The sweetness fills the palate, a warmth that seems to travel through the body. A storyteller named Husnieh Ahmed Ghozlan recalls the sensation, the juice running across her lips. She remembers being ten, small, yet able to identify beauty in the world, declaring Palestine the most beautiful place she knew. Figs, pomegranates, eggplants — trees that would sleep beneath the night. Going back after seventy-five years, she revisits the steps that led to a long mourning for a land she loved. In Shatila refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, she reflects on how every step they took added beauty to the soil they touched, even as war pressed close around them.