Umm al-Zaytoun, August 2025

Death by fire is a cruel end, the most punishing of all. That is how my memory burned when the flames took my childhood home. They ate the photographs, the old wooden shelf, the olive branch, the story’s innocence. They swallowed our laughter and the family’s warmth, and left only ash, a scatter of torn pictures, a darkness coating everything that was once a place to return to, my only refuge in this world. All that remained of my grandfather’s tenderness and his stories has hardened into a knot inside me that will not loosen as long as I live.