Tales of a City by the Sea

I have a neighbor. He is a quiet man, working hard in construction and after work he would stay with his family. You rarely even see him in the neighborhood. One morning I saw him sitting in the street – he had a story to tell.

He is from Jenin. He married in Hallisa (our Haifa neighborhood) and came to live with his wife here. They are already married for some twenty years but he couldn’t get his papers right. As the occupation gets old, so do many of its victims. So, that night, my neighbor felt his heart was betraying him and hurried to the hospital. Apparently it was not that bad. After checking him and verifying that he was no dying, the doctors in the hospital called in the police, which, at 3:00 am, drove him to Jenin (some 45 km south east of Haifa) and threw him…