'It has been nearly two centuries since one of the greatest crimes of humanity blotted our consciences. An unforgivable and inexplicable act of punishing one people for the actions and sufferings of others but the ethnic cleansing of Palestine has finally come to be expiated in this new triumph of humanity. The masses of people, refugees torn from their homeland, have been returning in droves back to their ancestral land returned to them by the world government after much debate and useless red tape, with free flights and red carpets to a land stolen and handed back. To see the happy people returning home is like seeing an old woman with a nostalgic heirloom, cradling it after losing it for so long, and one has to ask how it was possible that they had ever been forced to leave their homes. We also have to ask if such a crime could ever happen again. But these are questions for historians and philosophers to ponder over while we look on as the joyous people step on lands that are the burial grounds of their forefathers….'
Samia turned away from the television, a donation from those who supported the cause, muttering to herself the distinctive phrase 'triumph of humanity' whose meaning she could only vaguely understand. Samia was a teenager, curly haired and pale, her paleness an indication that she was a recent arrival to the Middle East where the temperatures tampers with your complexion even if her ethnic features indicated that her family had long ago come from there. She blinked once or twice after she turned away from the television because she was not used to such physical monitors. The internet was not set up yet in the village where their family had relocated to and the contact lenses through which she could watch things like the news didn't work without it. The village was in the 20th century. This was the 22nd. Some people suspected human interference was the true reason, others more plausibly said that this part of the world which had been occupied and blockaded cut off from the rest of the world for years needed time to get to modern levels of connectivity. Samia had to suffer things like large screens until reconnection happened while the family, and the people who chose to exercise their right of return, underwent a different kind of reconnection.
Samia was listening to her father and her brother speaking to each other in broken Arabic, rather than the more natural Swedish, as they attempted to assimilate in their new surroundings or as the rest of the family called it, their rightful home.
The house that Samia's family had moved into was a three bedroom house with all three rooms on one floor. The living room had a cooling fan hanging from the ceiling. Her mother was in the kitchen making the Palestinian bread that the house was redolent with but Samia, though she had a mild liking for the bread and its aroma, still dubbed it foreign to her. She left the sparse yet strangely cluttered living room to go look outside wearing a tank top and shorts with a long and brown head scarf wrapped around her neck and falling over her shoulders instead of covering her head. It was a gift and made of silk and felt cool to the touch which is why she carried it around in the amazing heat.
The village was located in a desert and the buildings had an archaic look about them. They were a dusty white blanched more by the sun than by time and when Samia looked at the buildings, which looked cramped inside with a lot of space between the buildings, she thought the village looked more abandoned than something that was near universally glorified by the people and their media. Samia's family was one of the few so far who had decided to relocate back to their ancestral lands so most of the buildings were empty. A sudden anguish came upon Samia looking upon the village: an anguish born out of a loneliness, alienation, emotional detachment. She saw a Tesla in the distance parked by a building. A futuristic Tesla that shone in the sunlight as it absorbed sunlight for fuel. The anguish lessened slightly by the familiar car, but it could not stop the choking sobs from wanting to burst through her throat. Trying to stop her sobs by wrapping her scarf tighter, Samia went back to the living room where the television was still on and the ceiling fan was still spinning.
'It's weird at first as the climate is so different from London - '
'I'll bet it is.'
'But we'll get used to it. Just like we'll get used to other things.'
'Of course you will. Of course. All in due time. But one thing you won't have to get used to is the metropolitan nature of New Palestine. Since I've been reporting here I've come across dozens of nationalities. Kinda like London, right?
'Oh yes, certainly it is. I've met so many people from different places of the world but all looking the same trying to assimilate back into their origins.'
The ceiling fan had stopped spinning by now; but once it did, a hollow emptiness was left that matched the village and matched the one in Samia's soul.
'Yes. And despite the different nationalities you still have your common language making communication possible, right? Like English in London you have Arabic in Ramallah.'
'I have to brush up a little on that, I'm afraid to admit! But God willing soon I'll get a decent grip of it again.'
'Have you ever been able to speak Arabic?'
'Never. But language is intrinsic to its people. Arabic is ours by blood, mine by right. I'll learn it in no time. I just need some time around my people.'
'I'm sure you will but it's difficult to assimilate into something when all you have is ethnicity. Hmm, having said that, I actually don't think I've met any Palestinian here who can speak Arabic fluently. Where are the ones that can? And what do you think of the fact that only a small percentage of people have chosen to return home?'
'I think they're scared, nervous, confused and don't know where they belong. But their time will come. Eventually they will all be here.'
'Anything you want to say to speed up the process?'
'One thing I want to say is this. How can a person die in a country where your great grandfathers don't lie buried? Ask yourself really, is that foreign country the place where you want to die in...'
The man's raised voice and his words which no one in the house could understand, boomed through the sparse and cluttered room whose walls were made of clay. Samia wasn't really listening anymore as she had hung herself, wrapping the scarf around the ceiling fan. Just as she passed out, the ceiling fan came crashing down and so did she. Samia got what she wanted though as the fan landed on her head and crushed it. It looked like an accident as the part that was wrapped around the fan had come undone because the fan had broken into three pieces...
At the funeral of Samia the faces of the parents and many of the mourners expressed pain and loss, the natural feelings; but one could see something else on the faces of the mourners, all of them of the same ethnic makeup, and that was the pride of burying a loved one in their own country knowing that they had died where they had meant to die and that they too would die there and be buried next to them soon enough, God willing.
