Bilal held Itamar’s gaze, clearly unable to breathe, his face turning red. When Itamar loosened his grip, Bilal doubled over, coughing, sucking in gulps of air.

“You are a sick and cruel man from a sick and cruel society,” Bilal said. “You forget I know what rotten garbage you really are.”

I thought Itamar would beat him, maybe shoot him. But he just stood there, breathing Bilal’s words, staring long into Bilal’s face, a mixture of sorrow, rage, and defeat in his posture.

“There is nothing here,” he said to his soldiers, ordering them out. When two of them began to pull at Bilal and me, Itamar ordered them to leave us. The soldiers hesitated, confused. Itamar screamed, “Cut their cuffs! Leave them!”

In 2003, the third year of the Second Intifada, the horrors of Israel’s crackdown incubated whole cities in humiliation and despair. But nine months after those harsh months of curfew, Palestinian babies were popping out of hospitals like popcorn. Most folks had obviously done exactly what Bilal and I had. When you can’t leave the house and there’s little food or water, fucking is all there is. Even as percolating anger and the solidifying plans of the resistance were as sure as the eyes and ears of traitors in our midst, families everywhere distributed sweets in celebration of baby girls and baby boys.

Ghassan said, “Those stupid motherfuckers are terrified we’ll outnumber them, so what do they do? They imprison everybody at home for months with nothing to do but make babies. And now there are thousands of little demographic threats. It’s damned poetic!”

Farmers lost their crops, families lost sons and daughters, towns lost electricity and roads, Israel’s jails were packed with young and old, jobs were nowhere to be found, but all those babies brought people together, gave hope and something to do, pushed us to visit each other, to eat together, live again, and plot the next moves of an unrelenting national liberation struggle.

My period was three weeks late.