As I sat alone in my apartment, I thought back to that night at the restaurant in SoHo, the last time I’d seen or spoken to my mother, by then nearly a month earlier. I’d trailed behind her all the way to the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. Once I caught up to her, she stuck out her hand to hail a taxi. One pulled over immediately. She opened the door, and before stepping in she turned to me, her top lip resting on her lower lip in that furious non-smile. “I don’t care what you choose to do anymore,” she said, and I crumbled. I needed her to care. Worse than anger was indifference: her approval was my compass, even when that meant resisting it. She then shot me a piercing look before shutting the cab door. “Good luck finding someone to love you like I did.”

I WAS FOUR WHEN THE FIRST INTIFADA BEGAN. AS A FAMILY, we would gather around the box-shaped TV in our wood-paneled basement in the D.C. suburbs and watch the seven o’clock news. I would spread out on the floor, taking in scenes of distant carnage while laying my Barbies atop one another in unintentional 69 positions. Karim would spring up and down in his bouncy chair. My father would pour some of the newly introduced Cool Ranch Doritos into one ceramic bowl and medium-spicy Old El Paso salsa into another. He’d then empty an already-cold Heineken bottle into a frosted pilsner glass from the freezer. Often I’d go searching for chocolate chip ice cream and instead find mulukhiya, a vegetable you could only ever find in Middle Eastern supermarkets, along with the frosted glasses on the freezer shelves. My mother was the only one who kept her eyes glued to the television, the distance from her homeland enhancing her longing and attachment as she felt it slip away.

On the television screen, scenes appeared from Nablus of coffins shrouded in Palestinian flags. Young men in stonewashed jeans and bandanas peeking out from behind graffitied walls and stacks of flaming tires, throwing a seemingly endless supply of stones. Israeli soldiers in tan uniforms and laced-up combat boots pacing around checkpoints with machine guns, chewing gum and looking both vigilant and bored. These were my first images of the conflict that shattered our homeland and scattered my family. Terms like civilian casualties and Molotov cocktails and cease-fire, later replaced by negotiations and peace talks and Camp David, resounded in the Peter Jennings voiceovers as the footage of violence played on screen. We watched at a cool remove while enjoying the comforts of our American suburb, seemingly untouched, oblivious of the underlying trauma.

Chapter 4

4

“YOUR LAST STOP BEFORE HEALING.” THE WORDS WERE displayed in bubbly cursive across the Ledge’s homepage. I’d stumbled upon the website after a semi-targeted search with the words destructive, relationships, help.