When I was four, my father took me for a walk to see Sheikh Munis.
It was very unusual for my father to invite‬ me to walk with him, only with him,‬‬‬
it was probably‬ the only time, so I was very happy.‬ ‬‬
It was a dark rainy Saturday.
We went out of the house and out of the neighborhood
and walked in a direction where I had never walked before.
There was probably nothing for me there.
We walked through fields of mud, shutdown construction sites
and some large isolated concrete buildings.
The walk was long and tiring, but full of expectation.
It was supposed to be on the other side, that place, Sheikh Munis.
There was supposed to be something else there, that we went to see.

I am not really sure where it started, the other place.
At a certain point it was clear that we were there.
We walked on a paved road, all cracked and strewn with puddles.
To our left side, mud and sky,
to the right, houses – sort of houses – standing next to each other along the road:
some of the windows, the doors and walls were missing or blocked,
the garden gates open, twisted and broken,
Amputated pieces of furniture and other objects were scattered in the mud,
drowning in puddles,
and silence, no voice, no motion, not a living soul.

Where are the people? I asked.
We kept walking, my father and I,
alone at the end of the world under a sky of steel
To our right side, wet and dark rips of houses
and to the left – nothing.
I was very tired, and my father was silent.
It’s not nice here, I said.
We walked straight down the street until we reached the end.
We turned around and went back home.

Years later, when they were still simply Arabs and had nothing to do with me,
I would get tormented by the dreariness of the Housing-block where I lived,
by a vague feeling of disgrace, alienation and failure.
Then this memory would emerge.
Like a ghost it would appear,
like a passing whiff of ugliness – beauty – pain – yearning.
It was so unreal, or better say, evanescent,
that I wasn’t sure that I didn’t invent or dream it.
Out of abysses of forgetfulness I would draw it,
as a last witness of pre-historic remains that were wiped out of the world,‬ ‬‬‬
I would hold it,
surrender myself to the enchanting romantic feeling – the yearning to something.
There was something there.
It was actually right here, I thought, right under my feet.
It had a dark beauty.
I longed for it, for this place.
It was something real, it had a story.
And it has something to do with me, I almost rejoiced.
It was an untold, unspoken story.
The true story

Since I could remember vaguely the direction we had walked,
I tried to locate the place.
I could not have imagined it, I thought.
I would go out of the house, turn to the direction,
get closer, try to get closer, but I couldn’t tell which way.
Which way to take?
Where is the village Sheikh Munis?
There was nothing there.
Nothing like it.
Only large buildings, lawns of grass and pathways
of the university
of Tel-Aviv.