Author: Tala Ladki
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Relax Your Mind:180 Seconds of Restless Thoughts
“Inhale, lift your arms up. Exhale, drop your hands to the floor. Inhale, right leg back. Drop the knee. Hold.” When I hear her say the movements, they sound easy enough. But there’s a constant humming in my ear, the echo of a voice in my head. “Hold? You can’t hold any longer. Your legs…
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Book Review: Mornings in Jenin
There are no words that can do this book justice, especially not at a time when the people of Gaza are being brutally bombed, starved and deprived of their most basic of rights; not when there’s a colonial entity conducting raids and random acts of violence in the West Bank, nor when there’s increased settler…
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Book Review: Cockroach
When I first started reading Rawi Hage’s Cockroach, I was not immediately hooked. Unfamiliar with his writing style, I had picked up the book because I recognized the name. A follow-up to his acclaimed De Niro’s Game, Cockroach explores mental illness, immigration and an immigrant’s struggle for survival. The pacing of the book was not…
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Book Review: The Book of Disappearance
What would happen if all the Palestinians vanished, all at once, from everywhere? In today’s political context, a lot can be inferred. But in Ibtisam Azem’s ‘The Book of Disappearance,’ this premise becomes a reality. Right from the start, Azem’s compelling writing and distinctive narrative hook the reader – a liberal Zionist journalist can no…
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Book Review: Evil Eye
Have you ever wondered what your life would look like if you didn’t have to live up to society – and more often, to your family’s – expectations? Maybe you would’ve chosen a different career path, maybe you would’ve ended up with a different partner. Maybe, just maybe, you would’ve done what really makes you…
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Grey
The floor trembled beneath the pink skin of my grey paws. Earlier that day on August 4th, 2020, as I later heard mom call it, nothing extraordinary had happened. I woke up grandma as soon as I could see a crack of light outside – I can’t remember if I thought she was dead after…
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Book Review: Enter Ghost
A Gripping and Powerful Look into The Protagonist’s Struggle with Her Palestinianism Sonia Naser has spent all her life in London. Growing up, she, her sister, mother, and father would visit their extended family in Palestine, something Sonia reflects a lot about. But for the past several years, Sonia has not been back to Palestine,…
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White confetti
Darine opens her eyes; her vision is blurred with white confetti. She fixes her head in the fluff of her mother’s sweater. Earlier that day, Darine sat on a plastic chair on the balcony reading Perks of Being a Wallflower. Her mother sat on the floor next to her with a bucket of water and…
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The Hakawati That Saved My Life
A few months ago, on another mundane Saturday, I had a dream I used to have as a child – a decapitated woman sat in a tub of her own blood, her head beside her on the white tiles, gnawing at an apple. That morning, as I prepared my usual black coffee, I imagined myself…