If you are listening, it becomes so natural that you care, and you create a connection of care toward others that is not limited to the borders of th… - Adania Shibli

Linguistic erasure on maps is where you first experience the betrayal of language; the erasure of Palestine from the map continues today. Your linguistic consciousness from an early age is built on reading these omissions. This is something I think I’ve been concerned with since the first text I wrote.

I only write fiction in Arabic because this language is a witch—an amazing, funny, crazy, generous, and forgiving witch. It has allowed me everything. It is the space of the most intimate freedom I have ever experienced in my life.

to “think about” Palestine is already a position of privilege that I would not like to engage with. My concern with Palestine is a personal one, not a literary one. It forms my literature; but my literature is never about Palestine. It is rather within and from Palestine as a condition of injustice; of the normalization of pain and degradation.