Everyone knew Hisham, and they knew a wide-eyed American when they saw one, so they were eager to tell me their stories. A grey-haired peace activist described taking a settler’s stone to the face and being unable to reach the only hospital around that could have saved his eye—such is life when you don’t have the right permit. He popped out his glass eye and offered it to me. He showed me security camera footage of a group of settler children following him home and dumping pig fat in his doorway.

Then a woman came by, exasperated, on her way to see her grandchildren—it was the first time she’d been allowed out of her house in weeks due to some arbitrary curfew (she received no explanation, there is never an explanation). She told me that a soldier shot her son in the leg, and a settler pushed her daughter off a roof.

We walked through the market. A man in front of an empty clothing shop—the whole market has been empty since 10/7 when Israel locked most of the gates between each town—pointed to his temple to show me where an IDF bullet entered his 15-year-old son’s skull, lodging itself in his brain, leaving him braindead and paralyzed. This happened roughly 20 years ago, so the son was my age.

The shopkeeper was an old man now but would be his son’s caretaker for the rest of his life. We walked by a sweets shop. The owner, a real smiley guy with a bad leg, invited us in for (free) baklava and coffee (it has been very difficult to get anybody in Palestine to accept my money). While we ate, drank, and smoked, he stepped outside to look for more customers. A passing soldier said, “Get inside before I break your other leg.”