When I was a 5 years old boy, I was always worried that my father and his friends will free Palestine! Though it was a wonderful thought but I wanted to be the man who freed Palestine. I remember spending hours imagining how as a victorious man I will enter Jerusalem and deliver my speech declaring: a free Palestine, for all.
I used to imagine myself visiting the old towns and villages, that demolished and erased from maps and reality but remained in people's minds and hearts, in the stories we heard thousands of times : my mother only carried us, a small bag of clothes and a key to a house that no longer exists. Every Palestinian home has a key for a house they cannot return to, memories of places that they are forbidden from visiting. Every Palestinian home has a child named after a town, named after a right to struggle and resist, named after a hope of return.
My dream was not unique, many Palestinian children born in refugees camps around the region had a similar dream, they, like me, grew older and their dream, like mine, is still a dream.
Today, I stand 71 years away from a memory, that many people will say: move on! People who have a homeland, who can live in the town that their parents were born in, work in the city that their great grandparents lived in. To those people, to all people, to my children, and to myself I say: we will return to Palestine, because it is not just a dream..
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