Catapult Extra | Excerpts

TinyLetter of the Month: Jamila Osman, “Notes from Ramallah”

“Writing these letters is my way of laying siege to the silences that I have learned to harbor.”

These days hope feels like a toy for children. To me it is losing its appeal and allure. I tell them about Somali refugees fleeing their country by boat and drowning in the middle of the ocean. I tell them about family members that have spent years languishing in refugee camps waiting for a country to accept them, family members who have died in refugee camps waiting for a country, any country, to accept them.

I feel this urgently as I travel throughout and learn from Palestinians living in the West Bank. A refugee understands the rights a people have to their ancestral domain. Settler colonial logic sees colonization as the beginning of history rather than a disruption of it.

//A devastation of the natural order of things//

Jamila

A chat with Jamila Osman about

blood song

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