Author’s Note for “Khushkhash”

I wrote “Khushkhash” in 2023. It was only a few months before the genocide in Gaza would begin; as I write in September 2025, it has not ended. The death toll is estimated to be at least 680,000 Palestinians, with over half being children. This does not include those who are permanently disabled; those now refugees; those forced to relocate daily under the zionist regime’s whims and others.

“Khushkhash” emerged in Ramadan 2023. I was dazed in Amman’s heat, shopping for ingredients to break my fast during the evenings. Walking through the market, I began to imagine a Palestinian woman parallel to myself. I’d pick a fruit, and think if I wanted to eat it within the next few hours after my fast would break. I’d imagine this woman being able to have the same rights and ease when biting into a fruit—no agricultural restrictions, no murderous settlers, no land theft; nothing except her land returned.

I spent my days walking all over Amman that month, thinking of how different one thing can make this world look. I wanted several things that Ramadan, and prayed for many more. I felt as if I caught heatstrokes or dehydration from roaming around for hours, lovesick. I was leaving Amman soon, and so I took my time saying goodbye to my little life.

I never named the woman in my head. She felt so singular, and yet coalesced of women I love and the women who made me. She was my blood, reminiscent of the shared bond of women. I walked with this character, holding her hands in my own. She followed me to the shops, climbing the hills, and in-between taxi rides with the wind kissing me. I wrote parts of her life in what felt like a fever dream. Her fate, her marriage, her children, her land, her husband. I was utterly enamored with her reality, and so curious of her. I desired to pull her world up and study the surrealisms in her life. I’ve always found it strange to consider Palestine a holy land, and yet so curious of how others easily divorce Palestinians from our land. It felt like watching a mother be separated from her own child.

In actuality, what I wanted from her was simple. I want to see us free. I wanted to imagine slices of her life; the miracle of shattering geopolitics and empires into meaningless shards. In her world, she has the simple ease of a liberated home. She does not have any violence suffocating her. She goes to the market, holds something as mundane as faqous into the light, and only thinks if its ripe yet.