A review by saradluffy
Palestine +100: Stories from a Century after the Nakba by Basma Ghalayini

3.0

This is a collection of 12 short stories envisioning Palestine 100 years after Nakba. It has many sci-fi and tech elements like hyperloop, simulation, virtual realities, parallel worlds, and robots. While some use these elements heavily for the plot, some others just use them as futuristic world-building in the background. We see different versions whether it is under-occupation or free or in the process for independence.

I was heavily reminded with the hashtag #tweet_like_its_free and was hoping some would have the level of wholesomeness in that trend.

Overall the stories had diverse setups and it was a good read. Some quotes from my favorite ones

Introduction Basma Ghalayini

It is perhaps for this reason that the genre of science fiction has never been particularly popular among Palestinian authors; it is a luxury, to which Palestinians haven’t felt they can afford to escape. The cruel present (and the traumatic past) have too firm a grip on Palestinian writers’ imaginations for fanciful ventures into possible futures.

Everyday life, for them, is a kind of a dystopia. A West Bank Palestinian need only record their journey to work, or talk back to an IDF soldier at a checkpoint, or forget to carry their ID card, or simply look out their car window at the walls, weaponry and barbed wire plastering the landscape, to know what a modern, totalitarian occupation is – something people in the West can only begin to understand through the language of dystopia.

Song of the Birds - Saleem Haddad

We are at the frontier of a new form of colonisation. So it’s up to us to develop new forms of resistance.

Digital Nation - Emad El-Din Aysha

It’s that mental clutter that turns Utopia to dystopia. Too many people fighting for what they think is right, and can’t imagine to be wrong, blotting each other out. It was bound to catch up with us, sooner or later. We no longer speak with one voice, even in the privacy of our own homes.

Vengeance - Tasnim Abutabikh

Can’t you see? I’m not your enemy; we only have one enemy, you and I, the same one: the people who turned us against each other and now control every inch of our lives down to the oxygen we breathe.

We shall reclaim the air we breathe, if not the land we stand on, one mask at a time.