A Loud and Hungry Darkness

Twenty years after the Second Intifada, Samar Batrawi reflects on stories of life endured under Israeli military occupation in Ramallah. Through a mosaic of personal and collective memories, the writer and friends from her youth unearth what they remember of curfews and subjugation: a miasma of privation, the sick violence of confinement and encirclement, the unthinkable luxury of silence. The past blurs into the present: the dispossession and barbarity written into this essay echo the current and relentless reality of life in Palestine.

First published in Fikra, “A Loud and Hungry Darkness” defies the baleful narratives imposed on Palestinian people and instead offers a language for communal darkness.

— Alexandra Valahu for Guernica Global Spotlights

It is between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m. on Friday, March 29, 2002.

My father’s face looks down at me as my eyes ease open; his hand brushes the arch of my brows in the same motion that had sent me to sleep several hours earlier. An endless rumbling noise floats in the air around us. I lay a hand on the wall beside me and feel reverberations through the cold plaster. My first thought is an earthquake. Then I remember who we are.

My father ushers my sister and me out of the room. We move to the back of the house, where we are least exposed to the invading army. Other noises float in the air now, too, short and sharp, metallic sneezes cascading through the city’s streets. The electricity is out, so we light what few candles we can find. We spend the night breathing air thick with unknowing as all we know collapses around us.

The tealights still burn as the sun begins to rise. The noises have migrated south now to the city center. My father is the first to leave the room and peek out the front window. He sees a tank across the road, the large barrel of