From the Nakba to now, Palestinian authors have used the trope of amputation as a literary symbol of loss and unity in the face of adversity.
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Dear Love Letter, Where Have You Gone?
Whatever happened to the love letter? Many are sitting in literary archives, while today’s youth prefers WhatsApps and emojis.
DOUMA — Thousands of Syrians have lost limbs during the country’s three-year war. Here in the Damascus suburbs, two men have opened a workshop where functioning prosthetics are fashioned out of found materials. When Omar al-Ahmad celebrated his 13th birthday this year, he didn’t mark the milestone by shopping for new clothes with his father in downtown Damascus, coveting — as he would have done before the war — the uniform of his favorite soccer team on a mannequin in a shop window. Instead, his gift was the right arm of a mannequin, fished out of rubble by his father […]
MBALLING — Some 20 people, all officially cured of leprosy, are sitting together at the functional rehabilitation center in Mballing, Senegal. But seeing them calls to mind the ancestral fears linked with this disease: club foots, mere leg or arm stumps, hands without fingers, misshapen faces, washed-out eyes that can no longer be opened. The […]
HOMS – This city in western Syria is nearing 500 days under siege, with no supply route in or out. Medical equipment and supplies are nearly impossible to find. There are no alternatives for the medicine, be it for chronic illness or for wounds sustained during daily shellings of the city. There are few medical personnel on the scene. In Old Homs, a critical wound becomes more terrifying than death itself. A doctor might need to amputate a limb to save a patient’s life. In more critical cases, the lack of medical facilities means the only option for patients is […]