Watch, little child
She stands on a step-stool in a sunlit kitchen in Damascus, watching her grandmother’s pale hands fashion food for a family of ten. Although her grandmother tries to shoo her away, the bird-like six-year-old perches at the old woman’s side everyday, straining her small neck to catch every motion. She learns how [...]

By Meghan Daniels
Some possible hooks:
1. The pain. Ice pick jabbing into flesh. An electric shock. As though the wind has stripped your skin. The image of my grandmother’s face, skeletal and raw.
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By Amy Kurzweil
These are the sounds of Sunday School: an off-key guitar spitting songs against the stained glass windows. The whispers of boys in vans and kippahs. This is what Sunday School tastes like: grape juice. Challah toasted with honey. This is what the synagogue smells like: a vacuumed rug. This is how I feel: [...]

My father never tells of miracles, escapes, and survivals. Instead he tells his life, and the history of his country in which it is inextricably entangled, in the form of mild jokes and anecdotes during unassuming conversations. Perhaps he no longer takes tragedy as seriously as others—but it is more likely that the mind naturally [...]