A House of Poetry

The last time I saw our home in the South was July 2025. We visited Lebanon briefly and took a day trip to check on the construction still underway. My parents were in a rush to rebuild it after it was gutted by two Israeli rockets in November 2024. We walked up the staircase through the middle of the hollowed house. All the walls were still down. It was a sunny day. We all stood around. Nowhere to sit. We knew the visit had to be brief. The buzz of drones hovered above us.

My 13-year-old daughter, Samaa, who was born in Vermont and grew up in Philadelphia, thought of the village house as her home too. She was distraught by the destruction. I had hoped this would be as close as she would ever come to war. She wandered into the garden. I saw her turn toward the valley and look out to her father’s Palestine. She has only been there once. She has been stopped at borders and detained at checkpoints. She knows what it is to be Palestinian.

Suddenly, she cried out, “Mom! Help!” We rushed to her. Her face was white, and she held her phone out in her palm as if her hand were burning. The screen read: “Welcome to Israel. You can now enjoy unlimited data.” Our hearts sank. The earth seemed to drop beneath our feet. We stood frozen until Hasan, the young man who cared for the garden in my parents’ absence, said, “Look there.” He pointed to his village across the hill. “Do you see that reception tower? They put it there recently. Now we get their cellphone signal. You must have an American plan. They are taking the land meter by meter while we sleep.” Hasan knew they would eventually come for the land in broad daylight, as they have many times before. The news says his village is now one of those leveled to the ground.

My daughter’s face in that moment will haunt me forever. She thought she was there to witness the rebuilding of her grandfather’s house, not the horror of occupation in real time. The monsters came for her grandfather’s house again. They came through her phone.