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PHOTOGRAPHY | PALESTINE
A Photographic Walk Through Yafa’s Old City
Accompanied by quotes from Fugitive Dreams: Chronicles of Occupation and Resistance
‘Mom liked visiting Yafa [Jaffa]. That was her city. Dad occasionally drove us around, pointing out landmarks: “that’s your mother’s school”, and “that’s the Catholic church she used to attend”. It was surreal enough to imagine my own mother a little girl going to school. Yet the school was real, a building amid a grove of trees, surrounded by a high fence. The locked gate bore a sign reading “Terra Santa School for Girls”. The church was also real, painted in pink, with a spire functioning as a clock tower. Mom told us how she used to walk a long distance from her house to school every day. “Show us Mom’s house,” one of my siblings invariably asked. The ensuing debate usually ended with our parents vetoing the idea, on the grounds that the house was “out of the way”, while enticing us with the beach.’
“On the way back from the beach, we often stopped at the Old City of Yafa, a picturesque three-dimensional cluster of domed buildings and narrow alleyways. The Old City was…
