I almost never share my dreams, but today I’ll make an exception.
Throughout my life, even when I dreamt of Palestine, there were always Israeli soldiers in the background because those were the images I’ve grown up with.
Then a month ago, I dreamt that my father was showing my family around our village in Tulkarem, where he was born before the occupation. He was showing us his trees and crops with such joy and nostalgia that my words could never capture. But the most beautiful part of the dream was what wasn’t there. No soldiers or settlers.
Then last night, I had another beautiful dream about Palestine. And for the first time in my life, I dreamt of Al-Aqsa itself without soldiers in the background.
I don’t know what this means for me personally, though I have my prayers of what I hope to see in my own lifetime. I also don’t claim to be a pious person sharing these dreams as some sort of new prophecy. I don’t need a dream to tell me how this story ends. While I long to pray in that Masjid one day and pick olives from the trees that generations of my family cared for before the colonizers came, I already fully believe with certainty that Palestine will be freed one day InshaAllah.
But amid devastation so overwhelming that can pull the heart to despair, these dreams profoundly warmed mine. And so I chose to share them, praying that anyone else who has grown up carrying this trauma might find some solace in them, while also recognizing that those who have lived beneath the occupation have endured its pain and cruelty in ways the rest of us can never fully comprehend.
