On July 8th, 2014 Israel launched a retaliatory attack on the Gaza strip after an extremist Palestinian group kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teenagers the month before. 17 days later I stood on the crest of Mt. Nebo along the Israeli-Palestinian border. Mt Nebo is just thirty-eight miles as the sparrow flies from where the teenagers’ bodies were discovered in Hebron.

It’s been almost two years since my mother finished with her radiation. I hear stories of cancer survivors, but I strangely don’t feel solidarity with them. Their recounts seem so different from my own family’s, a little too dramatic, like a play, a blistering tale of pain and triumph. I don’t remember my mom’s cancer that way.