Strangely, for me, it felt like home. A man from Balata refugee camp, with expolisve bullets in his chest bombarded me with a flood of jokes about the people of Gaza. I am from Gaza, so I wouldn’t let it slide. “Did you know about the man from Balata who was invited to a wedding?” I rebutted. I finished my joke and was hit by another, from a wounded boy from Hebron in the other side of the room. This gave me even more room to fight back. I was sitting near Mahmoud’s bed. My journalistic mission was overshadowed by the laughter of the wounded. “Mahmoud has just smiled,” his brother cheered. Others felt inspired that he might even soon eat without the help of tubes. Others went as far as predicting that the young man would one day talk.

Mahmoud was wounded in early March 2002, while defending his camp. He was shot twice, once in the foot, and the second in the throat. Between both injuries there were two days. Mahmoud snuck out of the house to fight for Jenin with a bullet in his foot, only to be shot again with a bullet that would paralyze him. I told Mahmoud about my Jenin book and he listened. It mattered a great deal to him that the story of his camp would be detailed, for the world to see. He too had a mission, “I want to get well so that I can go back and defend Jenin”, he wrote. Mahmoud had no political affiliations. He left school to help his ailing father take care of the remaining children of the family. During the invasion, his home was demolished.