“Umm Hassan is dead.”
These are Dr. Khaleel Ayyoub’s first words to his only patient, the legendary hero of a dozen failed wars for Palestinian liberation, in Galilee Hospital in Shatila. But this isn’t a real hospital (scarcely any supplies or professional staff), Khaleel is not a real doctor (though he had some rudimentary medical training in China), and Yunis, or Abu Salim, is not a real hero (though famous as “lone wolf” fighter) — and is now probably brain dead.

… as in 1901, when Strindberg wrote “The Dreamplay,” it seems as though There Is No Alternative (“TINA” – see Daniel Singer’s 1999 book on this tyrannical goddess). Of course, there is an alternative, there always is. Let us pray, to whatever gods we find within ourselves, that it is not the kind of alternative Europe created for itself in 1914. (2000.12.04)