A letter from Isreal

by Sonia Ihuoma Nwakanma

 

Dear Neighbour,

I wonder, sometimes, if you saw me before I ever saw you.
Before I stepped off the ship — sea-sick, soul-sick — onto the sunburned soil of the land I was told was mine.

They said, “We’re going home.”
But I’d never been here before.

Home, to me, was a whisper of a promise — not a memory.
My grandparents had spoken of Jerusalem like it was heaven, not earth.
But the ghettos of Europe drummed into us that there was no safe corner — not for people like us.

So, we came, heart-first.
And when we saw the land, we wept.
Because we needed it to be empty.

But it wasn’t.
You were here.
And that complicated everything.

I think I was afraid to look you in the eyes at first.
Because I knew — deep down — that for me to feel safe, you might have to feel displaced.
And that tore me in two.

What should have been a shared resurrection became a competition of pain.
I told myself, “We suffered more.”
You told yourself, “We were here already.”
And between both our truths, the ground cracked.

But what if, instead, we had paused?

What if I had knocked on your door and said:

“I know this land is yours — and mine, too.
But not because of law, because of love, history, and hope,
can we build something together?”

What if, instead of army posts and red lines,
we had drawn gardens and playgrounds?
What if my children had learned Arabic in school,
and yours danced the hora at our weddings?

We might never have become the same — but maybe we didn’t need to.

Maybe it would have been enough to become neighbours who didn’t flinch at each other’s footsteps.

Now, as I write this, I see it all too clearly:
Your keffiyeh. My kippah.
Your call to prayer. My songs and psalms.
Two melodies meant to rise — not clash.

I’m sorry.
For what we did. For what we didn’t do.
I wish we had settled this as kin of the same soil —
Not strangers, not sides, but children of the same sun.
Different tongues, yes.
Different prayers, yes.
But both shaped by the winds of this land.
Middle Eastern by birthright,
even if exile tried to rewrite my bloodline in foreign script.

I wish we had found each other before they drew lines around our names,
before outsiders decided our future
like we were pawns on their map of power.

Because this land —
it didn’t need Britain’s ink or Europe’s guilt.
It needed our courage. Our compassion.

Our conversation.

I wish we had done this on our own.
I believe… we still can.

But I hope somewhere in time — in another thread of history — in some alternate universe,
we are sitting beneath the same fig tree,
you passing me tea, me handing you bread,
and our children rolling olives between their palms, not grenades.

 

With imagined love, and real regret,
Your brother,
Israel.

 

 

 

A Reply from Palestine

— To my Jewish brother; in the world that could have been

Dear Neighbour,

You came from across the sea — your bags heavy with history, your eyes searching for safety, your feet weary from running.

You came not with weapons, but with hope. And though I didn’t know your language, I recognized something in your face: the look of someone trying to survive; to belong.

I will not lie to you — when you first arrived, I was afraid.
Not because you were Jewish, but because the world had a habit of giving away land that was not theirs to give.
Because I remembered how empires had come before — Ottomans, Brits, Romans — drawing borders with ink, not understanding the roots we’d planted with blood and memory.

I didn’t know if you came to share, or to take.

But I watched.

I listened.

And now, because of your letter, I believe I now understand.

You did not come to erase us.
You came because the world had erased you too many times.
Because your temples were burned. Your families hunted. Your identity crushed beneath boots and barbed wire.

So, maybe when you said, “This was once ours,”
I should’ve replied, “It is ours now — but there is room.”

We could have made this a home for both our peoples.
We could have built something sacred — not just holy, but whole.
Side by side, not in suspicion, but in song.

You bringing your scriptures, me bringing my spices.

You planting olives, me harvesting figs.

Instead of walls, we could have built wells.

Instead of borders, bridges.

Instead of tombstones, terraces.

We cannot rewrite what was done.
But in this alternate reality of which you speak — in this fragile, fictional universe — I choose to believe we tried.
That when your people said, “We are afraid,” we said, “So are we — but let’s not let fear be our master.”

And maybe, just maybe, our children would have grown up speaking both Hebrew and Arabic — not to fight, but to understand.

Not to curse each other’s Gods,
but to bless the ground we both call sacred.

 

With imagined peace,
Your brother,
Palestine