At the end of Kamal Aljafari’s latest film, An Unusual Summer, the Palestinian filmmaker recalls a memory from his childhood, centred on the communal garden outside of his home in the city of Ramlah, a 30-minute drive southeast of Tel Aviv:
As a child I spent summerclimbing the fig treefilling straw baskets with green figsbig as apples
My sister was more courageousthan me
Our bodies itching from the fig leaves
My uncle Issa came back one dayI overheard that the Red Crossallowed him to visit his mother
It was a hot summerperhaps Augusthe spent every day in the gardencleaning and diggingaround the fig tree
Before he left he engraved my nameon the fig tree
Years later the bulldozers cameuprooted the garden and tree
Aljafari’s father Abedeljalil, who turned six during…
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Cinema Scope (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 85 - Winter 2021