My friend Pam
is stuck all night at
the airport in Frankfurt.
Hard benches, harder floor,
nothing open.

Wait, I think.
That’s a Palestinian thing:
forced to wait for hours
at a border.
Israel already steals
everything we try to own:
our felafel,
our hummus (NOT khamas!)
our land.

I am torn between possessiveness
and friendship.
Pam is white and American,
now feeling a taste of what travel means to us
if we can travel at all.

But wait…
She believes in justice;
she’s brave, another ‘Palestinian thing,’
and she has always stood for us,
and for the truth.
So much so that she is
half Palestinian.
It seems logical perhaps
that she shares this experience
as well.