Fourteen years ago, a Palestinian friend from Gaza gifted me a copy of Jean Genet’s Prisoner of Love. It was a birthday gift that was nearly a year late, a fact that sticks in my mind for two reasons. The first is that, when my friend handed me the book in the garden of her Islington house-share, I recall how the warmth of the sun felt youthful and full of promise in that specifically early summer way, whereas my birthday is in late September.
The second reason I remember the lateness of the gift is that, when my friend handed me the book in 2010, I brought its pages to my nose — as I do with almost everything, but especially books — and inhaled deeply. A powerful smell of dead cigarettes wafted from the untouched pages. The book had been sitting in my friend’s bedroom for many months, and she was a smoker who spent her days in London — unemployed, with no work permit, and unable to return to Gaza following the Israeli blockade — lying in bed chain-smoking and reading.
“I think you’ll like this,” she said.
Read the rest of the essay at TMR.