SAYED KASHUA

I don't really wake up in the morning and say, 'Ohmigod, I'm a Palestinian in a Jewish state.' I wake up in the morning and say, 'Ohmigod, I have to make sandwiches for my kids.'

Sometimes I think that if we have to go back, then it certainly won't be to Jerusalem. Not to the Jerusalem beset with racism that we left at the height of the last Gaza war.

Like with all the Arabs, they use the 'suspect procedure' on me. I arrive four hours before the flight. They do a body search in a back room behind the curtain and then escort me onto the plane because they're afraid that on the way I might pick up a bomb from someone.

We were, as Arabs in Israel, educated not to leave our villages, in order to protect our identity.

How I'd like to start a new life in a distant land. Not because of racism or politics. But to be in a place that I knew hardly anything about, in a place where I wouldn't even care to know the prime minister's name. A place where names and faces would have no meaning for me.

I hate flying. The first time I flew with my wife, Najat, was the first time I'd ever flown in my life, and that was just a short flight to Turkey. I spent the whole time with my shirt pulled over my head. Then I got used to it.

Is it too late to institute a leap year and mandate that the holidays fall on regular, convenient dates - so that Id al-Fitr will come, say, in the spring and Id al-Adha in early summer?

For one moment, after I left Jerusalem with my family for life in Illinois, I thought that maybe there's still a chance: maybe there are still enough people in Israel who refuse to rule and oppress another nation.

Maybe I would go back to West Jerusalem without too much bother if I could lie to my kids and tell them they are equal citizens in a democratic state.

I began to write, believing that all I had to do to change things would be to write the other side, to tell the stories that I heard from my grandmother.

I use a lot of humor, and I follow the saying that if you want to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh first; otherwise, they will shoot you.

I always see my wife as the clever one, as the wise one in the family.

I don't know how it works with the Jews, but here in Beit Safafa, as in every self-respecting Arab community that is respected in turn by the state, there are no street names and no house numbers.

What kind of people will these ghettos of Palestinians produce? What form of morality, national consciousness and hope will people be left with after so many years of stifling occupation and a sense of hopelessness?

Whom do you speak to about introducing a leap year? Is it heresy to request such a thing? Why do the Jews have one and we don't?

Many Israelis are educating their kids in a very nationalist, powerful identity, since kindergarten - and the Arabs as well.

I'm always sad when Dad doesn't like my columns. He waits for them every week and usually likes them, in which case he doesn't say a word - it's only if he's critical that he bothers to call.

I don't like identity. We accept identities in Israel. We make them holy. But what does identity really mean?

I conduct all my nighttime activities under the assumption that my wife is awake, that she never falls asleep.

I wanted to bring likable Arabs into the average Israeli living room.

I tell you a joke to have you listen to me, and then maybe I will tell you another joke that we can laugh together and feel equal. And then I will tell you a story hopefully that will make you cry. So I think that's the way that I approach the columns, as a surviving tool in a way.

Americans are connected to the situation in the West Bank and Gaza and Israel because, generally speaking, Jewish Americans were always there, and many American Jewish people connect their nationality to the Israeli one.

I once wrote that the first week in Jerusalem was the hardest week of my life. I was different, other; my clothes were different, as was my language. All of the classes were in Hebrew - science, bible, literature. I sat there not understanding one word. When I tried to speak, everyone would laugh at me.

Thanksgiving is the only day of the year when most of the stores here are closed during the day and reopen after midnight. Even restaurants shut down for the holiday, except for the fast-food chains.

I wish I could be proud of being an Israeli citizen, but how can I do that when I'm not really recognized as a full citizen?