Tuesday, October 22, 2024
4:00 - 5:30 p.m.
True North Classroom (101), Stephen Robert Hall, Watson Institute
Pulitzer Prize-Winning author Nathan Thrall will discuss his book “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy.”
About the Book
Five-year-old Milad Salama is excited for the school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem. On the way, his bus collides with a semitrailer in a horrific accident. His father, Abed, gets word of the crash and rushes to the site. The scene is chaos—the children have been taken to different hospitals in Jerusalem and the West Bank; some are missing, others cannot be identified. Abed sets off on an odyssey to learn Milad’s fate. It is every parent’s worst nightmare, but for Abed it is compounded by the maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles he must navigate because he is Palestinian. He is on the wrong side of the separation wall, holds the wrong ID to pass the military checkpoints, and has the wrong papers to enter the city of Jerusalem.