When Innocence Becomes a Witness to the Cruelty of Wars
Republic of Palestine – Literary and Cultural Affairs Editor
أقرأ بالعربية
Lee en español
Al-Azbakeya Publishing House in Ramallah, in cooperation with Azbakeya Amman, is preparing to release the first literary work by Jordanian writer Reda Nizam Istaitiyeh, entitled Wandering Dreams—a short story that opens a unique window onto the impact of war on the human psyche and collective memory.
Reda Nizam Istaitiyeh is a third-generation Palestinian, born in the city of Kwait to a middle-class family. He studied Business Administration at Al-Zaytoonah University in Jordan, where he became actively involved in student and grassroots activism as a leading member of the Tajdeed Student Bloc. This background enabled him to merge a Palestinian resistance identity with a Jordanian nationalist belonging, alongside an internationalist political formation through his militancy in the Jordanian Democratic Popular Unity Party.
Istaitiyeh drew inspiration for Wandering Dreams from the ongoing genocide experienced by the Palestinian people—one that has intensified and accumulated over recent years—turning the story into a testimony to the brutality of war, which does not end when the guns fall silent, but continues within memory and souls. Through this debut literary text, the author seeks to reveal the human dimension of war from a rare perspective, where suffering is written through children’s eyes and the silence of a brother returning from hell, rather than through depictions of battles themselves.
Wandering Dreams is not about combat as much as it is about what war leaves behind: wounded souls that return incomplete, villages that quietly lose their colors, and small dreams—like “two chickens”—that become an exorbitant price paid by the poor for the delusions of emperors.
The story unfolds within a simple setting: a village, a forest, a mother’s home, and two brothers. Marco, returning from war with a body and spirit ravaged by wounds, and young Theo, trying to make sense of his world, only to discover that war does not end with the cessation of fighting—it begins in memory, nightmares, and stifled tears.
Through nature—the forest, trees, and mushrooms—as metaphors for life and death, the writer connects what saves with what destroys, innocence with suffering, presenting freedom as a value not granted, but seized at an immense cost.
The text intersects with modern theories of memory and trauma. Marco embodies what Cathy Caruth describes as the “wounded survivor,” where trauma is not fully grasped at the moment of its occurrence but returns later to haunt consciousness. His fragmented stories about fallen comrades align with Paul Ricoeur’s concept of narrative identity, serving as a means of repairing the self and imposing order upon the chaos of war. Marco also carries a collective memory that resonates with Maurice Halbwachs’ ideas, as his individual memory becomes a collective awareness for future generations—condensing the lessons of war into cautious experience and knowledge rooted in lived reality rather than certainty or authority.
Wandering Dreams is a quiet yet devastating text, one that seeps into the reader’s depths and leaves a lasting imprint. It is a literary testimony of war—not as a political event, but as a continuous crime against humanity and against its small dreams striving for survival.
The narrative transforms the wounded body into a living archive of memory; Marco’s missing eye is not merely a physical loss, but a window onto an ethical and truthful vision that exposes what power seeks to conceal. Silence, nocturnal weeping, and recurring pain form the language of the text, revealing truths that words alone cannot express.
Wandering Dreams is a story of survival, loss, and freedom, confronting the reader with a profound ethical question:
What remains of a human being when they are asked to sacrifice everything—even their eyes—for the sake of freedom?
Coming soon—a text that shakes hearts before minds, opening windows onto a world whose stories are told only through the silence of wounds and the insight of a single eye.
Freedom demands no price but freedom itself.
