REVIEW: “The Key” by Anwar Hamed

Review of Anwar Hamed, Andrew Leber (trans.), “The Key”, in Basma Ghalayini, ed., Palestine+100, (Comma Press, 2019): 65-76 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Not all stories told in Palestine are stories of displaced Arabs…the Israeli settlers too have their stories to tell, and one of such story is Hamed’s. In his future, a novel solution to the Arab-Israeli tensions comes in the form of a gravitational wall: Invisible, but programmed to only allow those who have the right key embedded in their chips to allow them to enter and exit. Even though the wall is protected with unhackable encryption, it comes as no surprise to the reader that no wall is ever going to be a tenable solution in the long run.