Intervention II. Take Me There

Abstract

In this fictional vignette, British-Palestinian novelist Selma Dabbagh considers how invasive infrastructures such as, in this case, the Israeli Separation Wall, impinge on personal lives and domestic intimacies, so giving further life to the divisions of planned violence. The anonymous couple featured in this short piece of fiction relate to each other through accounts of their everyday lives. As Dabbagh’s female character, in particular, reflects, these surroundings are both visible and invisible, physical and psychological, as the landscapes she longs for mostly lie beyond the wall that, by day, obstructs the view from their window and by night invades their dreams. In the story’s concluding geographical overlaying, Dabbagh evokes the haunting of this violent infrastructure with another historically notorious instance of planned violence—the Berlin Wall.