50 Water Dreams ***

50 WATER DREAMS beckons us into a mysterious world of broken tesserae, a dispersed mosaic the reader must puzzle over to reconstruct. What we discover, as the pieces begin to fit, is that Siwar Masannat subversively flips the script of scripture, and invites us to re-read what we thought we knew as the story of a land called 'holy.' In her words, 'Fadia, I say I dare not blink. If I could, / hide you in my eyelids & the nation, / too.' If peace is to come between Israelis and Palestinians, it may require this sort of utter recasting and frame- breaking. An auspicious and unblinking debut!