Contemporary
We stopped by a simple stone monument.
"What does it say?"
Aviva paused to read the Hebrew. "It commemorates the soldiers who died while taking the hill in the 1948 War of Independence. There was probably a village here."
"What do you mean?"
"Probably some Arab village."
I turned to Aviva. "They planted trees over an Arab village?"
"Sure."
"Why would they do that?"
Aviva shrugged. "To make the land beautiful, I guess."
I stared at her. Then I rubbed my temples. Aviva seemed like a stranger. My head buzzed. I wanted to say, This is not a forest. Instead I said, "What happened to the people who used to live here?"
Where I come from, kids are divided into two groups. White kids on one side, Indigenous on the other. Sides of the room, sides of the field, the smoking pit, the hallway, the washrooms; you name it. We're on one side and they're on the other. They live on one side of the Forks River bridge, and we live on the other side. They hang out in their part of town, and we hang out in ours.
