Revolution always rages before curfews. With fervor. Once the revolution is over, the raging stops. The fight, even the violence, has borne fruit; it is over, and now an order and sovereignty is established: a cold construction with straight lines.

There in that former internment camp, I stepped into the yard of the old prison that the colonial government built for political prisoners in the 1920s: it was narrow, barbed wire on the walls, and with underground cells where the most difficult prisoners used to be locked up. Under the hot sun and in the stifling heat of Boven Digul, which in no way resembled a 'pretty village', how did those prisoners manage to survive?

The sun can be bright, but distant and indifferent to human suffering. Les Misrables, which was first published on April 1, 1862, wanted to be closer to the earth, and sensitive to French weeping. As its famous phrase says: "Those who do not weep, do not see."

That brutal, hopeless and never-ending history probably started in a small Palestinian town 15 kilometers southeast of Tel Aviv. Arabs call it al-Ludd (). The Jews now call it by its Biblical name Lod. It used to be known as Lydda.

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself.I am large. I contain multitudes.
Walt Whitman

You do not take sides. You do not want your view obstructed by barricades. You want to show that behind every barricade, whether it be that group over there or this one here, perches the dirty and repugnant. There are schemes and tools of destruction at the ready. You want to stress that your role ('I am an intellectual', you say) is to oppose this. You want to underline clear thinking, unbiased standards of good, and listening to one's conscience.