Starring in Salt of this Sea or (milhu hathal bahr - in Arabic) is well-known Palestinian poet from New York, Suheir Hammad and Saleh Bakri, a well-known Palestinian actor.
The script was very poignant and symbolic, and the story so true and typical of all Palestinians. Personally for me, there was a very melancholic feeling, accompanied by a lot of anger. Sparing you most details, the main characters in the movie suffer from restriction. They are denied entry to a land they can only see in their dreams. Faced with reality, but determined to defy it, they try to steal these precious moments of which they are deprived, and enjoy them while they last. They manage to sneak into Yafa (Jaffa). What is sad is that they start to make pretend, like they could manage to really stay there even if it was "illegal" for them to. Put in that position, I would pretend too. Like them, I would also try to forget everything stolen from the Palestinians and pretend like it was still there, like there was never an occupation and never an intruder.
Honestly, I felt like this movie was made for people like myself; Palestinians who have not lived in nor seen all of Palestine. I felt like it was a gift. I had only heard about Yafa's beauty in my grandparents' stories and had never quite been through such an experience. I think that most people would say that the movie is crucial for foreigners, who are usually the ones who are unfamiliar with Palestinians' stolen rights. I would agree to a very large extent, but personally still, I felt like it was for me.
This afternoon, I watched the movie again. I had not missed any particular detail but I wanted to have that feeling again. It was the closest I could get to being in Yafa, whose door is shut in my face, a heaven on earth that I would only see in my dreams.
