Thirty years after the civil war ended, Lebanon still doesn’t have 24-hour electricity, functioning water and sanitation systems, or reliable rubbish collection. The administrative oppression is so large-scale, so absurd, so unfathomable, it has corroded the distance between fact and fiction, between reality and allegory – home is a dump.

Some of the questions two young soldiers asked me at the King Hussein border crossing checkpoint... Were you born on a Thursday in Cleopatra Hospital? Did you come out silently, as day-break smudged the night sky?

We are deeply concerned by the Australian government’s complicity in enabling the Israeli state to suppress the aspiration of the Palestinian people to self-determination. Last week, Australia was one of only two countries (with the Marshall Islands) to vote against a UN Human Rights Council resolution condemning the illegal annexation of significant parts of the occupied Palestinian West Bank by Israel.