Letter to a Refusing Pilot
(Letter to a Refusing Pilot)

In the summer of 1982, a rumor made the rounds of a small city in South Lebanon, which was under Israeli occupation at the time. It was said that a fighter pilot in the Israeli air force had been ordered to bomb a target on the outskirts of Saida, but knowing the building was a school, he refused to destroy it. Instead of carrying out his commanders orders, the pilot veered off course and dropped his bombs in the sea. As a boy, Akram Zaatari grew up hearing ever more elaborate versions of this story. Decades later, he discovered it wasn’t a rumor.