The teacher read out a text about the tremendous difficulties the pilgrims encountered – about the exhaustion, hunger and disease – and the little pilgrims started to spin around, one after the other, falling gently onto the soil of the promised land. Then little children with feathers on their heads – Native Americans, they were called – arrived and helped the pilgrims get up, recover and stand on their feet. The natives showed the pilgrims how to work the new earth, what to do with corn and what pumpkin is, how to hunt and which animals they could eat.
I was naively waiting for a Nakba in the next act, and I was very proud that my son was one of the pioneers. But instead of perpetrating genocide, the pilgrims held a large meal from the harvest of the land, and invited the natives to eat with them in a great celebration as a token of gratitude.
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