This morning a baby rabbit and a chicken escaped their houses, causing a chorus of exclamations like “Mira Mira!!” and “Rapido!!” from the group of small children playing around the farm. I had thought the site of me standing with an antenna in the garden would attract some attention, but the rabbits and chickens were far more important.

In this ten-day holiday I have been avoiding most news from the outside world, focusing on the immediate needs of rest, and conversations with T about the future- yet I have woken up most days having dreamed of Palestine. The Basque Country is full of symbols of Palestine solidarity, from 'Palestine aurrera!' to flags draped from seaside windows. Yet my dreams are full of the feeling that a draped flag or a scrawled sentence of support is far, far too little - has been far too little for too long.

I spend some of my time on this holiday building a Palestine geographies 'reader', an attempt, with two other geographers, one of them Palestinian, to make an open access, growing resource for thinking and remembering the expansive geographies of Palestine, including not only Gaza but the post-48 diaspora. I wonder if, like a draped flag, the role of this 'reader' will be symbolic, or if it will make possible other forms of reckoning and remembering. In 'A Map, the Sea, and Many Olive Trees', Elia Ayoub recounts how his grandfather was forced from his hometown in Haifa to Lebanon in 1948. He describes the systematic 'self-defencing' or obliteration of Palestinian settlements within and beyond Gaza, including importantly olive groves. "Many Olive trees are older than 1948. The Israelis must believe that these Olive trees have seen too much. Why else have they spent decades destroying them? Why do they still do it?".

Elia concludes the essay: "You grow up a little bit. You're 34 years/centuries old now. You're already older than many Olive trees because Israel has been cutting those down, you see. That makes you an elder. An elder is someone who is older than the Olive trees"