For Abu Nathmi, the 80-year old gardener who occasionally takes care of Emile's beautiful garden in Ramallah, 4 devastating TNT explosions across the street from Emile's home seemed irrelevant, or at least not relevant enough to prevent Abu Nathmi from working in the garden at 8 o'clock in the morning, as he has done every week for the past 15 years. Only until an hour before Abu Nathmi's pleasantly surprising arrival at the house, the neighbourhood had been officially declared a 'closed military zone' by the Israeli army.

I am less amazed with Abu Nathmi's ability to work as a gardener at age 80 than I am with the expression of the wrinkles in his face: that dark face with hundreds of lines on the forehead, interrupted by a glowing set of brown eyes; that old man, with 80 years of Palestine's history on his face.

I sat with Emile and Abu Nathmi in a straight row at the front side of the house to drink tea with mint (the mint taken from the garden of course). Our spontaneous get-together started off with an interesting combination of subjects, including Abu Nathmi's late wife, who was Cypriot, the logistics of marriage, and a light disagreement with Abu Nathmi on whether the building across the street-which was destroyed the night before-was built during the Ottoman rule of Palestine or during the British mandate of 1920-1948. Eventually, we managed to convince Abu Nathmi that it was built by the British about 80 years ago. It was just as old as Abu Nathmi himself!

Suddenly, our conversation was interrupted by an unbelievably long moment of silence. It seems to me now (a day after) that the moment of silence resulted from an unusual 'coincidence of realisation!'

All three of us seemed to be simultaneously reminded of an obvious and somewhat surreal fact: we are having a tea (with mint) break in the front garden of a partially destroyed house, with more than 80 shattered windows, 7 broken doors, and a colourless garden filled with rubble. Not only that, but Abu Nathmi and I are at the presence of Emile, who, along with his daughters (Amal and Zeina), and Sriany (the housekeeper), happened to luckily survive a night of terror, in which explosions meters away from their home could be heard/felt the night before from Jerusalem (20 kilometres away).

The young trees in Emile's garden were so dusty from the rubble that for the first time in my life I genuinely felt sorry for a tree! The living room inside the house, the bedrooms, and the bathrooms were filled with shattered glass (which, according to old-man-Abu Nathmi, looked like knives and swords).

Our tea (with mint) break ended along with that unpleasant moment of silence. Abu Nathmi was quickly off to his gardening, and Emile and I continued to cautiously remove shattered glass from the house.

In the evening, Emile and I rushed to drive Abu Nathmi back home, as news of another Israeli invasion spread throughout Ramallah. He lives in Al-Am'ari refugee camp in Al-Bireh near Ramallah. As we arrived back at the front of the house, I realised that, while it was still bright, the dust had not yet settled from the explosions, and the atmosphere was still filled with debris. At that moment I noticed a young girl (probably 8 or 9 years old) trying to cautiously cross the street. She seemed to have difficulty doing that; every time she looked up to see if there were any cars coming, the dust would blind her, and she would go back to the sidewalk. "Poor girl" Emile said quietly. We both felt sorry for that child; that helpless little girl.

I wondered: Abu Nathmi, the destroyed building, the dusty young trees in Emile's garden, and the little girl trying to cross the street; will that girl's face ever have the same expression of wrinkles as in Abu Nathmi's face? Will the lives of the Palestinian people in the next 80 years be as tragically shattered by explosions as the glass in Emile's home? Will that little girl ever be able to cross the street?