I have to admit that I was a little surprised when I was told that I would be having dinner with the screen writer for "The Last King of Scotland." But surprises have turned into everyday occurrences here in the camp. He was in the area researching his next movie project about an Israeli Arab suicide bomber. The conversation at dinner turned into more than I expected.

Ziad and Isaa (the screen writers guide) went into story after story about suicide bombers, being in the jail, torture, violence, soldiers...the imagery around the table so charged that those of us listening were left sitting staring blankly at the table. Jeremy, the screen writer, scribbled furiously in his tiny notebook trying to catch the pictures, words, emotions and ideas flying around in the air.

For about an hour during this period it seemed like Ziad did not take a breath. One story led into another and then another, the images spinning off each other.

"I had to be about 3 or 4 years old, I don't remember. I'll have to ask my sister later." Ziad began one story, his hands resting on the red plastic tablecloth with his fingers pressed together.

"I remember that night we were sleeping." He painted the setting in the air, using his hands in large exaggerated hand motions. The family was sleeping in their 3-meter by 3-meter room in one of the complexes built by United Nations in 1952 to replace the tents that had, at first, peppered the landscape in the Dheisheh Refugee camp.

"Of course we were sleeping on the floor, we don't have beds in our small room." He mimed his position on the floor, laying his head down and touching his cheek to the table, his eyes closed.

Ziad was awakened by a noise, a feeling, something inside, telling him that the quiet world of sleep around him was not quite right, the Israeli army was in the house.

"I woke up...I open my eyes. I find that one of the soldiers; his boot is blocking my eyes. I couldn't see anything but I can hear the voice shouting, screaming and I can hear my sister screaming and crying." The big black army issue boot completely obscured his vision. The image laid upon the table like a huge metaphoric giant. The blackness of the boot, the Israeli occupation...

All the people at the table had become participants in the story, their ears could hear the screaming and their eyes followed his words.

"I move like this and I can see many boots." He lifts his head from the table slowly, craning his eyes upward, looking deliberately at each one of the people seated around the table.

Finally, young Ziad got up the courage to raise himself slightly off the ground, his vision breaking the plane of the barrier set up by the one black boot. His eyes inched upward to catch glimpses of more black boots, an army of them scurrying around his families home. The boots were lit by the flickering dimness of the flashlights in the hands of Israeli soldiers.

"Of course, it was very dark but there were flashes, flashes in the hands of the soldiers. And when I start going up, if I want to go back to that moment which it was a few seconds...maybe a minute, I don't remember. You go up with the boots, you go up...up and then I started to realize that there were some weapons, up...up and you can see huge bodies...legs." His words began to melt together, the present for those listening to this story fading into the past, feeling Ziad's flashback pull them in.

Ziad began to scream out, crying for his mother. At this point he was sitting up, the shaking of his scared body accentuated his tears. The tears streamed down from his eyes and mixed with the snot dripping from his nose to form a liquid soup that dribbled into his wailing mouth. "My mouth became very dry," he said offhandedly as if to no one in particular.

"I start seeing some people with their m-16s and you can see them everywhere inside the room and outside the house," his words picked up strength as he leaned back in his chair and propped it up on two legs.

Suddenly the world disappeared around him in a ball of light as one of the soldiers focused on him and shined the light in his eyes.

"Me I can see the flash, I can't see anything, like shadows around huge people," Ziad's hands moved out in a big circle as if he was probing for something in the dark.

"And they were searching the house, looking for my brother." Ziad's brother was an activist in the community.

The soldiers came many times to his families home looking for his brother but this time, he was not home. Even now, Palestinians are afraid of these times. When the military enters their homes, when they pull up to a checkpoint situated inconveniently in what is supposed to be their land and, in an instant, someone can be arrested, taken away to the jail for years, sometimes a life time and ripped from the families.

For Ziad, these stories have been told so many times that they just roll off his tongue. He mentioned how many years it had taken for him to get over this story, years of waking up screaming in the night, his mother using old homemade remedies for curing nightmares...

With that last sentence Ziad shrugged his shoulders and immediately launched into the next story about his brother. The present seemed to snap back into everyone's head, the flashback bubble popped around them. They were no longer in a room with soldiers, m-16s and flickering flashlights. The black boot was not blocking their vision anymore. They were back at the table, the plates cleared away, the mosque next door droning out the latest call to prayer, a firework exploding in the distance...The could see and hear the world around them but it looked a bit different.