The sun had slipped beneath the hills; a soft enveloping glow grasps the quiet streets, hushed as the minutes drift away drawing closer and closer to sundown and the breaking of the fast. The Muslim holy month of Ramadan sheds a gentle peace over the side of the WALL that Zeynab approaches, her body tired and her stomach rumbling from the hours of fasting. Yet as she moves closer and closer to this concrete monster, the energy surrounding her shifts.

As the last rays of light tickle the setting, Zeynab cautiously steps over crumbling rocks and pieces of garbage to stand beneath the stone cold WALL. On the other side of this human made barrier it is a time of celebration. 2007 marks the commemoration the 40-year anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem. The streets of Jerusalem are lit up with strings of glowing lights, promotional material proclaims this glorious year filled with activities and functions each month and scores of people flock to her embrace to remember 1967.

Zeynab can't see any of that from this side of the WALL. At 15 years old she has been to Jerusalem once, escorted in by international volunteers because before the age of 16 she is not required to have a Palestinian ID and thus, will not be harrassed at the checkpoints. She was taken through Jerusalem and, for the first time, to see her family's ancestral village of Zakryya, a mere 25 kilometers from where she now lives in the Dheisheh Refugee Camp. For her, it is not a celebration as her heart longs to be reunited with her own heritage and her own history.

She reaches out one hand, then two to touch the icy concrete plastered with graffiti calling for peace and, at this spot, decorated with huge posters of peoples faces in protest. Her eyes lift from the bottom of the wall to the tiptop, meters and meters above her.   Zeynab's small frame clad in a simple white t-shirt and khaki colored pants is dwarfed by the WALL. Dark wisps of her pulled back hair curl around her face as, eager for the feast to begin, she tries to capture any bit of light that she can while telling her version of what a celebration in Jerusalem means.

Her gaze reaches the peak of the WALL and she begins to speak, "I can't see the sun. I can't see the trees, I can't see my land..." Her words, spoken in Arabic are quiet at first, gradually with each word her voice grows louder, "I can't see my land." Its not quite dark on her side of the WALL, the calm cool tones of dusk enclose the spot where Zeynab stands. Her statement, "I can't see the sun" seems not to refer to its physical presence but to her eyes being blocked, the shadow closing in on her spirit. This dark silent side of the WALL in stark contrast to the light and celebration just a few feet away.

Zeynab falls into a silent moment of contemplation, her eyes sinking to the ground beneath the wall, her feet shuffling to kick a lone rock on the ground. The seconds slip by. In this stifling silence the mind creates its own noises, its almost as if you can hear the cheers, laughter and music of celebration on the other side of the wall.

Suddenly her head snaps forward and she blurts out, "They are celebrating what the took from us, they don't care about us, they are celebrating injustice. I don't understand... Why?" This one simple three-letter word carries behind it an indescribable weight.

Zeynab is not the only Palestinian child who hears the word reunification and raises a questioning eyebrow but her voice speaks for so many, so many who can't travel past the WALL and see their ancestral villages, so many who aren't celebrating.

Haitham is another of these children. At 14 years old, he labors with the word reunification, flipping the unfamiliar word around in his mind and struggling to form his response. "Jerusalem in maybe 5 minutes that way," he gestures with his hand from his seat in a restaurant of Dheisheh towards the WALL.

"You hope that you can go there and you cant...your friends there...your family there... your grandfather, your sister. Why?" Haitham's simple broken English words paint the division of the Palestinian families in the air around the table.

His voice charged, his hands spinning the words out of his mouth as he continues "If I go there, maybe they will take me to the prison...but why? This is our land, I have a village (Girash), I can't go there...Why?" Haitham glances out the window, pulling in with his eyes the cramped rectangular buildings huddled together. This is the only home he has ever known. Girash, his original village seems thousands of miles away. The people in Dheisheh arrived from 46 different villages, united on this barren hillside, unified at basically the same time that Jerusalem was declared unified but for a very different reason.

Moaiad, who has been sitting quietly next to Haitham, pipes in with the same question, "Why?" "They put the wall, before the wall we could go to Jerusalem," he says. "We are in a cage...like a big prison, not like, it's a fact, it's a prison." He leans farther forward as he speaks, his arms coming to rest upon his knees, his fingers intertwining together. "They see me in Jerusalem without a permission and they will take me to the prison, I am 15. Why?"

That one word echoes off the WALL, it floats in the air above Dheisheh and so many other refugee camps, it reverberates back around the streets and off the buildings, making no sound but carrying with it the weight of the voices of more than six million Palestinian refugees since 1948, refugees who are all but forgotten on the streets of Jerusalem where reunification is celebrated, a word that has quite a different meaning on this side of the WALL.