Note: This originally ran in The End of Days: A Novel of Flight and Exile.

It’s a conflict that, to put it mildly, elicits strong opinions. Even those as theoretically aligned as young, urban, progressive Jewish LGBTQ folks can hold diametrically opposing views. So what hope does a made-up story have of every getting to the root of this seemingly intractable conflict?

Indeed, storytelling is limited. It captures a finite set of characters, and only renders what’s needed to move the plot forward. This story in particular is from one group’s perspective — one which, some feel, has had more than enough opportunity to tell its side of the story.

So how’s it expected to serve as a history lesson?

Fiction isn’t literal history, obviously, but in providing (hopefully) compelling narrative, it can spotlight the overlooked and misunderstood. There are so many specifics about 1948 that haven’t been widely disseminated-events that, rather than bolstering one side or another’s argument about the conflict, expose nuance and complexity.

For my part, I had collected troves of family stories-along with companion tales from cohorts and contemporaries, as well as officially-documented accounts-over decades. These offered up a ground-level recounting of pivotal historical events; how they were experienced by (mostly) regular people, on the ground, in the thick of it, day by day.

The aim of historical fiction, as I see it, is to galvanize readers enough to learn more about the true history of the times captured in prose. For engagement to prompt edification. I offer up an analogy from my academic past: as a Comm Studies major back when it was part of the English department, I took my share of literary survey classes. In one of these, we read The Lady of Shalott, the famed lyrical ballad by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. And…I was bored. I learned enough about the poem to get a so-so grade in the class, and promptly forgot completely about it.

Then, years later, I happened upon a version of it set to music by folk singer (and fellow Canadian) Loreena McKennitt; for those unfamiliar with her work, I think of it as Enya with a kick. It’s hauntingly beautiful, and I’m not ashamed to say it moved me to tears. Initially I didn’t even connect that it was the Tennyson poem, but as I researched it, learned about the strands of Arthurian legend that were its influences, my fascination grew.

I have no doubt I absorbed (and internalized) orders of magnitude more about this poem as a result of hearing the song than I ever did in a dry, dusty classroom.

If The End of Days can prompt even one reader of it to react a tenth of the way that I had to that poem-try to uncover for themselves the layers of history that shaped this struggle-then I feel it will have succeeded.

Interested? Sample the story here or start from the beginning.

Originally published at https://theendofdays.substack.com on September 29, 2026.

Note: This originally ran in The End of Days: A Novel of Flight and Exile.

I recently read this piece by Nachum Kaplan in Future of Jewish; it hit on many tropes with which I’ve become intimately familiar over the years. Having developed some non-typical views on this most contentious bit of geopolitics, it left me wondering: what if I’d been there? What would I have said?

Disclaimer: I don’t know any of these people; my take on what they would say and think is pure straw-man fictional conjecture. A thought experiment, if you will. No disrespect intended to anyone portrayed.

I was hoping for an engaging, productive conversation when the hostess described the table as “a safe space for difficult conversations.” I also knew it was easy to view that as euphemism for “everyone is free to express precisely the same opinion.”

The dinner was being held in an immaculate apartment overlooking the city. The furniture was Scandinavian, the lighting was flattering, and there was a political slant to the books on the shelves that any modern progressive would recognize: Palestinian-American academic and literary critic Edward Said sat beside French psychiatrist and political philosopher Frantz Fanon. American philosopher Judith Butler leaned against a large volume on decolonizing architecture. There were several books about Israel — though I didn’t see any by Israelis, historians, military analysts, Arabic speakers, Hebrew speakers, or anyone who had recently burdened themselves with the region’s chronology.

The apartment belonged to Oliver and Beatrice, who had invited 12 people for what they called “an evening of food, friendship, and necessary conversation.” I knew they held different views than I did (or thought they had) about this most contentious of subjects.

“We’re so glad you came,” Beatrice said, touching my arm. “We were worried you might feel uncomfortable.”

“Ah, it’s all good,” I replied. “Happy to be a spokesmodel for, I don’t know, whoever needs it right now.” A polite chuckle.

The other guests had already assembled around a huge island bench. They held champagne flutes and spoke about suffering in places off the beaten path for most of us. There was Julian, an international lawyer who specialized in commercial leases. Nadia worked in branding and referred to herself as a storyteller. Marcus was a documentary producer whose documentaries had never been produced-something I could relate to as a onetime wannabe filmmaker. Eleanor taught postcolonial literature. Simon was in finance; I’d heard about his critiques of capitalism at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, though I wondered if his plaints fell on deaf ears. There was also Theo, a surgeon, who admitted he knew nothing about Israel.

I was introduced around the room. “This is our pro-Israel friend,” Beatrice announced. I scoffed.

“I do have a long history with the place,” I said. “I lived there for a few years when I was a kid, and my Mom grew up there,” I said. “I still hold citizenship, have family over there, and was raised in a deeply Zionist household…but that was then.”

A small murmur from the crowd.

“How brave of you to come,” Eleanor said.

“Uh, you know, call it an opportunity to find common ground.”

“I suppose you’re alright, then, knowing you’re in the minority,” Eleanor said.

“Well, I grew up a linguistic minority within its own linguistic-minority enclave. Jewish in a Christian sphere, gay in a largely hetero world. All I need to complete the set is ‘black’ and ‘lesbian’,” I said. Some laughter.

Oliver raised his glass: “To honest conversation.” Everyone echoed him. For the first 10 minutes, the conversation was restrained. We discussed schools, property prices, artificial intelligence, and whether the city had lost its soul. Then Nadia placed her fork carefully beside her plate and sighed: “I just don’t understand how anyone can still defend Israel.”

The room grew quiet. Heads turned towards me with the benign anticipation of people waiting for a laboratory animal to perform a familiar trick. I sighed.

“I hear that,” I said. “After connecting with folks on all sides of the situation, and reading far too much about it for my own good, I gotta say, my feelings are complicated.”

“But do you defend it?” She asked.

“I don’t know if I’d say ‘defend.’ Do I think a for-real country got built there in spite of every reason for it to fail? Yeah, sure. It’s still think it’s a pretty awesome place, even for me, now, who I am, a completely non-religious gay guy; I always joke that I think I ended up in California because it reminded me of Tel Aviv.”

“But isn’t that just succumbing to pinkwashing?”

“I’d totally buy that if Israel was actually a horrible place to be queer-which was more true, say, fifty years ago. Now it’s still got a ways to go on the LGBTQ index-hello, same-sex marriage? But if we define ‘pinkwashing’ as ‘we’re doing a bunch of crummy things over here, but don’t look at that. Shiny object! We have Pride parades!’ Then, yeah, that is willful misdirection. But the scene over there is real. I’ve seen it. I have a trans cousin in Jerusalem. And, agreed, just because Israel is better on LGBTQ rights than its neighbors doesn’t mean other things it’s doing are justified.”

“Also,” Nadia said, “the present-day repression of LGBTQs in formerly colonized places came from Western imperialism. So it’s intersectional, tied in with the occupation. The apartheid. The genocide. The colonialism.”

Four accusations. It almost sounded like a wine list.

“Yeah… well, that’s where things get interesting,” I said.

Julian smiled and said, “I think what Nadia means is that the entire structure is indefensible.”

“OK,” I said. “So let’s look at these. The first thing I always ask is, ‘why?’ Why does this nation do what it does?”

“It’s the structure of oppression,” Julian replied.

“OK, but to what end? Oppression always has a goal, even if it’s awful,” I said. “Like, why did slavery exist? Because some truly reprehensible people realized free labor can make them rich. They even cooked up half-baked b.s. about races and rival tribes to justify it.”

“Isn’t that just what Israel is doing?”

“Well… no. Again, not justifying or making excuses for what’s going on there, which is abominable. But it’s not driven by exploitation, and, for the most part, not by racism either. It’s driven by deep-seated mistrust. Are there Israelis and Israel-supporting Jews who have some messed-up quasi-racist views? Sure. But that never was the driving force behind Zionism.”

“But it’s an ethno-nationalist movement.”

“Actually” I said, “I kind-of I agree that it is. It was a nineteenth-century movement, after all. But even then, early Zionists spent a lot of time debating what it was. Maybe it comes down to the big philosophical question of being a small minority, and what are the boundaries and parameters of exclusion that minoritarian identity involves.”

“You don’t sound like much of a Zionist,” Julian said. I chuckled.

“I’m sure some would say I’m not. But here’s the thing: I don’t feel these things are mutually exclusive.”

“Which things?”

“Zionism-i.e. a national homeland for the Jewish people-and egalitarian status for all people in the land of historic Palestine.”

“But how can a colonial framework coexist with equality?”

“Honestly, I’m with Aaron Sorkin on this one-the West Wing guy. I don’t think any place or people is unredeemable. I do think right now there’s a very real crisis of bad leadership on both sides, the Netanyahu gang and Hamas. I also know it’s not just a leadership issue, but leadership can steer a people and an ideology in all kinds of weird directions. And you pointed to the extreme case: Europe. They wrote the masterclass on colonialism and oppression, right? Well, it took two world wars, and a whole lot of history, but they figured things out. I have to believe it’s possible. Or maybe I’ve just watched too much Star Trek.” A titter of laughter.

The second course arrived: sea bass on a bed of something green. Theo, who had been silent until then, cleared his throat: “Surely the core issue is that Israel was created by Europeans on Arab land?”

“Well,” I said. “Some of that is true. And it’s partly the reason why-controversial opinion here, I know-I think Israelis need to actually own the fact that, yes, some of their history does include aspects of what we now call ‘settler colonialism.’ There’s pushback on that label, because Jews had been in the land continuously for thousands of years. No Spanish conquistador coming to the Americas could say that. Thing is, having a connection to the place as old as Ancient Rome, plus the presence of a couple of impoverished scholars in Jerusalem, doesn’t automatically make a nation-state a slam-dunk. It also ignores the thousands of years of history where other peoples inhabited the land.”

They all looked a bit stunned. Surely no “pro-Israel” sort would ever say such a thing.

“And yeah, even in books written by Israeli New Historians like Tom Segev and Benny Morris, they talk about how early European settlers in Palestine made use of Arab labor, then restricted their labor force to Jews only; or how land purchases from wealthy Arab landowners in Damascus kicked off Arab tenant farmers who’d been there for generations. Plenty on the Israeli right dismiss that by saying ‘that’s just the business of nation-building.’ Frankly, I’m with you guys: I think those things were wrong.”

“Then how can you still defend it?” Theo asked.

“I think it’s the same defense, of you want to call it that, of all settler colonial countries. That includes all of us here, right? I think if we go back far enough every nation has some original sin in its origin story they have to contend with. Rashid Khalidi-I noticed you have The Hundred Years War on Palestine on your bookshelf, which I’ve also read-noted that Israel did a lot of the same stuff that other nations did, only too late, in an era where such actions were no longer acceptable. I think there’s a lot of truth in that.”

“So you don’t defend it at all. Shouldn’t you be calling for a free Palestine, and be on Greta Thunberg’s yacht?” Eleanor asked. I chuckled.

“I’m always down for a boat ride. I do like a lot of the work she did on environmental causes,” I said. “My only concern, about her, and all of this, really, is, why only Israel? I think that’s the thing that raises the hackles of so many of the pro-Israel crowd. They’re like ‘why are we being singled out in a world where China oppresses its minorities, Sudan has full-on mass murder going on-and as Bill Maher put it when interviewing Don Cheadle for the movie Hotel Rwanda, ‘next time, let’s stop the genocide before the movie about it comes out.’ I think that’s what leads all these Jewish folks to cry ‘ antisemitism! ‘ because it feels like any little thing Israel does is the crime of the century, whereas everyone else gets a free pass to do whatever they want.”

“Yes, but two wrongs don’t make a right.”

“Believe it or not, I have an answer for that one as well.”

“You’re a man with a lot of answers,” Beatrice said.

“I think it’s a backhanded compliment, but also a blind spot we have in the West. We tend to focus a lot more on the misdeeds of nations we consider ‘First World.’ Honestly, if France or America or Belgium was doing what Israel is now doing, even if it was officially being called ‘self defense,’ we’d be hearing a lot about it. Which is too bad, because there are a lot of conflicts the world over that don’t get the same coverage as Israel/Palestine. Some of that’s simple logistics: it’s much easier to report on a war zone from a hotel in Jerusalem than from the capitals in Chad or Eritrea. So I’m not against calling out Israel for doing things we consider wrong; but I think that needs to be applied everywhere, to all nations.”

“But they’re doing more than just ‘wrong.’ There’s a genocide,” Marcus said. I squinted.

“I know, there’s that word,” I said. “I think it’s important to dive deeper.”

“What’s to dive deeper? It’s been confirmed by multiple sources,” Marcus said. I wrinkled my nose.

“I know, it’s kind-of a hard subject. And I know it almost seems weird that we’re sitting here in this lovely place having dinner discussing what to call an awful historical event an ocean away. And, to be fair, looking at South Africa’s ICJ filing and the legalistic definition of ‘genocide,’ which has the words ‘in whole or in part,’ then, yeah, what happened could be considered a genocide. Particularly when you had Israeli cabinet ministers-which, I wanna say again, many, many of us, Jews and Israelis alike, are totally not on board with-calling all Palestinians ‘human animals.’ I think there was the notion, by some, that after October 7, pretty much any form of retribution was on the table.”

“Even if that retribution was genocide,” Eleanor said.

“The claim they’d made, the Israeli military, was that they were dismantling a whole network of tunnels that Hamas had cleverly embedded within civilian infrastructure to deliberately make them hard to destroy, and maximize civilian casualties on purpose. Honestly, I wish there was a lot better reporting and exposition on that, because I don’t think that message ever got through, and I don’t think it was simply antisemitism as the reason. I think there’s a tendency within Israel to say ‘they’ll hate us either way, why even bother explaining ourselves?’ I think that’s a huge mistake.”

“You must admit, though, that that’s Orientalist, seeing the Palestinians, the people of color, as incapable of empathy, needing to be subjugated, or even eliminated,” Marcus remarked.

“Sure, though to underscore the racial point, with all the Jews of Middle Eastern descent in Israel, I don’t think that tracks with the way we view race relations in the West. As for the genocide charge, though, I think, for me and lots of Jewish folks, that’s a really, really freighted word. Because there’s the pedantic, legalistic definition of a word, and then there’s its association-I know that sounds like b.s. but bear with me. Like, take ‘socialism,’ which our Republican crowd loves to toss out. Do they even know it means? They’re weaponizing it. When people hear ‘socialism’ they think Stalin, gulags and bread lines. So I think it’s similar with ‘genocide.’ To me, to most Jews, that word means Hitler. Auschwitz. The Warsaw Ghetto. Schindler’s List. And, what worries me, when this charge is leveled at Israel, is that those doing the leveling are trying to say: ‘See? You’ve become the Nazis.’ Which, by the way, is a charge a number of Israeli writers and thinkers have made as well.”

“So why not simply dismantle the State if it’s so far gone?” A new voice asked this, Theo.

“Well, that’s the thing,” I replied. “Getting back to Aaron Sorkin’s unredeemability. First off, I think it’s foolish and absurd to suggest mass emigration of any group. The people who are there, and want to be there, should be able to stay. But to make that work is going to mean compromise on both sides.”

“Even for the Palestinians, who’ve suffered so much oppression and occupation?”

“Yes, them too. I know it’s easy to say ‘it was their homeland, they’ve always been the majority in historic Palestine, the place should be theirs.’ But given the demographics, I think any one group dominating is and probably always was unrealistic. There used to be Zionists who wanted a bi-national state; the movement my grandparents belonged to used to stand for that. I know that’s considered dead-on-arrival these days.”

“So you support a one-state solution?” Theo said, a bit surprised. I shrugged.

“I would never rule anything out. Honestly, one-state, two-state, twenty-three-state, heck, call it guacamole-state. I think what matters less than the nomenclature is a formula that allows everyone to thrive and be free, which means going back to first principles.”

“I hear the engineer in you talking. You know, not all problems are solvable technocratically,” Theo said.

“I know. And I totally know this isn’t happening right now. But here’s what I think: Israel needs a constitution; there’s been talk that the only reason it never had one isn’t out of some Westminster-style parliamentary procedure, it’s because they never wanted to admit all the Palestinian descendants from pre-1948 to drown out the Jewish majority. But a constitution can help with that, if it includes unbreakable guarantees like Right of Return as a form of constitutional refuge. Yes, I know that seems to throw a wrench into ‘equal rights,’ but it doesn’t have to. The Palestinians, for their part, need to stop their own century-long freak-out over immigration diminishing their own numerical superiority. If you look back at their resistance to Jewish immigration, it almost sounds like Trump and his Mexican wall.”

“But those aren’t in any way the same thing,” Eleanor said.

“They’re not. But xenophobia isn’t OK just because certain people practice it. Now, if it’s a question of fights over scarce resources, or groups hoarding for themselves, that’s a different issue. But, logically and logistically, historic Palestine has the room and resources for everyone who does or wants to live there. It’s on the denser side, but so’s the Netherlands. We can make it work, particularly with two highly-educated, sophisticated peoples.”

“Alright, then? Do the Palestinians get a Right of Return?”

“Whatever the framework, I say anyone who has a historic and contemporary status there should be able to live there, anywhere. I was just reading Omer Bartov’s Israel: What Went Wrong? where he describes a Palestinian Arab family who actually wanted to live in a Jewish settlement, and were not allowed to because of the belief that groups must be kept separate. I think that’s totally messed up. A monocultural ethnostate is not what Israel-or Palestine-should ever be. Maybe it’s my bias, growing up mostly in North America, but I believe in pluralism. I think we all do. And, believe it or not, Israel actually has quietly become a pretty pluralistic place. There’s the significant Arab minority in the country. There’s Druze. There’s Bedouins. No, they haven’t always been treated fantastically, but there’s some semblance of egalitarianism there we can build on. Then there’s the Jews. Israel’s Jewish community is incredibly varied-including, as I was saying, a large Middle Eastern community that’s shockingly similar to the Arabs they’d lived around for centuries. So, why not make it a little more diverse, slowly let back in those who left or were kicked out, and make it one nation, complete? Maybe even give it a name like ‘The Abrahamic Confederation.’”

“But then, you’re an anti-Zionist. You’re talking the destruction of the Jewish state.”

“See, that’s the thing…I don’t think I am. And I think Israelis who think that, understandably in these times, also aren’t quite seeing it. Why does a Jewish state have to have a Jewish majority by X amount? States can possess characteristics based on their founders, their traditions, their history…it doesn’t have to be because of an 80% majority. But to safeguard these characteristics, maintain the notion of Jewish sovereignty, and build trust between people, constitutional guarantees-and the will to uphold them-must exist. It might seem impossible now, but so did the EU in the 1930s when Albert Einstein proposed it.”

“Well, what about the Palestinians who want to return to villages the Jews destroyed and are now living on top of?”

“If you’re talking contemporaneously, what’s going on in the West Bank, there’s no excuse for it, taking people’s land. Historically, though, it gets more complicated. If there are villages, long abandoned and forgotten, maybe some can be brought to life. But the idea of everyone from 1948 getting the exact street and house back that they held 80 years ago? You know, a few years ago I went on a big round-the-world trip, and stopped in Riga, Latvia, where my own ancestors lived. I snapped some photos of some elegant buildings, and when I showed them to some elderly cousins-in Israel, turns out-they said to me ‘we lived there!’ Now, much as that looks like some pretty awesome real estate, nobody in my family is planning to call dibs on those apartments.”

“Yes, but that’s different than saying that to someone whose family has lived in a refugee camp for those 80 years.”

“True. But time passes, things change. We can have a solution, but it requires everyone to bend a little. I know lots of Zionist folks point to the refugees from Arab countries who were kicked out after the 1948 war and say ‘we did our part absorbing our people; we’re done’; I also know it’s easy to look at those expulsions and say ‘well, that was legitimate Arab retribution for the Nakba.’ But you know what? Israel did take those people in, resettled them. They did the same for Jews from the former Soviet Union. And other places. So it is possible to do something like that again.”

“But since none of this looks at all likely, aren’t you just dreaming?”

“Maybe…but I think, with all that’s happened, it’s time to lean in to a bit of dreaming. I mean, we’ve tried everything else. There are, now, a small number of brave Palestinian and Israeli voices pushing for this. There’s Omer Bartov, whom I mentioned. There’s also Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, Amin Abed, and Samer Sinijlawi. I know we’re all voices in the wilderness right now, but way I see it, it’s the only way forward. Because the only alternative is forever living by the sword. And I have to believe we can be better than that.”

Originally published at https://theendofdays.substack.com on August 27, 2026.

Gander, Newfoundland, Canada. An airbase at the edge of nowhere that became the crossroads of everywhere during World War Two. Ten thousand personnel of all walks of life, and, naturally, all sexual orientations. Some, of course, had to stay secret.

Pilots were officers, many seasoned, coming from the War in Europe. Mechanics were mostly enlisted men, local boys whose dreamy passions of flight hadn’t yet been fulfilled. Between them ran the lines of military life-rank, class, accent, mess privileges, the invisible velvet rope separating officers from other ranks. But war loosens what it claims to contain, turning discretion into a kind of unofficial currency.

An RAF pilot officer had status. He could give orders, invent errands, justify a late-night inspection, explain why an aircraftman had been kept behind to discuss a magneto, a chart, a fuel mixture, a crosswind landing. He could be protected, at least temporarily, by polish and bearing. An RCAF aircraftman mechanic had less latitude. He could be punished for the same desire, with no officer’s mess, no school ties, no assumption that his private life was merely eccentric rather than criminal.

That is, if he even knew himself enough to know.

For two men who wanted one another, Gander offered both danger and cover. The base was crowded, anonymous, and run to exhaustion. Men slept in barracks, waited for fog to lift, awoke to engines warming up before dawn. A look held too long bred suspicion, even violence. A touch had to become instruction. Desire had to disguise itself as apprenticeship.

Perhaps a pilot officer could play teacher, train an aircraftman to fly as cover. Except, the military was no flying club. Training was logged, assigned, regulated. Yet aviation has always contained informal margins: cockpit familiarization, taxiing instruction, explanation of instruments, a few minutes at the controls in empty air if no one asked too many questions. A pilot might say the mechanic was useful because he understood engines. The mechanic might say he wanted to know what the machines felt like when they left the earth.

The tragedy-and the beauty-is that such a relationship would have needed to become most visible exactly where it had to remain hidden. On the flight line, a pilot could stand too close and call it instruction. In the cockpit, knees could touch out of cramped necessity.

Other things might bring together men with such desires from wildly disparate backgrounds. For some, the War was more than mere conflagration: it was a totemic, existential struggle for the future of humankind. For the most disaffected of Jews- there were plenty who felt no connection either to the threatened Old World communities of Europe, or toward the Zionists and their fever dreams of colonizing a land in the desert-there was, at least, a recognition of the stakes. But there was another group who saw the same situation differently: they were not Jewish, but had embraced a mythic notion that this was a national liberation movement like many others. Even if irreligious in their own camp, they nonetheless believed in this cause rooted in another peoples’ religion.

It’s not difficult to imagine two people like that, thrown together on an airbase in the middle of a war, building something unique with one another. Mythologies about exile, return, covenant, up against lived experience with Hebrew songs and summer camps. How would they influence one another? How would each come out of it, changed? And what future would they have beyond the cold, Atlantic Newfoundland fog in which their love emerged?

Originally published at https://theendofdays.substack.com.

The End of Days is a serialized historical novel about postwar working-class twentysomethings Daniel Brown and Emma Radomsky, childhood friends from Toronto whose lives diverge after World War II, only to converge again on the road to Palestine, 1948.

Daniel is an airplane mechanic who has spent his life dreaming of flight while hiding the truth of who he is. Emma is a former wartime codebreaker and left-wing Zionist whose ideals pull her toward Palestine. As Daniel is drawn into aircraft smuggling and Emma into kibbutz life, both confront the birth of Israel, the Palestinian Nakba, and the shattering cost of dreams made real.

This is fiction, grounded in family memory, historical research, and the lives of ordinary people caught inside extraordinary events.

Start with this chapter. New chapters are published every two weeks, with recaps at the top. You can subscribe for free and read the full archive in order.

Daniel wants airplanes more than he wants almost anything else-except, perhaps, a life he does not yet have the language to name. A Jewish boy from Toronto from a onetime rich family that lost it all, he’s restless and closeted in a world that has no place for him. He spends the war as a mechanic at Ferry Command in Gander, Newfoundland, where a young, idealistic RAF pilot changes the course of his life. By 1948, his love of machines draws him into a secret aircraft-smuggling operation bound for Palestine.

Emma is the believer Daniel could never quite become. Brilliant, idealistic, and drawn to patterns others miss, she passes through wartime codebreaking before returning to the left-wing Zionist movement of her youth. In Palestine, her dream of equality and renewal collides with the human cost of history.

This is not a polemic, nor is it a mythic origin story. It is a novel about people who believed history could be remade, only to find themselves remade by history.

Two of my grandparents were part of a trail of left-wing idealists who’d lived World War II in North America…only to chuck the postwar life for an uncertain future, half a world away, in Mandatory Palestine in 1947. One grandparent had a background in aviation, and they both had a fellow-traveler friend who was thought to be queer.

In the aftermath of two Octobers ago, with new conflicts breaking out in the region, and many recalibrating their worldviews, I did what I knew best: I wrote. On top of tales from my forebears, I’d read and heard other stories that connected to theirs that have largely gone untold. With all the flattening of the events of those days, I felt now was the time to tell these tales.

This is fiction grounded in years of reading, family memory, and historical research. It does not pretend to be comprehensive. It follows a finite set of characters whose perspectives are partial, human, and shaped by their time.

This story is free, and I plan to keep it that way. Since it’s emerging a little at a time, we’re collectively embarking on this journey together. The prose, characters, structure, and research are my own. Some illustrations are AI-generated concept images, prompted and curated by me to evoke the period.

It’s my hope that, whatever perspective you bring, this tale edifies, enlightens, and engages, revealing how dreams, ideals, and loves fare when they collide with the realities of history.

Originally published at https://theendofdays.substack.com.

I’ve been quieter on here of late as I’ve been cooking up something a little different.

Specifically, a bit of serialized fiction. It’s a story based on tales from my own forebears (plus a pile of research), which I’m currently publishing, chapter by chapter, over here.

Whether you believe history repeats, rhymes or echoes, events have made this story jarringly relevant once more. The events in Palestine, and later Israel, between 1947 and 1948 set up so many of the conditions for the present-day geopolitics of the Middle East.

But that’s the big picture. Confronted with the scale of such events, most of us wonder: what was it like for regular people on the ground? What brought them to act, and react, the way they did, in the face of the broad sweep of history? How do people’s beliefs and behaviors measure up in the face of sometimes-unsavory reality?

Since I’m me, I couldn’t also help but wonder what it would’ve been like as outsiders within the outsider liberation struggles they were involved in. To wit: being LGBTQ+ in those places and times.

And so, I present The End of Days: A Novel of Flight and Exile. Follow Daniel, a queer airplane mechanic with a love of pulp-sci-fi, and Emma, a socialist former wartime code-breaker, as they navigate different paths to the Israel/Palestine conflict in 1947 and 1948.

Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction, albeit based on historical events. For those on all sides of this long-running struggle, I hope it serves to enlighten, edify, and engage.

It’s no secret my spouse is a bone fide Disney adult; I sometimes joke that he’d wanted a kid so he could continue his Disney reveries. Some of it is coming of age as a Millennial, a generation less cynical and more open to popular culture than my own sometimes-snarky Gen X (though many of us, including me, rejected a lot of that cynicism).

At the same time, Millennials were kids during the Disney Renaissance, that late-1980s-through 1990s era where the studio put out a suite of celebrated animated films concurrent with significant theme park expansion. As for me, my sublime-appreciating parents had always been enchanted by the studio’s offerings — and as an outspoken nerd from way back, I welcomed the growth and expansion of the company, as they welcomed Marvel and Lucasfilm under their wing, along with Winnie-the-Pooh, the Muppets, along with their classics (and a few not-so-classics; we’re still trying to pretend Operation Dumbo Drop didn’t happen).

Our first visit with Leon was when he was barely a few months old, right before pandemic-era lockdowns came into effect. As the world reopened, we began excursions to Orange County, and soon made the pilgrimage down there a regular occurrence. Over the years, we’ve brought along (and made) friends, more than a few of whom were fellow Disney adults; met up with extended family members; and generally gotten to know the California parks inside and out as they completed their most recent waves of expansion. I probably know the location of every bathroom in those two parks.

Disney Adulting

The Disney theme parks elicit seemingly at least as many opinions as there are guests. Elite types disdain them as hoi polloi schlock. Multitudes more are alarmed by those rising prices, twinned with reminiscences of the halcyon days of $99 annual passes. And all of us want to do practically anything to avoid lines.

So what’s a Disney Adult parent to do?

Mathew, true to form, figured out all the hacks, and even did some TikToking about it a bit ago. Basically, the key to the parks is this: do whatever you can to arrive early, preferably just as the park opens. Although there will be other hordes there for rope drop, as it’s known, it’s still scant numbers compared to the numbers you’ll see later in the day. Knock out as many rides as possibly early on, then you can slow down and do other activities later in the day.

The same is true for dining: sit-down Disney restaurants aren’t really all that different price-wise from equivalent restaurants elsewhere, and though their quick-serve is on the pricier end for what it is, it’s often of higher quality, with generally good options for vegetarians and vegans. But here too, a trick: tables at most of the in-demand restaurants are snapped up almost immediately when reservations open up. That’s typically at the sixty-day mark, early in the day here on the West Coast. Glad I have an early-rising spouse.

There are also Lightning Lanes (once upon a time a similar such offering, FastPass, was free, but nowadays it’s no longer) to skip the lines. For those with bigger budgets, a stay at a Disney hotel (there are only three at Disneyland, but many more at the Florida parks) traditionally offered up to an hour of early access to the parks, but looks like that perk’s going away soon as well. Other buy-in-bulk options include annual passes for park admission, or even joining Disney Vacation Club, a point-based timeshare option that’s so popular that they have no need for those cheesy timeshare presentations; occasionally, a DVC contract even sells for a higher price than when bought. Arbitrage never looked so magical.

“I watched him grow up at Disneyland”

Looking (with some mistiness) at photos of past visits, I’m not sure if we’re living out a cliché. But then, clichés exist for a reason. It’s the stuff Mad Men character Don Draper talks about in that first-season finale, pitching the Carousel slide projector to the folks at Kodak. He mentions a sentimental bond with the product, which is exactly the way so many Disney adults and kids feel. Sure, it’s a product, but it’s made by artisans who care deeply about their craft, telling stories as timeless as the myths and legends on which they’re based.

Then there’s nostalgia, Don Draper says. Delicate, but potent. The Disney parks try to fulfill the greatest aspects of travel: it’s ability to bring people together through shared, novel experiences. Its a carousel, literally and figuratively, allowing us to travel the way a child travels. Bringing us back to a place where we know we are loved.

Although we’ll be taking a hiatus from the park in Southern California, the title of this piece hints at further adventures — Disney and otherwise — yet to come.

I’ve become more familiar with the world of cruising over the years; my spouse practically grew up cruising, and from him and his broader family have been learning the lay of the land (or sea, as it were) on this mode of travel. The travel-savvy are aware it has more than a few distinctions from terrestrial holidays.

For one thing, cruising operates at a different cadence. Since it’s rarely a mode of transit anymore, there’s less provision for the sort of efficiency frequent travelers expect. You might wait awhile for luggage to arrive in your room the first evening (seen that); if you get a random bout of nausea and a few, uhm, expulsions, they may confine you to quarters (ditto); if you encounter a mishap, expect to wait in a long line at the cruise services desk — and then not always find an expert at the other end to solve your problem (haven’t we all).

But there’s one more distinction, particularly from airlines: there are hardly ever mistake fares in cruising, and little if any standard in the industry on how they’re handled and honored. In the air travel industry, whole websites have emerged to harvest mistake fares and pass them on to eager travelers; as a rule, airlines have largely accepted these.

So it was with more than a little trepidation that we showed up at the Port of Los Angeles one uncharacteristically cloudy April day to see how our intended seven-day journey down to Mexico would end up.

It began nearly two years ago, when Mathew, scoping out future travel, spotted a fare for a two-bedroom suite on a seven-day Mexican Riviera sojourn that seemed impossible. And yet, with the aid of a travel agent family member, we learned it was legit, and the booking went through with no issues.

There’s really no standard in the travel industry for what constitutes a “mistake fare.” Technically these are those fares entered into the system by accident at an absurdly low price — $50 instead of $5,000 for an international long-haul business class seat. Occasionally these are even put out by the airline itself in order to move perishable inventory. But if your too-good-to-be-true fare disappears within hours, and is never acknowledged in any promotions, it was probably a mistake fare.

This particular outing was on a ship we’d been on before — on my first cruise, in fact, way back in 2014. The Navigator of the Seas, a ship going back to the late 1990s, had been recently refurbished — “amplified,” in Royal Caribbean parlance — and though we’d grown blasé about more basic amenities on mid-range cruise lines, the opportunity to do this one up suite-style was most intriguing. We’d been on a couple of base-level suites on shorter cruises in the past, and even at that level relished the difference: the staff are expertly trained in hospitality, to the point that our little guy’s practically become friends with some of them. Reservations for shows, escorted expediency in boarding and disembarkation…it’s something of a business class experience for a leisure-style activity that abolished Titanic-era classes decades back.

So would we get all that this time?

Having found the fare, Mathew felt especially nervous as we unloaded at the terminal. But as we arrived, boarded, and made our way onto the ship, everything went smoothly. We were immediately impressed by the refurbishment; it made this almost three-decade old ship feel fresh. The Voyager-class ships were the first to boast a large open indoor promenade spanning multiple decks, and it remains a striking feature of this vessel and the newer ones that have literally expanded the concept.

Were we stressing out more than we needed to? Maybe. Then again, it’s probably no surprise to many that the dimensions of our travels have transformed over the years. Sometimes I wonder if in my solo years I was trying to recapture the experience of being a child on family trips: that comforting sense that everything’s already planned out for you, that never-before-experienced adventures await. As an independent adult, once you get good enough at providing for and entertaining yourself, you can almost make it feel that way again.

But throw a spouse and a child into the mix? Faced with the challenge, some utterly refuse to travel while they have small children. Some others are well-to-do enough to leave the little ones at home with a nanny, or, (talk about real suite lifestyle) actually bring the nanny with them on holiday. We’re not too big on the former, and so far aren’t quite the latter either. If there’s one thing that both Mathew’s and my passion for travel bring forth, it’s the notion that Leon won’t be the kid who never goes anywhere — and, more significantly, that he’d be the kid who’d want to go anywhere.

Sure, that’s great from his perspective, but as an adult with said little one, the experience becomes one of tour operator rather than tourist. Far fewer things can readily be left to chance. I’d once been thought of as an over-planner, but back then that really only meant sketching out the broad strokes of an itinerary as budgeting required: hotel and plane tickets in advance (sometimes not much in advance), and all good. I didn’t need to know what day I was going to see the Eiffel Tower, or for how long I’d trek among the ruins of Machu Picchu or Angkor Wat. I could stay out all night if I wanted (and even did, now and again).

But that was then. A bored, frustrated, hungry or fatigued child erases all that, and can turn spontaneity into a nightmare.

This, perhaps, is one panacea of cruising, which suite class only augments. We felt our first wave of relief when our amiable concierge welcomed us to the lounge (a space cleverly carved out of the ship’s topmost deck), and mentioned he’d already booked us times and tickets on hard-to-get ship activities. This has always been a bit of a thing with cruising, especially so in recent years as this travel mode’s popularity has soared. Since you’re literally a captive audience, scarce, in-demand activities turn into a Darwinian scramble for showtimes and reservations.

In our case, he’d booked us times at the ice skating rink — yes, I remember this from our first cruise on this vessel; as a native-born Canadian I always joke that we’re issued skis and skates at birth, meaning I have to try skating on a ship even though I sort-of suck at skating (Mathew’s better, in spite of having grown up in California). Though Leon wasn’t too keen on trying this out just yet (no worries, kiddo, snow’s easier to fall on anyway so still hoping for a skier), both Mathew and I had our go. Pro tip: it may be a refrigerated ice rink, but all that activity warms you up quickly. Dress in layers.

We didn’t get off at our first port, Cabo San Lucas, as it required a tender and, once more with a small one, excursions of this kind become a bigger logistical endeavor. On top of that, I’d been to Cabo before years back, and while it’s a fun destination with a nearby historic town on the other side of the peninsula (San Jose del Cabo, the second “Cabo” in Los Cabos), it wasn’t as memorable a spot as others.

Since our last stop — and, so far, my favorite spot in Mexico from travels past — saw the ship dock a good distance from the center of town, we didn’t get to see too much of Puerto Vallarta. We strolled around some local markets (after navigating the maze of its cruise terminal, for which the phrase “exit through the gift shop” is an understatement), and did another little reconnoiter.

Suite class or not, we did out utmost to enjoy this ship’s offerings on this slightly chilly April cruise down Mexico way: the roving piano player who rolls in and out of elevators with showtune renditions; the eateries which offer an elevated experience (here, too, things have changed: cruising used to include high-tone food, going back to the days of ocean liners; nowadays, main dining fare is just alright, and higher-end chow is more often had for a moderate fee); the game of laser tag; the towel animals (Leon started a collection of these on the nightstand in his bedroom); the exceptionally good ice show put together by the performers themselves.

Also, any concerns about intimidation or family-unfriendliness in suite class evaporated from minute one. On top of staff, who were terrific, we also met a colorful, diverse panoply of fellow suite guests (some of whom may or may not have scored the same fare): a family from Vancouver, Canada whose Mom’s a travel agent (lots to discuss there); an older couple from Southern California — one a former tech-finance director, another a kindergarten teacher — who likewise took a shine to the little guy, while somehow simultaneously holding equally great conversations with the grown-ups.

Since this was an Easter cruise, there was a holiday-themed egg hunt, a search for eggs containing little rubber duckies Royal Caribbean has tried to adopt as a mascot. On our last night, Leon arranged these on the tub, all in a row, mirroring the days and nights on this vessel. He may not have realized it, but it made for a fitting tribute to an adventure where the uncertain and unexpected combine to build the meanings and memories that are for me travel’s raison d’être.

Here’s to (accidental) suite life!

It was that long ago, in June of 2010, that I nervously stepped into a taxi from my little place in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill, headed to the event at a Castro Street bookstore to herald the release of the first-ever book-length anything I’d ever written.

Platitudes about timespan notwithstanding, what strikes me most about those days, when the book and the trip it was about were happening, was the youthful notion that after, say, one’s thirties, all the big life transitions were done. After all, most of us are settled at that age: married, owning first homes (well, once upon a time), having first kids, all set in careers. Life’s future tragedies — the passing of a parent; the failure of a marriage; a massive socio-economic shock — often seem distant, or abstract.

Or as Elastigirl from The Incredibles put it, “we’re superheroes… what could happen?”

Of course, as the years roll on, many of us discover that’s a blend of hubris and horseshit.

Maybe it’s a by-product of these fractured times, but it seems for many the years that follow the freewheeling thirties are anything but placid these days. Future tragedies move into the present. World events move in unpredictable directions. All those best-laid plans go up in smoke.

Perhaps most surprising, then, is what emerged for me out of all that tumult: after decades of both figurative and literal wandering, I finally did settle down, just in time for my adopted homeland to legalize same-sex marriage. Together with my husband and associated creatures, we set about doing two things I never would have imagined for myself that evening when I got into that taxi — or that earlier evening almost two years before, where I boarded my first flight across the Atlantic in two decades: become owners of a single-family home, and welcome a child into our family.

Perhaps least surprising to those who’ve been through it: these supposedly banal journeys of domestication were no less of a whirlwind than the times that came before. The home purchase turned into a multi-year adventure, as we got caught in the winds of San Francisco’s housing, construction, and affordability crisis. We made it out OK, and the house turned out gorgeous, though in pandemic times we were forced to make some big changes once more.

The little one’s arrival was on a whole other level: on top of the usual life-changing clichés about the arrival of kids in one’s life, the whole thing came amid other professional and personal stuff that frankly could merit an entire blog and book of its own (maybe someday). Oh, yeah, and then that little thing called the pandemic happened in the middle of it all.

Yet, through it all, we made a pledge to Leon: as descendants of families of nomads, one thing would always remain a focus in our lives.

Travel!

And so, this project evolves in a fresh, new direction: the continuing voyages, in Star Trek-speak, of a whole family of travelers. Maybe a bit like The Incredibles after all. The cast: me, onetime queer backpacker and child of overseas immigrants; and Mathew, son of two military kids, accomplished global explorer, and master logistician.

Join us as we bring Leon, now five, and help show him — one more Disney reference incoming — a whole new world.