In the city of Nablus in the West Bank, Rasheed Abueideh owns a nut roastery, where he works to provide for his family. He is also an award-winning game developer. A decade ago, as the 2014 Gaza war raged, he created a harrowing video game called Liyla and the Shadows of War, about a man trying to find safety for his daughter and himself – but as missiles fall around them, it quickly becomes clear that there is no safety. When the game was released in 2016, it was initially rejected by Apple on the grounds of inappropriate content, a decision reversed after a week of outcry.
Despite the acclaim and attention that Liyla received, however, Abueideh has not been able to raise funding for his next game through conventional means. The game he envisions, Dreams on a Pillow, is about the 1948 Nakba, told through a folk tale about a mother in the Arab-Israeli war, in which more than half the Palestinian population was displaced. He tells me that his game has been rejected almost 300 times, by publishers and providers of cultural grants, for being too controversial, too much of a risk. “Talking about the Palestinian story was always forbidden,” he says.
