Los Angeles, United States – Leila Giries was eight years old when she fled with her family from Ayn Karim, a Palestinian village on the outskirts of Jerusalem, during the creation of the Israeli state and violent expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians in 1948.
More than seven decades later, her memories remain vivid: families rushing to pack their most vital belongings, prayers as a truck full of refugees drove along a cliffside road, the searing pain of her mother using a flaming piece of cloth to cauterise an open wound when she stepped on a nail.
