He was born under a tin roof above which projectiles flew. He was born from anxiety, for you see, the bombs find their way through the sky, dark and blue. The hum was loud, so were the screams. He still remembers, the smell of fear and yellow hue. Between him and safety, space warps, expands, and shakes him to his knees. And now, the only rhythm he hears, is the sound of his weak heartbeats.

But what is a neuron?

Think of a neuron as the fundamental unit of processing in our brains. Analogous to transistors in a microcontroller or a processing unit, neurons, when connected intelligently together, can form rather intricate circuits that perform logic and computation quickly and efficiently . Zooming in on these circuits, a neuron receives inputs and decides whether to pass them to other neurons or not. However, this process is not as straight forward as it might first sound; there is a multitude of intertwined variables at play that dictate this process on the single neuron level. Let’s take a deeper look into what makes up a neuron.

From the part of the world where wind sounds like death, where cold carves on his bones a sad sonnet, where his heart fails to keep a rhythm the same way he fails to figure out who he is. From the part of the world where he sees the eyes of old men filled with misery every time he takes a bus, where he fails to remember childhood memories and even doubt that he had one, where he overthinks about solipsism instead of thermodynamics, where a fraction of his soul vanishes day after another, with every tear, with every laughter; from there he always wonders how he ended up here, in this place, with this mind, with this body, with these scars and their ache.

I wrote this three years ago in Arabic, it felt weird reading it again and translating it, Arabic follows English: - Start from the first time you ever dreamt, from the school bell, the folds of your copybook, and in between the letters of “good job”, and “keep it up”. From the cement throne, the broken doorstep of your classroom where you could see the mosque and from its window through which you could see the prison. From there, start a draft of yourself. From that metallic fence with the deadly sharp edges above your school’s gate, the long stares of love between high school students along the way to your classroom, the long list of silly, naïve promises they made each other which you did not understand with your pale brown hair and innocent, small, blue uniform; from there, begin to think about all the puzzles, organize all of the mysterious symbols. Ignore the fact that the prison might throw its curse at you and fill your life with detestation, that depression might fester in your heart like Israeli settlers in Jerusalem, or like drunken Arabs in Jerusalem […] Continue. From the underground shelters and their inclined ceilings that are painted with letters and names, one time over another, for each Palestinian prisoner sentenced for eternity, from the noise of the speakers around the tiny roads screaming some old, weak revolution songs that promised freedom and dignity, from there, you have always wondered, how can this ever heal the cigarettes burns from the bodies of those who spent years in Israeli jails, or the heartbreaking of a mother who lost her only child, or a citizen of Jerusalem who witnessed a Zionist bulldozer put his ancient house to ground. To the right of the margin of a blank page, make a draft for yourself, mutter there your secrets, your pains, and your sins […]. Live some time in your imagination, discover your fantasies, think deep about the concept of the self, and take care […]