Hamdi lives in a block of flats with his parents and five siblings, in a Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of Bethlehem, West Bank. Their flat has a sitting area, a kitchen and three bedrooms. The camp was originally temporary, set up by the United Nations in 1948. More than sixty years later, it is still there, now housing three times as many inhabitants. It is overcrowded. Hamdi is thirteen years old and attends a boys’ school where his father hopes he will study hard enough to gain a degree, to give him better opportunities than his father had. Hamdi has experienced violence on the streets of Bethlehem. His sixteen-year-old half-brother was killed by soldiers during a demonstration against Israeli occupation, and at the age of nine, Hamdi was shot in the foot for confronting Israeli soldiers in a tank. His injury has not deterred him from further confrontations.
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