As a freelance journalist, I often rely on coffee shops to do my writing. In Ramallah it hasn’t always been easy to find one. But over the last year, new cafés – with a cup costing around six dollars – have popped up across the city. Despite rising inflation, these coffee shops are not only growing in number and size, but are often full of customers.
As I write this letter from one such establishment, six young women – all university students – sit to my left, giddy with laughter. They spread a large red poster across the table and begin working. The group tells me they meet here because ‘it’s familiar, and it allows us to come together safely to work or hang together’.
