Review: In Deena Helm’s debut, a haunted house carries generations of Palestinian trauma

JEDDAH: “Our Cut of Salt” is an extraordinary debut partly because it understands that the haunted-house story has always been most effective when it is, at heart, a story about people and the fears they carry with them. Under Palestinian American writer Deena Helm’s pen, a haunted house in Haifa that once was home to a Palestinian family is not merely the site of a ghost story; it is itself a record of displacement, violence and belonging, as well as an indictment of military occupation. For