The Power of Bread

The Power of Bread

Guest Writer: Twylla Alexander

“We bake this bread with love…for family, for friends, for peace.”

—Twylla Alexander in The Power of Bread.

Khalil is Palestinian; Leah is Israeli. Now second-grade classmates in Cairo, Egypt, they call each other "enemy." As the class prepares for its Breads of the World Festival, a mysterious power is at work in Khalil and Leah's lives, a power as simple as bread, yet as complex as peace.

The Power of Bread is based on a true story that happened 15 years ago when I was a 2nd grade teacher in Cairo. Two children in my class – a boy from Palestine and a girl from Israel – felt much the same about each other as Khalil and Leah. I was shocked! How could 8-year-old children dislike, even hate, someone they had never met?

The question continued to needle me that year, even as the real Leah and Khalil began to discover they had more in common than they thought. Prejudice had entered these children’s lives far too early. If left to its own destructive devices, without intentional efforts to look beyond differences, prejudices would deepen into adulthood, and the cycle would begin again.

I wondered if a book, a story – based in truth, told with a hint of magic, and the baking of bread – could provide children, and adults in their lives, a path for discussion and understanding. During the next 10 years of collaboration and writing, The Power of Bread found its voice.

As Khalil bakes bread with his Grandma Fatmah and Leah with her Grandma Haya, their grandmothers’ familiar blessings take on new meaning. A power stronger than hate begins to work its magic. In the communion of a common experience, the simple baking and breaking of bread…there is love.

Twylla Alexander

Twylla lives in Conway, Arkansas. She is the author of Labyrinth Journeys ~ 50 States, 51 Stories.