Grandpa had a regular speech he'd give me every time I came by, since I remember myself in my earliest memories, it went like this: “Even though the village is small, it has more secrets than the mountains themselves could carry. We are cowards. We know everything, but refuse to speak about anything.

One day, a man will come and he will try to unbalance the scale, to put the truth on one end and expose everything we’ve been hiding for all of these years. Because we are cowards, we will try with all our might to stop him, even by taking his life. More men will come doing the same thing, and because we are cowards, we will treat them the same.

Time and Again. I will die, you will be grown up and your children will grow too. You and your children will carry together the burden of our sins, and the sins of our fathers and grandfathers”.

This is my grandfather speech. Every time I would visit him, even if I was just running past his house as a 5 year old, he would summon me in to hear his speech. At this point in the speech he would always stop and ask for a glass of water. I would bring it, watch him drink and he would continue, every time, exactly the same without missing a beat. “Us Arabs, we are cowards, yes cowards! To rid ourselves of our cowardness, we need to change ourselves from the inside. We need to investigate our secrets and revolt against ourselves. Only then we can rid ourselves of the fear in our hearts”.

Then Grandfather would raise his stick and wave it at me with a big smile, “get out of here you little fool, go revolt and rebel against all of this!”. I would stand on my thin little legs and run out to play with the rest of the children.

When grandfather died, his funeral was modest. I remember my father and uncles carrying the coffin. Behind them, three old men dragged themselves alone, looking as if the only reason they came to the funeral was to see what their final respects will look like, when their time comes soon enough. None of the village elders, or the respectful men of religion came to my grandfather's funeral.

Since the revolution began in Syria, everything has changed. Everything has changed and stayed the same, in Syria and everywhere around. “The Taste Of Apples Is red” tells a story from our current times, the times we, the Arabs, are going through right now. It’s about a particular time, in which we do not want to expose our secrets because we are still cowards, or at least we believe so. It will investigate the secrets that we are so afraid to deal with, and that are no different than any other secrets of any other peoples in the world.