Mr. Israel Shefi’s Night of Independence
[While the song from the radio can still be heard, Israel sits motionless, in such a way that it is hard to tell whether he is checking a test, thinking, or is just sunk in his place. Later, suddenly, the melody is interrupted in the middle by the beeps announcing the news. Hearing the beeps, Israel raises his head and listens with increasing…
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The Crazy Book
Arab Halva—moist, sticky, fibrous. The taste tears across my lips like a memory. Within me Jaffa stirs, wakens from sleep; eyes and faces of Jaffa.
I am there, it is afternoon, a city half-awake…
City of Many Days
The long-suffering city took in people with the strangest ideas, philosophers, freaks, madmen, each with his own nutty flavor, who vanished as suddenly as they appeared. Sometimes Jerusalem seemed to…
Yaʻakobi & Leidental
[Leidental’s room. Evening. Leidental. One of his fingers is bandaged.]Leidental:[To himself.] At eight fifteen I felt I cannot any more with myself. I had: regulation misery, pain to top…
A Son of Two Cities
No sooner had he laid his head on the pillow that he was fast asleep. His insomnia of the night before, his great fatigue on the sailing date, and the ship’s swaying in the waves—all combined to…
Early in the Summer of 1970
I believe I ought to go over the moment when I learned of his death once more.
A summer morning, the sky wide, June, last days of the school year. I rise late, faintly stunned, straight into the…
The Seagull
On a turquoise sea sails a ship. A sharp-eyed gull flies around the mast, swooping down from time to time to see what is happening on the ship, in all its decks. The boat has three decks and a bridge…