Tel Aviv Diary: Karen Alkalay-Gut

We’ve begun counting the number of times in the local news the word “normative” is used. Usually the defense lawyer brings up the word first – a “normative” family gets killed, a “normative” teenager robs an old lady, etc. etc. The big problem with this term is that in Israel the norms are variable and changing. And since the occupation violence is becoming normative. In addition, the more we learn about ‘normative’ people behaving in an antisocial manner, the more we become innured and accept antisocial behavior as normative.

>”No, no sunlight!” I screamed like a vampire at Ezi as he dragged me out of the house. I didn’t think it would do me any good to go to Ein Harod to see this first display of a private collection of Israeli art. “I’m still sick.” But he would have his way. (This might be a slight exaggeration) But there was a picture or two that made it worth it. Uri Lipschitz’s abstraction called “Kfar Kassem” that shows the shock and blood and confusion of the massacre there in 48. Shalom Sebba’s sketch of the stained glass windows for the parliament, with its twelve tribes of Israel overwhelmed me – because each son was so typical of the present members of parliament: jealous, suspicious, unfaithful… No wonder Sebba never got to make those windows. They are brilliant. I started telling my sister-in-law about them and she laughed, “You know my mother saved them from the waste basket,” she said. “They were individual sketches and Sebba wanted to throw them out.” They are so beautiful, so human, so profound, and to think they almost were destroyed by their maker. There were numerous other gems in this collection – Batya Apollo’s amazing consciousness, Yohanan Simone’s early clarity, Reuven Rubin’s family with donkey (in which the donkey is the focus) and Aharon Messeg’s darkening vision, for example. What I couldn’t get into were all those impressionistic paintings of landscape. When the light here is so clear, so sharp, why did so many Israeli painters make their blurred visions of the scene? Was their idealism clouding the paintings?

In any case we really had to leave in order to get some shopping done for Shabbat, and although I considered the nearby Arab town of Uhm El Fahem I decided it was too much of a hassle to shop where I don’t exactly know where things are, and we raced back to our neighborhood before the local supermarket closed. That turned out to be funny because I had never noticed before that in the supermarket where I shop all the workers and many of the shoppers are Arab.

A kassam costs 200-300 shekel to put together, about $75 max. Our iron dome system costs thirty million or so. and the Iron Dome doesn’t stop the kassam. The magic wand program will have to be finished soon and that will stop the smaller rockets. It’s cheap to kill and expensive to protect. But we really have to spend the money. The barrage of rockets this morning may not have killed anyone, but makes life impossible for anyone in range. And of course, makes it necessary to retaliate instead of concentrating on bulding relations. Terrible.

I called Naim Araidi today to tell him that even without an invitation I want to come to Mrar for the festival. Of course, he issued an invitation on the spot. How cheeky of me, how uncharacteristic! But I didn’t want to plan to go to Italy and then find out that the Nissan Festival was on the same date. I missed it last year and I missed it, and for some reason it is very important for me to be there. There is a hope I feel there that I never feel elsewhere, even though the level of the poetry is not at all higher. So Naim told me to save April 2-5, and I will. You come too.

Egypt and Gaza have a long, rich and unhappy past. Egypt has never been happy with Gaza, and gave it to Israel just to get rid of it. Personally, I liked the people I met in Gaza – stubborn and strong. When I was there in 74-5 they were also often friendly and as excited to meet me as I was to meet them. I think about each person I met there – here’s one example from back then:

Gaza 1974

I

After dinner I’m alone with the grandmother,

while the men talk business
and wives feed the children
bumping each other in the hidden kitchen.

I am a guest, an English teacher new
to the Middle East, without tongue,
and I cannot play in pantomime
like my daughter with the children and the goats.

In this bare room
the old woman talks
as if eventually I must understand

her language

since she speaks in the feminine.

II

When I cannot answer, even after her long

probing looks, she shrugs,
takes her crochet hook from a pocket,

and points out the window
to a girl
dancing solemnly alone.

Her gnarled hands, wound with pink wool, move easily,

and soon she is making lovely rosettes in the bodice.
I take the hook and try to imitate, slip,
slip again, finally latch through the last eye

to pull the rose together. She smiles,
I show her a stitch of my own
which she examines, unravels,
then duplicates with a flourish.

With orders to stay in bed I enjoy a day of television. I like to skip most of the programs and go right to the commercials. The one where the burglar breaks into the window and then says to his cell, “I’m inside. I’ll call you on the landline.” The rap song about a chocolate pudding (milki). The slaves in Egypt regretting that they’re missing their tv programs. The commercials are definitely better than the programs.

What do I know from profiling? Almost every time I go abroad I do something wrong, like forget to sign the customs form in the right place or cough too much or say something stupid and wind up getting more than a once over, while people who look suspicious to me waltz past me to the luggage. One time I waited forever for Ezi to get searched because his back brace set off the alarm. So my idea of profiling is a bit skewed. And when some American asked me – the day I got there – what I thought of profiling about 10 years ago, I said “wonderful!” He turned around and walked away. For years after that I would examine and reexamine my answer. It must be awful to be picked out of a crowd because of your race. What is really needed is careful individual evaluations by trained, intelligent people.

It’s not the computer, it’s me. I’m sick. Nothing serious, nothing contagious, but enough to make me want to stay in bed. I went to a reception this evening but I raced back to my quilt. Just in time to watch a little program on Amos Oz, and to revel in his magic, his absolute intellectual beauty. His overt criticism of Israel’s policies has diminished in the past years, but not because his beliefs have changed. He is simply unwilling to be associated with ‘the other side’. Why do you love your country, he’s asked. Because it is flesh of my flesh.

After having celebrated new years in Ecaterinburg (at 9) and Budapest (at 10) we forgot about the closer neighbors and the holiday at home and fell asleep. But too much champagne has a negative effect on my nervous system and now i am up for the night, watching the news about the Grad rocket attack on Netivot. Something like a new years promise.

It is very strange to see films in Israel. Not as strange as it used to be, but I remember when it was the wild west. The first movie I saw in this country was in 1965 in Beer Sheva. I think it was a Belmundo film but the film itself didn;t matter – the and everyone laughed, or threw things at each other over the rows… ah, the film didn’t matter at all. Tonight we saw the Coen Brothers, “A Serious Man,” which is completely different when the audience knows all the languages and linguistic references, but few of the social references. America of the sixties is strange to Jews who grew up here. So my laughing sometimes echoed hollowly in the theater, and sometimes was countered by a silent accusation of antisemitism. But everyone understood the Yiddish, the Herew, and the religious references. I myself thought the film the Jewish version of “No Country for Old Men.”