Why and when did you start writing?
When my father read stories to me on the kibbutz, I always
identified with the writers and thought about how they wrote the story.
I told my father I would be a writer, and that has been a part of my
identity ever since. It’s not something I ever decided or thought about
- it was simply part of who I was.
I remember when I was five or six, I "edited" Cinderella; I
felt the
story should mention at the start that Cinderella had unusually small
feet, to make it more realistic, since one shoe would ordinarily fit
many feet.
The first full-length book my father read to me was Alice in
Wonderland. I’ve noticed that echoes of Alice in Wonderland often
appear in my writing, though this is not something I have ever planned.
Another early literary experience was The
Little Matchgirl. I would beg
my father to read it to me, and he would refuse, because I would burst
out weeping each time. Finally he’d relent and I
would cry for about half an hour at the end of the story.
I identified with the matchgirl, because even though I was
part of a
close-knit community on the kibbutz, I was isolated from my parents at
night and during most of the day, which was difficult for us. Our
careworker was unpleasant and sometimes sadistic. As an adult I tried
to read the story to my daughter in the
library one day, and had to disappear behind a shelf, as I was crying
helplessly again. I was at the same time laughing at myself, and my
daughter was also quite amused, but I couldn't stop.
I guess it was also empathy that made me cry when I was
little. I
could not bear that this matchgirl had so little, and that no one cared
about her, and as a good little Marxist, I already knew that this was
not mere fiction.
My first attempt at fiction, though, was far from
compassionate! I
wrote a short novel when I was twelve, which bears some slight
resemblance to Stephen King's Carrie.
An unpopular girl takes
revenge... needless to say I was an outsider at school in Montreal. As
a friend of mine once said, society rides on the accomplishments of all
the people who were tormented when they were children.
You wrote for many years without trying to get published.
Why is that, and how has being published changed your life?
I have never been ambitious in terms of publishing. I’ve
been writing for thirty years, but I didn’t think about publishing,
because each time I finished a story or novel, I thought: the next one
will be better.
I was fifteen or sixteen when I saw Pasolini’s Decameron.
Pasolini
himself plays an artist who is working on a fresco. At the end of the
movie, the fresco comes to life, the angels begin to sing, and Pasolini
says something like: what is the point of creating, when what you dream
is always so much more beautiful?
That struck me very powerfully as a motif that would follow me
all
my life. The vision and the creation drift apart in the process of
creating, and that is a continual source of despair. But over the
years, I’ve learnt to accept and even be amused by the phenomenon. When
I completed Ten Thousand Lovers,
I felt that the novel was close enough
to my initial vision to be published. I was still hesitant, though,
because I was afraid of some aspects of publishing.
My fears were justified, in fact, but the letters I receive
from
readers, and the freedom I now have to write full-time, more than make
up for the drawbacks. Really, there is only one drawback: permanence.
The permanence of ridiculous misquotes in articles, the permanence of
the published text (no more rewrites!), the permanence of recorded
opinions that later change.
The misquotes range from major distortions to smaller
tampering,
such as editors changing my gender-neutral pronouns to masculine
pronouns. One of the most embarrassing misquotes had to do with the
relationship between Hebrew and Arabic. I was quoted as saying
something ridiculous about the origins of those languages. I imagined
my former PhD advisor reading the article and thinking I’d actually
made that comment, and demanding I return my degree… one has to develop
a sense of humour about these things, but I now understand why some
writers don’t want to give
interviews, and why performing artists often make only the blandest
statements. The Internet amplifies the misrepresentation.
There was also an unexpected disappointment: the discovery
that some reviewers read other reviews instead of reading
the book. I suppose it doesn’t seem worth it to them, to read an entire
novel in order to write a short review, for which they may not be
getting paid all that much. At the same time, reviewers do influence
potential readers, and it’s a pity to see some of them copying other
reviews.
But on the whole I’m glad now that some of my books are in
print,
because the miracle of reaching readers is very
inspiring. And the gift of time to write is also possible only because
I’ve started publishing.
The trilogy is set in politically hot territory; do you
feel that it is somehow propagating a specific political view?
Inevitably, my political perceptions come through in my
writing, as
does my view of life in general. Writers expose themselves completely
in their fiction: one is stripped naked. But my activist self and my
writer self are separate. As an activist, I have a specific analysis.
But as a
writer, I deal with ambiguity, unanswered questions, unknown territory.
As the South African writer, Njabulo Ndebele, has said,
fiction
frees you from the pre-determined formula. A novel seeks to expand
possibilities rather than narrow them. That is the great pleasure of
writing: the freedom to delve as deeply as one wishes, look at things
as closely as one wishes. I am always interested in the human story, in
the way people experience their surroundings and how they are affected
by them. Even when I do political work, such as Checkpoint Watch, I
feel I’ve been hurled into a human drama, and I want to know what
everyone involved is feeling and thinking. I live with my characters
before I start writing, and it’s their story I want to tell; their
story dictates what I write.
How does your Canadian identity help you write about Israel?
Like many Israelis who live outside Israel (about 750,000
according
to some estimates), I have never lost my Israeli identity, even though
English is now my primary language, and even though I have lived longer
in Canada than in Israel. As soon as I step off the plane in Israel, I
feel completely integrated. When I return to Canada, the adjustment
takes much longer. My personality appears to be more Israeli than
Canadian, especially in terms of the informality one finds in Israeli
culture.
In this trilogy that dual perspective emerges in different
ways. In Ten Thousand Lovers,
Lily moves in and out of memory; she is both
deeply immersed in the events that took place in Israel, and watching
them from a distance. In Look For Me,
Dana is the daughter of South
Africans, and she’s an activist, which means that she’s taken a step
back to reflect on policies that others take for granted.
She’s grown up reading Miss Read! You can’t get more of a contrast to
Israeli life than the quiet English villages of the Miss Read books. In
A Wall of Light, I move
closer to the heart of Israel, but once again
my main character, Sonya, is an outsider.
So I think it is probably easier for non-Israelis to enter the
world of my novels than it would be if I were writing
from an entirely Israeli perspective. When we write as insiders, we
open the doors to our literary world, and our readers enter at their
own risk. When we write as partial outsiders, we offer more guidance, a
tourist booth with brochures.
How did you come to create the characters in A Wall of
Light?
I fell in love with the characters of this novel, and I felt
truly
bereft when I’d finished. I wanted to meet them; I didn’t want to
accept that they didn’t exist in the real world. When I was in my
twenties, I wrote such dark stories and novels! That changed gradually
after I had a child. I think I
was so focussed on creating a gentle and friendly environment for my
daughter, and she amused me so much, that I began creating more hopeful
worlds. I didn’t lose interest in the lunatics and dour pessimists, but
I found myself writing more about gentler people who were trying to
find their way in a difficult and often tragic world.
Where do characters come from? I really can’t say. They came
to me
as if out of nowhere. I adore Noah; he’s so honest and funny and
straight-forward, and he’s also quite strong. I think I was interested
in his strength: how does he manage to remain so centred in the midst
of crisis and tragedy? I was probably exploring this question as I
wrote. I love his relationship with Kostya, and how he decides to ask
Kostya for advice when he begins to wonder about his sexual
orientation. I enjoyed writing about Noah at different ages, from ten
to twenty-two. One sees how his basic personality never really changes,
and the clues to his future are all there from the start. I am very
drawn to diaries, and have several boxes of diaries myself, going back
to age 12. I like to think about the way we choose to narrate our
stories, and the relationship between those stories and fiction - the
way events are recreated and redefined the minute you find words for
them and of course the endless ways in which a single event can be
recorded.
Having a deaf
character posed technical challenges; Sonya uses Sign, which is visual.
But I discovered that
people who lose their hearing when they are older continue to think in
spoken language as well as Sign. I’ve always been interested in Sign,
and I was glad to learn more about it; for example, I had no idea that
there were so many signing systems a different one for every country.
Kostya is also a character in Look For Me, and I knew from the
minute I mentioned his sister that she would be the third woman whose
love story I would try to tell. I also enjoyed developing his character
in A Wall of Light.
As I wrote, I began to sniff an allegorical undercurrent. I
made
every effort not to think about it, because thinking is
anathema to writing, in my experience. Writing for me has to be almost
entirely intuitive; when I decide a word or passage or plot element
isn’t right, it’s because it feels wrong. But I have academic training,
and I’m an analytic reader, so that side of me is also quite active. I
simply push it away. I was half-way through the novel before I noticed
that Sonya’s name has allegorical resonance.
When I finished writing the novel, an Israeli read the MS and
told
me that Sonya is an old-fashioned name, and that in 1973, when Sonya
was born, that name would not be an obvious choice. So I had the nurse
at the hospital write Tziyona on the birth certificate. My main
characters almost always come to me with names, though I do use a name
book
for minor characters. Noah just came with his name, as did Kostya. It
never ceases to amaze me how much coherence emerges from the
unconscious mind.
In Ten Thousand Lovers,
there is an episode in which a nurse influences the choice of a baby
name;
this would not be unusual in Israel. I was almost called Ada instead of
Edeet, but the kibbutz had already made a poster that said, Welcome
Edeet, and when my mother changed her mind, on the day I was born, she
was told the poster was already up and it would be a pity to
have to redo it.
Eli is not based on anyone I’ve known, though I suppose the
campus
womanizer is a familiar figure in universities everywhere. I think the
way I present certain aspects of Israeli culture may strike readers who
are not familiar with that culture as unrealistic. A reviewer of Ten
Thousand Lovers thought it was strange that the characters moved
so
easily from politics to personal topics, but that is typical of Israeli
discourse. Directness, informality, easy conversation about subjects
which might be considered taboo in other cultures, openness about sex,
the acceptance of eccentricity, the personalization of politics - all
these are quite characteristic. Within minutes, a taxi driver in Israel
will start describing his hernia operation, his son’s drug
rehabilitation, his despair over the conflict. No two people are alike,
of course, but there are cultural tendencies.
For all three books in the trilogy, I gave my completed drafts
to
Israelis to read, including at least one army person, so they could
find any mistakes I might have made, or offer suggestions. Though in
Israel my views of the conflict are considered left-wing, I made sure
to give the MS to right-wing Israelis as well, as I wanted to hear all
comments, from all sides. Everyone who read the MS had important
contributions to make, and helped with the accuracy of the details and
the credibility of the characters.
How are the three books of the trilogy connected, and how
do they differ from one another?
I had not set out to write a trilogy, but half-way through Ten
Thousand Lovers I realized that it would take three novels for
me to
release all the feelings about Israel which I had stored inside me. I
saw the novels as interconnected by theme, structure and setting, as
well as through the minor characters.
Writing the first novel, Ten
Thousand Lovers, was an extremely
emotional experience. I cried often, and I postponed writing the ending
because I knew how hard it would be for me. I was looking at very
painful issues in that novel. The tragedies of
war, the madness of the conflict, the cruelties of torture. I was also
looking back at the early days of the Occupation and at Lily’s past. In
Ten Thousand Lovers I
focussed on language and meaning. The novel was
influenced by midrash, which is a form of free textual interpretation,
where layers of meaning are unravelled through association and
imagination. I love Hebrew, its etymology and development, and I wanted
to write about language because the way we use words is so closely tied
to the way we understand and create our reality.
The original title of Ten
Thousand Lovers was The Things We
Do, and
that is what the novel is about: the things we do with our bodies, for
example: how the same body, the same few limbs and organs, can perform
acts of love as well as acts that cause unbearable pain. The
image at the end of the novel, the body of the child on the altar, is
an image of purity and potential - of the choices we make, to bring
down the sword or to let the child live. The first Israeli who used
that image, in a sculpture, to condemn war created an uproar, and the
sculpture was banished to the museum’s basement. Today there is more
acceptance of the view that fighting is not the only alternative, and
that sending our beloved sons and daughters to be killed in war is not
always as necessary as our leaders would have us believe.
Though I did a lot of research for Ten Thousand Lovers, it was
small-time compared to what I had to do in order to write Look For Me.
Research for that novel quickly merged with activism. Was I terrified
the first time I boarded a bus to go into the Occupied Territories to
see new outposts [unauthorized Jewish settlement]? Yes. It was the
height of the second intafada; and I was entering a war zone. But the
fear passed as I became involved and committed to working towards
peace. It is uplifting to see Israelis and Palestinians meeting, seeing
eye to
eye, wanting the same things. It is also important to see the
Palestinians as they are, and not in the distorted way the media often
portrays them. Palestinian society is diverse and complex, as is
Israeli or any other society. This seems obvious, but it needs to be
said, because we always carry misconceptions about cultures we aren’t
familiar with - which is why communication and interaction are so
crucial.
Dana
in Look for Me is more
practical than Lily in Ten Thousand
Lovers, I think. She has a romantic streak but she
is also quite down-to-earth; and this dichotomy is reflected in her
profession: she writes formulaic romance novels. Lily is a
linguist; Dana is a
photographer. In some ways Ten
Thousand Lovers is about what we say
(and don’t say), and Look For Me
is about what we see (and don’t see).
I wrote these novels because they urged themselves upon me.
The
writing was personal, solitary. I was alone with my stories, and I
tried to tell them as well as I could. If they now speak to others, and
do some good, I am grateful.