In The Land Of Israel: A City In The Present Tense
Oz, Amos
IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL: A CITY IN THE PRESENT TENSE The novelist as social commentator writes of patience, of healing and of learning to live with what there is AMOS OZ And how are things going in...
...And how are the kids...
...So he laughs and says to me, Okay, Gramps, never mind, give me five bucks and I'll take a cup of coffee...
...A reply to your own articles...
...How should they know...
...Aren't there any normal people left in this country, people who don't want to annihilate the Jews or exterminate the Arabs, and don't want to humiliate the Ashkenazim or drag in the Messiah by his beard...
...Not "the land of our forefathers' glory" and not "days of yore," but simply the State of Israel...
...That's the way it is...
...The insult and the fury of Bet Shemesh are a result of the magnitude of the promise this land proffered to all who sought it, a promise that was not fulfilled, and could not be fulfilled: not merely a land of refuge for emigrants, not just a house and yard and a living and entertainment, but the realization of all hope...
...It's coming along great...
...Mister is still young, maybe, but I'll tell you anyways...
...Excerpted from In the Land of Israel by Amos Oz...
...A pretty city and to my mind a good one, this Ashdod...
...And this, in excerpt, is what she wrote in her letter to me: "Forgive me for interfering...
...What do you think—Moses was a member of the Likud...
...Rami got out of the army the day before yesterday...
...To be published as A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book by Har-court Brace Jovanovich, Inc...
...To humiliate me...
...In Ashdod I worked in wood, too...
...I concur...
...And ask them, please, after all their complaints against me— let's assume that the way they paint history is all true and just—then what do they want now...
...Penniless...
...The demonstrators bundle in their jackets against the cold as they sing softly into the winter darkness, "Bring near the day which is neither day nor night...
...Golda Meir, she should rest in peace...
...Patience, I say...
...Not pretending to be Paris or Zurich or aspiring to be Jerusalem...
...We shouldn't complain...
...So where does this blind hatred come from...
...Now, thanks God, we got the State and everybody has what to eat and clothes and education—not enough yet, the education—and we even got a lot of luxury...
...Private life is virtually not private here...
...It said, "You PLO agent destroyer of the nation filthy traitor Nazi heir you better stop you satanic antiks before we finish you off the Likud government will last forever with Begin on top because the Labor Party is all Arabs and kibutzniks one after the other We know your communistic PLO views—you and Yosi Sarrid and Wilner and Peres and Mota Gur and Shulamit Aloni and Peace Now are all on our hit list the hell with you defeetist leftists beware what you say—you'll get what you've got coming to you all you lousy bastards...
...But beyond that—why did you suddenly decide to present our case with the rumblings of some fanatic here or some psychopath there...
...I-us...
...Once I saw Mrs...
...Amos Oz, the Israeli writer, is a member of Kibbutz Hulda...
...Ploiesti...
...Patronizing...
...That's what I want to say on the television...
...After the Egyptians were repelled, only the barren sand dunes remained...
...Is prosperity now, too...
...Two beauties, well aware of their attractions, enter the perfumery, seemingly ignoring my glances and the glances of three sun-tanned wolves—dandies—their shirts carelessly open to reveal the gold chains at their necks as they sit at the adjacent table, exchanging experienced glances and loud, clever expert opinions...
...gradually learning to cling to what it has managed to build here over the course of one hundred difficult years, despite the "sand and enemies," as the man from Ashdod put it...
...You're supposed to speak for us...
...Nobody dig it now, but when they dig it—will be very good here...
...English translation by Maurie Goldberg-Bartura...
...Only thing is, next week he starts in Beersheba...
...Menachem Begin and his ministers went home long ago...
...Terrific...
...Us-I...
...The hardest question is how to distance oneself a bit, how to preserve a measure of internal detachment...
...Me, I have the kidney troubles...
...In summer is hot and in winter is strong wind and is rain...
...I only think that literature suffers because of it, and that is a pity...
...There is time...
...We'll watch movies from the cassette...
...You will find no Light unto the Nations here, but also no ghetto or slum—only a small, bright port city rapidly growing and expanding to the south and east...
...Again in today's mail I received, among other things, a fascinating little threat...
...So they make up...
...I got no criticism...
...Revenge...
...Will come prosperity to the city and to Israel—will be peace...
...I finished the roof—you wouldn't believe it—all by myself— no contractor, no laborers, with these two hands...
...But now I am pensioner...
...And I have a serious complaint against you as well: Why did you present all those terrible things from every side in the newspaper, without any reply...
...The Kahan Commission report said, among other things, "We have no doubt that no conspiracy or plot was entered into between anyone from the Israeli political echelon or from the military echelon in the Israeli Defense Forces and the Phalangists, with the aim of perpetrating atrocities in the camps...
...In the center of town, near a movie theater, is an enclosed, paved square surrounded by shops and shaded by one giant, heavy-topped tree...
...Gradually learning to hold on by its fingernails to what there is...
...That's a saying in French...
...I know this is perhaps presumptuous, but I feel the need to tell you something...
...Why don't you come over on Friday...
...He don't know the first thing about anything, this kid...
...And how can he, that refugee from the Holocaust, who never stops talking about the Holocaust all the time, how can he bear to hear them call us Nazis and remain silent...
...I got to add her another kvetch...
...They'll listen to your voice...
...Vines have climbed up the rows of identical buildings, forming their lacy patterns over the cinder blocks...
...Who talks today about what went on in those days...
...We had bubkes, that's what...
...Is it possible...
...Everything we built here at such great sacrifice, everything we created here out of nothing, including the mistakes we surely made...
...And so in Brenner and so in Alterman...
...We'll talk something else...
...We're in Tiberias, only Yael doesn't know about it yet: I'm going to surprise her...
...David'll work on him a little...
...Their hands cup small candles...
...Or Labor...
...or others operating at the behest of the State . . . then there is no place for further discussion of the question of indirect responsibility...
...he might be filling out income-tax forms or the football lottery, or preparing a legal brief...
...In the early '70s the country was in an uproar over the violent strikes and the bitter labor disputes that broke out here...
...Only with the concrete, Asulin came to help me out...
...On the day the Kahan Commission's report was released—Tuesday, February 8, 1983—the chief of staff testified at the court-martial of soldiers and officers charged with harassing Arab inhabitants on the West Bank...
...And if it is possible—is it right...
...Everybody cried with happiness how the Jews beat the goyim: the Sephardim, the Ashkenazim, the religious, the Likud, the kibbutzim, everybody felt together...
...A community of brothers...
...For us, history is interwoven with biography...
...Thanks God, I can pay...
...Why do they make us out to be monsters...
...On Tuesday the conclusions of the Kahan Commission of Inquiry concerning the massacre in Lebanon were published and the country was in an uproar...
...Tell me, what is it that attracts you to all these extremist types...
...Aren't they ashamed...
...Even into Bible class...
...And to tell them that even though we didn't go to synagogue and observe the customs, we were religious people, in the internal sense of the word—much more than the Orthodox, who walk around in skullcaps...
...Perhaps we should take smaller bites, relinquish the totality of the Land for the sake of internal and external peace...
...It was only so not to shame me...
...What kind of living is he going to make out of literature and Judaica...
...And with almost half of the territory of Lebanon, where.crime and punishment have become one...
...It's an inter-Jewish book...
...It's a spiritual book...
...I seen Hitler...
...Don't be angry with me for speaking so openly to you like this, but in my opinion you have to publish a response...
...A hard winter in the Land of Israel...
...To tell them that we suffered poverty and want worse than what they are suffering today, and even worse than their parents suffered in the transit camps...
...There're other things in life, no...
...There wasn't nothing...
...Afterward the large power station was built...
...Of course there are...
...The television with all that Dallas stuff...
...There are arguments in the house—it's awful...
...And from her we shall see what will flower when peace and a little repose finally come...
...Here, in Ashdod, we also have oil...
...Back in '48, the Egyptian army columns reached Ashdod on their way to Tel Aviv, only 20 miles to the north...
...Concede heavenly Jerusalem for the sake of the Jerusalem of the slums, waive messianic salvation for the sake of small, gradual reforms, forgo messianic fervor for the sake of prosaic sobriety...
...Tearfully...
...Too bad is not this way all the time," he says...
...You know what my dream is...
...Only thing is, the money has to hold out...
...Our dear teachers once used to divide Bialik's poems between "poems of private agony" and "poems of public agony...
...And you'll bring him along...
...How those greenbacks go...
...Did you give orders or were you aware, General Eitan was asked, that Arab parents are severely punished when their children are caught throwing stones at Israeli vehicles...
...not quite a world premiere, but simply a city on a human scale...
...But Bialik wrote "public" poems in the first person singular...
...Why did you keep silent in Bet Shemesh while they insulted and sullied everything that is dear and sacred to us...
...Snow on the soldiers still fighting in Lebanon to separates the Druse from the Christians in the Shouf Mountains, the Christians from the Palestinians in Tyre and Sidon, to separate curse from curse...
...As far as the obligations applying to every civilized nation and the ethical rules accepted by civilized peoples go, the question of indirect responsibility cannot be avoided...
...The habit of the poet-emperor...
...Later, at the streetcomer, an elderly man, his sad face tight in concentration, carefully parks his car, locks it, and has started to walk away when he suddenly slaps his forehead and returns to the car to remove a package wrapped in brown paper...
...And what there is, at best, is the city of Ashdod...
...This argument what we got—is nothing...
...Who are we...
...My two neighbors sitting on the bench and chatting in soft voices are joined by a woman, full-bodied, with large earrings and a dress that generously reveals the slopes of her attractive breasts...
...Things are not good...
...At the university...
...The country really gets right into your bones...
...That is more your field...
...This Friday—it's out...
...And in the same breath he continues and threatens the murderer, "And on your blouse / shall spring the blood of the suckling babe / and of the sage, / never to be erased, for eternity...
...He is industriously writing something without lifting his head...
...of course there is no-goodniks, even cheaters, there is uneducated, but is a minority...
...Yossi Sarid was a pilot from the army before...
...In the winter of1982-83, a series of his articles, based on conversations with Israelis, appeared in the weekend supplement to the Israeli newspaper, Davar...
...The Prophets—and politics...
...Or, "He came back from the States during Sadat's visit...
...Exploiters...
...I brung the plumber, a Moroccan, name of Abram, a good friend from my boy...
...And what a gift of gab—a silver tongue...
...A bright sea-blue washes over the broad avenues and apartment buildings this morning...
...We have a number of those who can write in newspapers, I think...
...There're other things in life, no...
...What, then, does one find in the autumn of 1982 and in the hard winter of 1983...
...Rumanish...
...And today...
...Prime Minister, in Rumania I had much criticism, but there wasn't no freedom to talk...
...And from where did he come to Ashdod...
...Peres!' and throw tomatoes, but tell them that my heart bleeds...
...The leaders of Peace Now tell them not to come...
...A veteran member here in Kibbutz Hulda says to me: "You should tell them—the youth, the Oriental communities, all those who were not here—what we went through when we came to this country...
...His opinions he gets from his mother, not from me...
...Me—I'm for everybody...
...What has he brought to this scene...
...A book about politics...
...IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL: A CITY IN THE PRESENT TENSE The novelist as social commentator writes of patience, of healing and of learning to live with what there is AMOS OZ And how are things going in the port city ofAshdod...
...On Thursday, Defense Minister Sharon presented/didn't present his resignation/nonresignation...
...They just don't know anything...
...Last autumn seems far away, and what was written then seems part of another era...
...To people eaten up by hatred...
...No intention existed on the part of any Israeli element to harm the noncombatant population in the camps...
...they have such in the best families...
...Only when he went into some office, to stand before the clerks or the authorities, would he put on our pair of shoes...
...A messiah complex...
...Snow in the mountains...
...One can almost say that history is biography...
...Abraham and Isaac— and politics...
...Perhaps I have no right to interfere, but in my estimation you should stay away from current-affairs writing and the cheap publicity that accompanies it, and instead isolate yourself and in that way make your contribution to Israeli literature...
...Didn't your boy help me out of my troubles in the army...
...They ought to know that, in general, under Begin's government we feel angrier and more insulted even than they say they felt under our government...
...And tell it to the Arabs, and to Bet Shemesh, too, to everyone...
...Rain and mist and great waters...
...There's even a lot of goyim what tell us bravo...
...Only compliments . . . only thanks God...
...That's what I said to her...
...I'm no match for him in an argument, lakes me out on points, this kid...
...But you know, mister, a man what has been where I was, don't complain no more...
...Whear were you when the Arabs butchered us...
...Braggart supporter of assassins your end is near...
...Do you have any idea of what you're saying...
...He came back a bit depressed, like all of them...
...that's the whole problem...
...If there is poverty here it is not glaring...
...They make maybe a living, but is no life for them...
...somewhere close behind me, pigeons coo...
...Even though we were great skeptics then...
...I imagine that many people write to you suggesting what to write, something I am opposed to (if the writer is not completely unencumbered, then he is not a writer...
...Assassins," not "murderers...
...Tables snake their way into the square from several cafgs...
...Everybody gives from his life to the country...
...They say—is right underneath Dalet quarter...
...But, on the other hand, I multiply at the fastest rate in Europe...
...Better than the goyish man...
...Perhaps we bit off too much...
...Not "the land of the hart" and not "the divine city reunited," as the cliches would have it, but simply the State of Israel...
...So how much I owe you, I ask him...
...It is not possible to absolve of such indirect responsibility those persons who, when they received the first reports of what was happening in the camps, did not rush to prevent the continuation of the Phalangists' actions and did not do everything within their power to stop them...
...His works, which include Elsewhere, Perhaps, The Hill of Evil Counsel and Where the Jackals Howl and Other Stories, have been translated from the Hebrew into 17 languages...
...Or like now from the dead what we lost in the Galilee war: so everybody cried together...
...An answer to the slanderers...
...I'll tell you what I believe, mister...
...For our agriculture...
...All those who secretly long for the charms of Paris or Vienna, for the Jewish shtetl, or for heavenly Jerusalem: do not cut loose from those longings—for what are we without our longings?—but let's remember that Ashdod is what there is...
...At the corner of the square a youth in his high-school uniform sets up an easel and begins to sketch something...
...Begin, with his distortions...
...Gush Emunim doesn't know, either...
...Certain religious circles reacted thus to the report's reference to the portion in Deuteronomy about the beheaded heifer: "How is it that these ignorant judges don't know that the rule of the beheaded heifer applies only in the case of Israelites...
...Against all the tzurisl Only, all the Jews what lives in America, in France, in Russia, by Khomeini even, should all come here quick, we should have all the Jewish people at home...
...I linger at the fence for a moment to overhear a snatch of conversation...
...To religious zealots...
...Are we gradually learning, or perhaps not...
...Perhaps it was a lunatic promise, perhaps we bit off too much, perhaps there is no shortcut...
...They forgot how we had it in this country in the beginning...
...This country can really get right into your bones...
...Three months have passed since that morning in Ashdod...
...Mothers sit near their babies' carriages and pass the morning in the sea breeze...
...Was it all malicious...
...A ship bellows from the direction of the port and the birds answer...
...Does he think the Bible's a newspaper...
...Much worse...
...At 9:30, an attractive woman unlocks her perfumery...
...Snow on the graves of the soldiers who died in the war in Lebanon...
...Didn't you find anyone like that...
...Another pupil cuts him off, grabs his wrist and says, "Listen, now listen—you're too extreme...
...I tell him that I don't need anything...
...And ask them another thing as well, 'hand on your heart': Was everything we did in this country in 50 years, or 80 years, so bad...
...Forgive me, I hope you aren't hurt...
...In his heart, not out loud...
...What did we have in the Diaspora...
...So I said to her, I said, Mrs...
...Can one look here, too, for the "question of indirect responsibility...
...Many would be delighted to forgo the "family of civilized nations" and send it down the drain along with the Kahan report, claiming that "what is permissible for all the stinkers in the world is permissible for us, too," and that "after what the Gentiles did to us, no one has the right to preach morality to us...
...On the Slaughter," for instance, is a poem that was apparently written in an outburst of fury, masochism and despair, and in it the poet turns to the murderer with the "axe in hand," shouting, "O hangman—take my neck, up and slay, / scalp me like a dog, my blood is forfeit...
...You tell me what I owe you and you don't shame me...
...Nothing...
...They argue...
...But the young people we got today, they see the holes—they don't see the cheese...
...But rain—very important, yes...
...Maybe he encourages it...
...To make me crawl in the dirt...
...We assert that...
...Five dollars—for three hours working...
...Write...
...The strong wind sweeps the hillsides...
...A certain echo of this approach may be found in statements made in the cabinet meeting of 19 September 1982...
...The majority—is very good...
...Slipping through my fingers—like my salary...
...The children have gone off to day-care centers or to school...
...This was before she died...
...I have already said, on several occasions, that the question that cleaves us "to the bone" is not the famous question "Who is a Jew in the eyes of the law...
...I didn't want to tell her about the tzuris: doesn't she have enough troubles already...
...And, further on: ". . . those who made the decisions and those who implemented them are indirectly responsible for what ultimately occurred, even if they did not intend this to happen and merely disregarded the anticipated danger...
...I don't say...
...Please do not interpret this to mean that I was not impressed by your reporting (although I don't particularly agree with some of your opinions...
...The State of Israel—a very nice thing...
...Now—a pensioner...
...Then, after, I was living in Paris a couple years—is no paradise there, for sure: the people there is alonely...
...Even when I'm all riled up, I get a kick out of listening to how he builds an argument...
...Everybody's a hero...
...So sit down...
...A city of workers and businessmen and artisans and housewives...
...In my laboratory of stylistic identification these words—and particularly that last one—are something like a fingerprint...
...Is the oil city...
...They don't know in Bet Shemesh, and the youth don't know, and in the bright lights of Tel Aviv they don't know, all those bohemians...
...Here is a so-so living, medium, but the people is always together...
...of course there are political implications to everything, even in the Bible, just like you could say that politics has biblical implications...
...Ashdod in the morning...
...Ask them—'hand on your heart,' as they said to you in Bet Shemesh—whether now, when the power is in Begin's hands, and in theirs, they really think it pays to settle accounts with us like this, the night of the long knives...
...And you have gone wrong...
...He fixes it all up, worked maybe three hours, and finally he takes the mop and the pail and cleans the whole mess what he made from the work and fixes up the tiles...
...Traitors...
...Besides, David brought us a video...
...Or, "We moved into this apartment exactly one week before the Six Day War...
...A Chassidic song with a Chassidic melody...
...Perhaps there was a wild pretension here, beyond our capabilities—beyond human capabilities...
...Why don't you come...
...Is it a crime that we have a room or two with a kitchenette, 50 or 60 square meters, and a television and a fan and a heater...
...And there is a boutique, a perfumery, bank branches, a bookstore, a hardware store and a restaurant...
...It's symbolic...
...I eavesdrop and jot down crumbs of conversation...
...At a side table sits a man of about 40, modishly dressed, an attache case open before him...
...Write our truth...
...A small Mediterranean city is Ashdod, a pleasant city, unpretentious, with a port and a lighthouse^ and a power station and factories and many landscaped avenues...
...And to you they'll listen...
...But nowadays Ashdod is not in the headlines...
...And we were paupers...
...Don't you have any answer to the Arabs who want to annihilate us...
...From all the communities...
...So far he's managing very nicely even without your help...
...Have you nothing to say to those ultra-Orthodox who also await the destruction of the State...
...Who is the writer...
...Of course, His Honor the president is good...
...And very cuttingly...
...And the figures he has scattered across the square are thin, long, faceless, all of them for some reason wrapped in black monks' cowls...
...There was one pair of shoes for the whole community, and whoever had to go into town to take care of something received these shoes, no matter whether they were too big or too small for him...
...From a simple man in the street...
...You remember when was the Europe song contest, mister...
...You're not a reporter...
...The man from Ashdod said, "We'll talk something else...
...And she is all we have that is our own...
...Mister don't think so...
...In other words, chop my own neck and you shall be defiled by the blood of all Jews, "suckling babe and sage...
...Maybe it'll be finished by Passover and we'll be able to move in...
...If only we try to look at her with a calm eye, we will surely not be shamed or disappointed...
...A city living entirely in the present tense, a clean city, almost serene...
...Of the 60 or 70 thousand souls here, about half are immigrants from North Africa, approximately one-third come from Western Europe and the Americas, and the remainder are native-born...
...A civilized nation...
...I concur once more, and ask the man where he is from...
...The genuine question js, What is the meaning of distancing»oneself...
...I," once said the Russian czar to the German kaiser, "suffer from the highest infant-mortality rate in Europe...
...And she is not quite the grandiose fulfillment of the vision of the Prophets and of the dream of generations...
...You should write, make speeches, even appear on television, and tell the whole truth about us...
...I'm only a simple worker who has some thoughts of his own, not a speaker and not a wheeler-dealer, and I trust you not to let it go like this but to leave no stone unturned in answering it all...
...The horns of passing cars do not squeal, the pedestrians do not run...
...You tell them, tell all those angry folks you allowed to cry on your shoulder...
...She goes out to the sidewalk, a straw broom in hand, and sweeps the sidewalk in front of her shop...
...I don't know, but it is not difficult for me to assemble a "profile" of him...
...How can one fix boundaries between areas here...
...So he says to me, Aren't you ashamed, Gramps...
...How're things by you, Yosef...
...copyright © 1983 by Amos Oz...
...Do you really think they believe what Begin puts into their heads—that we're Nazis...
...Later a transit camp of tin shacks was put up between the dunes, under blazing sun, amid the garbage dumps, the flies and the treacherous sandy roads...
...This country can really get right into your bones...
...And David Levy, too...
...Perhaps there was, on all sides, a latent messianism...
...In '66, the port was dedicated...
...Excuse me, mister, I got to go by the bank here...
...Taking hasty leave of their homes, Jewish refugees were brought here, people persecuted and bitter...
...A treat...
...I don't mean about the politics, about the arguing...
...Corrupt...
...Five-star hotel...
...I ask myself the same question, believe me...
...I had a whole wall was broken in my house, from the leaks...
...On almost every comer is a kindergarten, and from almost every kindergarten drift the voices of children's songs...
...No, no—don't under any circumstances quote me...
...The next day people from Gush Emunim ask to attend Emil's funeral...
...but precisely the opposite question: "What is the law in the eyes of the Jew...
...An icy wind blows in Jerusalem...
...Noisy birds chatter from the branches of the trees on the avenue...
...The elderly Rumanian suddenly turns to me and speaks in a broken Hebrew jargon mingled with Yiddish and a touch of French: "Now is not winter, not summer...
...Live from the dialysis...
...Forgive me for bursting out like this—it's not like me—but when you go wrong, at least someone should tell you you've gone wrong...
...So I say to him: What, a beggar I am...
...Begin is good...
...I tell you, that's the way it is in Eretz Yisrael when a Jew has a Jewish heart...
...I seen Stalin—maybe you're too young—I seen the bestiality from the goyim...
...Now is something very good...
...Here they were stopped by two daring pilots, one of whom was shot down, and here they were repelled in a desperate night attack by the fighters of the fledgling Israeli army...
...Why didn't you make your big demonstarations then...
...Where...
...The afternoon newspapers arrive at 10:30, and soon everyone, including me, the wolves and even several of the mothers, is absorbed in the headlines...
...I sit down beside him, trying to imprint the morning voices of urban Ashdod on my memory...
...Have you lost your tongue...
...I already seen with my own eyes what the goyim got and what we got...
...What does this young artist see here...
...Perhaps we should have aimed for less...
...Let Begin be their spokesman...
...If there aren't, the state turns into a monster and history becomes a merciless tyrant...
...I mean the Jews there, along with the goyim...
...What's the matter with you...
...This selection is taken from the forthcoming English translation of that series...
...What is the rule we determine for ourselves...
...A life of purity...
...And maybe we won't talk politics, after all...
...And the materials—his...
...Are you hurt...
...A basis for such responsibility may be found in the outlook of our ancestors, which was expressed in things that were said about the moral significance of the biblical reference to the 'beheaded heifer' (in the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 21...
...But we should learn...
...Like pouring concrete, I swear...
...How's the new house coming along...
...No, I can't believe that...
...Several hours after the grenade was thrown at the Peace Now demonstrators, close to midnight, friends of Emil, who has been killed, still sit in a small circle on the rocky hill facing the halls of power...
...I mean about the life...
...Or he'll go into politics...
...Incredible...
...That same evening Emil Grunzweig was murdered and some of his friends who had participated in a Peace Now demonstration in Jerusalem were injured, after they marched through a jeering crowd that did not cease to shower them with spit and threats and stones...
...And this is true: my son was giving him all sorts help...
...And perhaps the entirety of our story is not a story of blood and fire or of salvations and consolations but, rather, a story of a halting attempt to recover from a severe illness...
...no intention existed on the part of anyone who acted in behalf of Israel to harm the noncombatant population...
...With the territories it occupies, which are—ironically enough—biblical regions arousing longings and aspirations...
...There is no shortcut...
...Not far away, on a park bench, sits a bespectacled old man in a faded black suit, reading a Rumanian-language newspaper...
...Actually, he's not for Begin, but he talks every bit as pretty as Begin...
...Even in culture and in literature: Ashdod...
...They should get respect for that...
...Sand and enemies...
...The life here is all the time together—the troubles together, the happiness together...
...Perhaps he, like me, joins word to word...
...He has added long shadows to each of the objects...
...From Dalet quarter...
...I simply felt a need to write you what I, as one of your steady readers, feel...
...Nineteen eighty-two is over and '83 has begun...
...You know a little...
...Paradise with all kinds tzuris, is true, but what is life without the troubles...
...To shut our mouths...
...A thread of sadness is woven-through the drawing...
...We cannot accept this position...
...Can breathe a little...
...Thank heaven...
...The water and the frost polish the stones...
...We would work hard all day from morning to night, and every evening we talked about ideology and all kinds of 'isms' until late at night...
...Rabin is good...
...And now...
...Peres is good...
...What would the Land of Israel look like without the Labor movement...
...Besides, he carried the shoes over his shoulder and didn't wear them, so as not to wear out the soles...
...Like Begin...
...Listen, everyone is good...
...A city planned by social democrats: without imperial boulevards, without monuments, without grandiose merchants' homes...
...A life of liberty," as the popular Zionist song goes...
...Perhaps we must compromise a little...
...Even the wealth of the suburb of villas near the beach is not ostentatious...
...But later at night, when each of us was alone on his mattress—that's when each of us talked to God...
...It all ties in to the same subject...
...And not just from this morning...
...Ashdod is a city on a human scale on the Mediterranean coast...
...The Arabs should only let live without the wars, we have here a paradise...
...This is a great honor to the Jewish people, what they done in this country so quick...
...You're still young...
...I have read almost everything you have written in the newspapers lately (including the pieces against the war in Lebanon) and I asked myself if one of our writers hasn't burned himself out...
...Write just that...
...Always had a brain, he did...
...Paupers—that's not the word for it...
...Perhaps there is no shortcut...
...I'm not willing to be publicized...
...What is this...
...It seems that almost everybody here knows almost everybody...
...You are not obliged to pay any attention or send me a reply...
...Not obliged, but I will try...
...With the zinc glue...
...He's taking literature and Judaica, he is...
...Maybe he'll get a job with some newspaper...
...It is a hard winter in Jerusalem...
...For instance, I had yesterday an incident...
...I've got a headache and a butt-ache from this stuff already...
...Civilized peoples...
...More exactly, I can figure out his sources of inspiration from his linguistic repertoire: "Nazi heirs," "antics," "satanic," "defeatists," "assassins...
...Do they even hear what they're saying...
...They gave me a great honor, to talk to Mrs...
...I'll tell you...
...Copyright © 1983 by Amos Oz and Am Oved Publishers Ltd...
...Everybody wants it should be good...
...Golda Meir, she should rest in peace, by the city Afula...
...With the goyim, the Jew becomes like agoy...
...Maybe he'll be a teacher...
...Affirmative," answered the chief of staff...
...Yael probably told you: He did two months in Damour, and after that he was in Beirut—got as far as Yuniye, he did...
...So, how's life, Jeanette...
...Perhaps it was a lunatic promise: to turn, in the space of two or three generations, masses of Jews, persecuted, frightened, full of love-hate toward their countries of origin, into a nation that would be an example for the Arab community, a model of salvation for the entire world...
...N.S., from Haifa, also has thoughts on the question of what I should and should not write...
...And from where...
...In Eretz Yisrael, there is freedom to say anything, no fear, but you know what...
...There was fear...
...In Rumania I was a wood worker...
...They'll pay attention...
...And also tell them, those angry people of yours in Bet Shemesh, that a man like me wouldn't throw stones or go disrupt their meetings with shouts of 'Peres...
...Not the "Maccabeans reborn" that Herzl talked of, but a warm-hearted, hot-tempered Mediterranean people that is gradually learning, through great suffering and in a tumult of sound and fury, to find release both from the bloodcurdling nightmares of the past and from delusions of grandeur, both ancient and modem...
...At this morning hour, a weekday serenity rests on Ashdod: the men at work, some of the women at work, some at home...
...And that our sons serve in the front-line combat units...
...You're not a tape recorder...
...It is ten o'clock already...
...And there was a cry of injustice, of injury, but worse than the cry was their humbled submission...
...Nonetheless] we perceive it to be necessary to deal with objections that have been voiced on various occasions, according to which if Israel's direct responsibility for the atrocities is negated!—i.e., if it is determined that the blood of those killed was not shed by IDF soldiers...
...Look...
...Oh, very good...
...At night the flood waters flow down to the sea...
...Something in the style of Berl [Katznelson] or Pinchas [Lavon...
...From a wooden tray slung from his neck, a wrinkled peddler offers me a comb or a pair of scissors or a bar of soap...
...At a distance a large truck passes, its brakes panting, its gears grinding...
...To expel me...
...In '57, the beginnings of a city were built here...
...Tell them not to believe the agitators: We don't have any castles of gold here, we haven't cheated anyone...
...Don't worry...
...Emil's friends interrupt the high-flown eulogy delivered by Chief Rabbi Goren at the funeral...
...Perhaps we must limit ourselves and forgo the rainbow of messianic dreams, whether they be called "the resurrection of the kingdom of David and Solomon," or "the building of a model society, a Light unto the Nations," or "fulfillment of the vision of the Prophets," or "to become the heart of the world...
...Shade trees grace the yards...
...But why don't you come to us next Friday...
...A disco song drifts from the radio, then an Israeli folk song, and after that a soft instrumental piece...
...A woman beats a rug or a mattress...
...About half an hour later I peek at his work: it is a sketch of this very square as captured through his own strange, private vision...
...You have a sort of feeling for it...
...And he, for no reason, wishes me well...
...A welfare case...
...My dream is—before my time comes, they should give me two minutes on the television Friday night, when everybody is listening, and I will tell the young people what everybody should be saying here every morning and every night, should say thanks God for everything what we got here in this country: the army, the ministers by the Knesset, the El Al, the income tax even, the streets, the kibbutzim, the factories—the everything...
...And, on the Arabs, it works very well...
...There was one pair of shoes for the whole community, and whoever had to go into town to take care of something received these shoes, no matter whether they were too big or too small for him...
...A woman might say, for example, "Our oldest son was born while Joel was in the bunkers, during the War of Attrition...
...And you know something—listen—sometimes God would talk to us, too...
...Well, I'd say it's even an interhuman book...
...One of the pupils says, "He brings politics into everything...
...The young people we got today, they see the holes—they don't see the cheese...
...Tell them that we still work, every one of us, as much as his health permits, doing physical labor...
...A bell from a nearby school rings and a river of blue uniforms sweeps into the asphalt schoolyard...
...Later on you can talk politics, have a drink...
...You're supposed to be our spokesman, not theirs...
Vol. 8 • October 1983 • No. 9
