4 Stars
This rich novel, with its dual timeline, is both entertaining and informative.
In 1950, Saida, one of the many Yemeni Jews who immigrated to Israel after the establishment of the country, is in an immigrant camp where she meets a shy young man named Yaqub. They fall in love, but it’s a forbidden relationship because Saida is married and has a young son.
In 1995, Zohara, a newly divorced grad student in New York City, receives a call from her older sister Lizzie telling her that their mother Saida has died. Zohara decides to return to Israel. While cleaning out her mother’s house, she learns that there is so much she didn’t know about her mother’s life. She uncovers Saida’s secrets and learns more about her heritage, as she also tries to determine her future.
The political unrest that is so much part of the history of Israel and Palestine is central in the second timeline. The Oslo Accords giving Palestinians more self-autonomy have been signed. Yoni, Zohara’s nephew who is grieving because of Saida’s death, becomes involved in protests against Prime Minister Rabin and his government’s agreement with the PLO.
I learned so much from this book. I learned about the migration of Yemeni Jews to Israel after 1948. They thought they were going to the Promised Land but conditions when they first arrived were abysmal. They lived in tents in an overcrowded camp which smelled of “sewage and sweat and mildew and rotten garbage.” Children were placed in nurseries and separated from their mothers. And it is during this time that Yemeni children went missing: a mother might go to see her child, only to be told he/she died overnight. Since bodies were not shown and death certificates not provided, people believed the children had been taken away to be adopted by Ashkenazi Jews: “It happened in Australia to children of Aboriginal descent. It happened in Canada with the Sixties Scoop, where they forcibly removed Indigenous children from their communities and placed them for adoption. ‘It’s a method of the dominant group to reeducate a community they believe is backward and primitive.’”
I was unaware of the prejudices amongst the Jewish communities. Mizrahi Jews from North Africa and the Middle East were targets of discrimination and mistreatment from those already established in Israel who were predominantly Ashkenazi. Yemeni Jews, “as Jews from Arab lands . . . had more in common with the local Arabs than with the Ashkenazi, who thought their culture was inferior, who saw the ‘Arabness’ as a problem to be solved.” One man described the Yemeni Jews as “’a people whose primitiveness is at its peak. Their level of education borderlines complete ignorance, and worse is their inability to absorb anything intellectual. . . . What will be the face of Israel with such populations?’” Certainly the Arab Jews seem to be treated as second-class citizens.
And then of course there’s the Nakba, the violent displacement and dispossession of Palestinians. Zohara mentions that her school textbooks spoke of the founding of Israel “as this magical coming together of Jews” with “little mention of the Palestinian tragedy.” Israel provided a home for “Holocaust survivors who had nowhere to go” but one of Yaqub’s friends asks, “’can we live here in peace knowing so many of the Arabs were displaced?’” Zohara thinks of Israel as “A country erected on the ruins of others, the oppression of others.”
I appreciated that the author depicts different political viewpoints. There are those in favour of the Oslo Accords and those opposed. Some see ceding any land to Palestinians as a betrayal of their “biblical birthright”; they’re the ones shouting, “’We have a total and absolute right to this place!’” Then there are others who feel the Accords don’t go far enough: “’There is no commitment by Israel to freeze settlements. They’re still building them. . . . And how come no one is talking about the Palestinian Right of Return? . . . acknowledging the tragedy would be a start . . . at the very least, we can speak about compensation.’”
As a young girl and woman, Zohara rejected her mother and her Yemeni culture. She was embarrassed by her mother, especially after she started attending an elite boarding school for gifted children in Jerusalem: “It was there that I became embarrassed by her accent . . . her Arabic name . . . her faith, her superstitions. The unfashionable flowery headscarf . . . the tang of spicy fenugreek emanating from her skin, the stains of turmeric that lingered on her hands.” One of Zohara’s friends points out that schools “’made us believe that to be Israeli, you had to reject your heritage, especially Mizrahi’” and adopt the “’idealized Ashkenazi culture.’”
After her return to Israel, Zohara comes to see her mother in a new light; she comes to understand how much she had to give up to come to a new country. Zohara thinks of the loss of Saida’s son but Saida also lost her youngest daughter in many ways. And Zohara realizes “like all Jews from Arab lands, she could never return to where she came from. With their Israeli passports, they were not even permitted to visit.”
Zohara also reconnects with her Mizrahi identity. She learns about how Yemeni women used songs to express themselves in a culture where women were illiterate and expected to be quiet. I’m so happy I discovered Ofra Haza and Gila Beshari.
In fact, I recommend listening to the Yemeni songs of these two women while reading this novel. Given current events in Israel and Gaza, this is a timely book which sheds light on the complex history of Israel. There is much to admire in this book: it’s well-written and interesting and very thought-provoking.
Note: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.
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