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Hebrew Fiction Mistaken identity Sayed Kashua’s new novel centers around an Arab lawyer who can pass for Jewish, but who feels like an impostor in both societies.

non-citizen Arabs and the Israeli authori- Second Person Singular ties, a few thousand people, living within by Sayed Kashua (translated from the Hebrew, Jerusalem but divorced from the locals “Guf Sheni Yahid,” by Mitch Ginsburg ) Grove Press, 352 pages, $25 among whom they reside. They will always .BTRVFSBEFT
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"SBWJU be seen as strangers, somewhat suspicious, but wholly indispensable. ... Somehow, in he was stopped less and less by the police “a functioning airhead.” It’s therefore sur- By Ruth Margalit the eyes of the locals, the Arab citizens of and the university’s security guards. prising to see him become consumed by Israel were considered to be half Jewish.” “He had finally figured out,” Kashua jealousy of his wife’s supposed lover, and n the latest season of “Avoda Aravit,” the In one of the novel’s opening scenes, the writes in his deadpan tone, “that the border his obsession with the idea that she might first Israeli prime-time television show lawyer and his wife, a couple in their 30s, police, the security guards, and the police be having an affair is exacerbated when he I to center exclusively on an Arab family, entertain a group of Arab friends in their officers, all of whom generally hail from realizes that the lover may well be Jewish. Amjad, the main character, joins the cast home for sushi and a salon-like discussion. the lower socioeconomic classes of Israeli The letter that he finds, unmistakably of the reality show “Big Brother,” but with This could be any bourgeois circle in any society, will never stop anyone dressed in in his wife’s handwriting, was secreted a twist. A soft-spoken, bespectacled jour- country − young professionals sipping clothes that seem more expensive than away inside a used copy he buys one day nalist for a Hebrew-language newspaper, drinks and discussing work, literature and their own.” Yet the lawyer’s affluence of Tolstoy’s “The Kreutzer Sonata” − which Amjad is asked by the producers to pretend their children’s education − except that comes with the heavy price of guilt, and fittingly tells the tale of Pozdnyshev, a man that he is Jewish. The other cast members, the conversation for the night, on the topic he can’t shake off the knowledge that his who kills his wife while in the grip of a jeal- knowing only that there is one Arab among of “the absence of a Palestinian narrative sushi dinner would “cost half a teacher’s ous rage. Scrawled on the inside cover of them, but not his identity, suspect that it is within the Israeli Ministry of Education,” the book, like a venomous snake awaiting Itzik, a Turkish-coffee drinking loudmouth quickly escalates into a heated debate prey, is a Hebrew name: Yonatan. whose dream is to open a restaurant. when Tarik, a colleague of “the lawyer,” His affluence comes Yonatan also happens to be the name of This masquerade of identity and its rejects the emphasis the rest of the group a severely disabled young man who lives implications (“I can’t believe I trusted places on Palestinian nationalism. Enraged with the heavy price with his mother and is in need of round-the- him,” a blonde house member muses after with him, some of the others begin to rattle clock supervision. He is our link to Amir, Amjad’s ethnicity is revealed ) is a stroke of off familiar talking points about the impor- of guilt; he can’t the son of a Palestinian collaborator from genius from Sayed Kashua, a columnist for tance of instilling the next generation with Jaljulya, who becomes Yonatan’s caregiver this newspaper and the creator of “Avoda “our culture” and “our roots,” whereas the forget that his sushi and serves not only as the lawyer’s rival but Aravit,” which means “Arab labor” and is main character finds himself siding with also, primarily, as his foil. Painfully shy and a Hebrew expression referring to second- Tarik. “Well, that’s the thing,” he tells the dinner would ‘cost highly impressionable, Amir is initially as rate work. It is also at the heart of Kashua’s others, “Sometimes I think that a tree is a clueless about his plans for the future as he powerful new novel “Second Person tree and a man is a man.” half a teacher’s is about women. Over time, Amir discovers Singular,” first published in Hebrew two The lawyer’s sense of rootlessness be- a life of which he knew nothing: a world of years ago, about a successful Arab lawyer gins to haunt him, as every image of his monthly salary’ Sonic Youth and Lou Reed, of cool T-shirts who one day discovers a love letter written current lifestyle clashes in his mind with and foreign-sounding books, and most of by his wife and embarks on a mission to images from his modest upbringing in a back in the village. all, while playing around with Yonatan’s find its mysterious intended recipient. village in the Triangle − an area within the camera, he discovers what becomes his The lawyer, who remains nameless Green Line largely populated by Arabs. His monthly salary” back in the village. Even real passion in life − taking photographs. It throughout the book, works in West rags-to-riches story may be heartwarming, his decision to send his daughter to a good is when the newly culturally literate Amir Jerusalem but lives in the Arab neigh- but Kashua also shows us the underside bilingual school in the city gnaws away at braces himself for the entrance exams to borhood of Beit Safafa. He drives a black of success, with clear-eyed insight into an him, making him feel as though his wish for the Bezalel arts academy in Jerusalem that Mercedes to impress his Jewish peers but Israeli society that is becoming ever more coexistence with the Jews is nothing but a Kashua brings identities − real and other- hires the daughter of a senior Fatah official tainted by discrimination based on class cover for what he and his friends are really wise − into play once again: Will Amir apply for his law office to win an Arab “seal of and money. The lawyer manages to clev- doing: sending off their children “like spies to the school using his own name, which will approval.” He looks down on Palestinians erly tap into this foible of society and use into the heart of a foreign culture.” surely land him a coveted spot as the “token from the territories, calling them uneducat- it to his advantage in order to blur another, This last point, incidentally, may be more Arab” of his class, or will he walk into the ed “car thieves,” but is keenly aware of the much more prominent distinction: ethnic- than just the lawyer talking: Kashua, like classroom and hand over to his examiners way in which they, in turn, perceive people ity. As his financial situation improved his character, also lives in Beit Safafa and a blue identity card bearing the picture of like him: “Lawyers, accountants, tax ad- during his time as a student at the Hebrew sends his daughter to the integrated Arab- one Yonatan Forschmidt? It’s quite telling visers, and doctors − brokers between the University, the main character found that Jewish school nearby. Earlier this year that the only assignment Amir fails to com- he wrote a column about the experience plete is a self-portrait, because, he explains, of finding a note taped to his car window “It hasn’t come into focus yet.” one day that cryptically said, “Why here?” Unbeknownst to them, Amir and the Kashua describes going into full-anxiety lawyer find themselves sharing the same mode, trying to formulate a response: Why dance floor one night at Hasira, a small, here indeed, he thought. Why spend so hole-in-the-wall nightclub that is a favor- much time and energy on integrating with ite among Jerusalem’s hipster students. the Jews when they will never accept me Amir looks around and takes the scene in. as one of their own? Then he saw another “Today I want to be one of them,” he thinks, car parked in the same spot with a similar “to laugh the way they laugh, to drink with- note on its windshield. He burst out laugh- out having to think about God. I want to be ing. “Why here?,” the note began, “You’re like them. Free, loose, full of dreams, able blocking the trash bins!” to think about love. Like them. Like those who started to fill the dance floor with the Spectacularly obtuse knowledge that it was theirs, they who felt no need to apologize for their existence, no For all the lawyer’s self-reflection on his need to hide their identity.” and his family’s place within Israeli society, While Amir imagines what it must be he is spectacularly obtuse when it comes to like to be “able to think about love” for a matters of the heart. He no longer sleeps change, the lawyer is able to do just that, as with his wife in the same bed and he con- his quest to find his wife’s lover reaches a fesses that, apart from knowing that she is convincing end. One gets the sense that he a social worker in the south of the city with has finally arrived. And so, too − with as- a degree in “something therapy-related,” surance and a deft eye − has Kashua. he doesn’t really know what she does. In one particular moment of cold-hearted- Ruth Margalit, a frequent contributor to Books, is on the ness, he thinks of her as nothing more than editorial staff of The New Yorker.