The Arab Within

Tamuz, 2000

The judging panel of the Hebrew Writers Association and Tamuz Publishing House unanimously chose The Arab Within as the best prose book for the year 2000.

“Against a background of this decade’s political events, there unfolds a creative and fascinating tale, which slowly penetrates the membrane of Israel’s sanity, to extract truths that pluck at the chords of our soul.” (the judging panel)

From the book:

Nadia’s words rose and floated in his head. As long as he doesn’t meet the victim face to face, he’ll never know who it was and now that he has details of the man’s private life, eats from his plates and sleeps in his bed, stands in her father’s place on the balcony and looks through his eyes at the sea, he can take upon himself responsibility for what he has done, admit to the crime but not to the guilt – as they say in courts of law – and ask himself, what fault is it of his that he was there on reserve duty and fired that shot and then met Nadia and then they moved into her father’s house and had a child and if God cooked up this mess, let him take responsibility for the sad wife, whose father he had murdered.
He went in. Hagar was awake, looking at him with shiny eyes and a naughty smile. The night is young and he would tell her everything – why they chose to live near the sea, why mummy was sad and that he had murdered grandfather, but that it was still possible to go on living and raise a family and maybe even, to be happy.