The master of tragicomedy

BASYA LAYE

Sayed Kashua is a man of conflicting realities. Born in Tira, an Arab town in the Triangle region, Kashua moved to Jerusalem as a teenager after being accepted into the Israel Arts and Science Academy, then studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Twenty years later, Kashua is a successful author, journalist and TV writer who lives in a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem and writes in Hebrew. One of Israel’s brightest literary stars, Kashua has carved out a singular space in Israel’s literary and political landscape, by delivering the realities of the Arab Israeli experience into Israel’s living rooms, to its breakfast tables and to its nightstands.

The author of three novels, Dancing Arabs, Let it Be Morning and the recently translated into English Second Person Singular, Kashua is the unofficial spokesperson for the Arab Israeli experience, taking on questions of identity, nationalism, culture, racism and assimilation. These are the same issues that he’s been unpacking for the last several years in his weekly column for Haaretz, a series of bitingly funny, politically astute and searingly honest observations of everyday life as a nearly 40-year-old husband and father of three, who happens to be living in unusual circumstances. He has also recently finished shooting the fourth season of Arab Labor, his critically acclaimed TV show that airs on Israel’s Channel 2.

The JI spoke with Kashua ahead of his visit to Vancouver for a Cherie Smith JCCGV Jewish Book Festival (JBF) event on March 9.

Kashua is circumspect when it comes to his unofficial role as “the voice of Arab Israel.”

“No one nominated me or [tried] to prevent me from trying to represent myself,” he told the Independent by phone from his home in Jerusalem. “After all, I’m addressing in Haaretz the readers of Haaretz. It’s the newspaper I love most, but it’s still Haaretz readers. When it comes to [my show on] TV, so I’m addressing much more Israelis with Arab Labor. So, yes, with the column and with the TV show I am trying to use a lot of irony … but when it comes to literature, I don’t think I’m playing any role, I’m trying to be very faithful to the characters and I’m not thinking about power or politics, the message that I’m trying to deliver. But, yes, for the newspaper, yes, it’s a weekly [reaction] to the political situation – sometimes, not always – and the TV also, it’s using a lot of humor to bring the Arab issue to the Israeli living room, and try to deal a little bit with racism and to explain a little bit the situation from a different point of view.”

Being a public figure is not something that seems to sit easy with Kashua, and yet he’s playful when asked about how his notoriety affects his family life.

“Well, my parents have gotten to the age where they spend many times in hospital and they enjoy it because there are a lot of doctors who apparently read my column and they give them good treatment. I find myself [visiting them] and … whenever one my aunts or my parents are hospitalized, I need to come and sign for the doctor [an autograph],” he joked.

“My wife, I don’t know, “ he continued. “I think, in English, [the column] is one week delayed. [Last] week, the column was all about my wife, and I always send my column to my wife before I deliver it to the newspaper. For me, it’s a little bit of a problem, I must say. I don’t like that very much. I’m [more] comfortable, it’s Purim right now, to put a mask on and get drunk here in Jerusalem with no one recognizing that it’s me. I don’t know. It’s not an issue at all. It’s OK; after all, it’s my family and they know me very well, and my writing.

“I cannot see living like a popular figure. I have three kids!” he added, laughing. “Every morning, I wake up at six, I send my kids to school and go to my office and to the production company, and write my columns and my TV show. Sometimes I do go out drinking at the same place and then it’s nice, because some bartenders can give me shots of vodka for free. This, I’m happy about. It’s OK. My wife doesn’t like it much when people approach her and say, ‘Oh, you’re the wife of …” she doesn’t like it at all. I can understand that. Also, we know very few people, after all. And usually it’s the wrong people, besides, who recognize us! Like it’s not the policeman who is arresting me who knows exactly who I am – they don’t read Haaretz – the clerks at the bank don’t recognize me.”

The characters in Kashua’s novels are master manipulators of their own personalities and destinies, taking on aspirational personas and casting off traits and behaviors that no longer fit, assimilating into higher status identities with ease. When faced with crises, however, these same characters rely on more basic affiliations, often enacting more stereotypical mentalities. One thing Kashua seems to have developed in common with his characters is a sobering desire to hold onto whatever shred of optimism is available in the surrounding chaos, an optimism that has been fleeting of late.

“A few weeks ago, I wrote about myself losing hope, looking in the mirror and realizing that I’m getting old, suddenly, and what happened? I do a lot of readings in front of people [in Israel] and always people ask me where do I get optimism from. So, I guess it’s true for the characters. I really don’t know. I really don’t have any reason to be optimistic if I look at the Israeli society or just watch the news or see what’s going around. But I think the characters are just like me, in a very naïve way, sure that people cannot be blind or idiots for too long. Sometimes, also, [I’m optimistic] because of personal relationships. Because if you are not part of a fighting group, if you are not part of a tribe, you are OK. I see that it happens between Jews and Arabs and Palestinians on the personal level. But as soon as you become part of something else bigger than you, so all the stereotypes and all the mentality … immediately you will be in a fighting group and that is a problem. I truly believe – maybe that is stupid of me – but I do believe that human beings are at least supposed to be OK, or human, a minimum of humanism exists in everyone…. To be honest, I don’t have a lot of reasons to be optimistic and neither do my characters.”

Kashua’s kids attend an integrated bilingual school and are growing up, in many respects, with the privileges of Jewish Israeli children. Raising kids in an environment that is removed from familiar markers of identity can be trying and the future for integrated Arab Israeli kids like his isn’t clear.

“Sometimes I feel a lot of guilt feelings towards my kids in the way that I choose to raise them in this place,” Kashua explained. “Because my kids do go to a mixed school, to a bilingual school. My older daughter, she’s 12 and a half now, she was accepted to [a school] which is considered to be the best school in Israel, and she’s the only Arab girl there. But my kids are in the bilingual school where Jews and Arabs study together. Sometimes I feel really guilty that I’m giving them this hope or idea that [equality] can happen. Although, I do believe, in that way, in education, that you have to respect that Jews and Arabs are supposed to study together and know both languages, and I’m very happy when Jewish kids come to sleep over. I just picked up my daughter now from her Jewish friend. I know that there are some difficulties, especially when my daughter left the bilingual school, there were many unpleasant situations that she needs to deal with. She still insists that she is having fun and she loves her new school.

“But, sometimes, I don’t know really if it’s too much,” he continued. “I don’t know if the easiest way is to raise them in an Arab village or an Arab neighborhood in Jerusalem, send them to an Arab school, and that way they cannot be confused. I’m really worried that I’m delivering something that doesn’t exist in Israel yet. I hope that they will not be confused and think that they are equal. It might be very problematic. Yes, I’m giving them a lot of hope, and we do educate them in the minimum of democracy – that people are equal – on other levels, no, I don’t know what will happen, how they will suffer when they realize that how sad can it be to be an Arab minority. What will happen if my daughter falls in love with a Jewish boy who himself or his family would not like the idea?”

In a good week, this reality weighs less heavily on Kashua, but in “a bad one, then the immediate decision is, ‘OK, we’re selling the house and we’re going back to an Arab village,’” he said. “It happens a lot…. We’re really good [right now] with all our neighbors and the kids insist they’re having fun at their schools. We’ll see.”

That Kashua’s work is considered to be revelatory is in and of itself telling: Arabs are nearly 20 percent of the population and yet very few Arab Israelis are household names, especially in the Jewish Diaspora. The issue of identity in Israel is a landmine that Kashua walks through with a sapper’s skill.

“The problem of identity when we are talking about Israel and Palestine is that it immediately goes to the national identity – and there is no place to be wrong in this case,” he explained. “Like Arabs who think that they can be Jewish, I feel a little bit sorry for them. I am sure that I am being criticized as someone who is like that, but it’s not true. When we are talking about identity, we talk about Jewish identity and Arab identity. And everything here is very, very complicated. Especially when it comes to the language because it’s part of the [Arab] national struggle or fight … for their identity. So, for us, citizens of Israel as Arabs, there’s always a big war how we can keep and how we can protect our identity. And we go to the wrong places sometimes for our identity.

“If you know a little bit about the situation of being an Arab in Israel it means that you have to live in your village,” he added. “It’s really an abnormal situation that most of the people don’t leave their villages. They stay in their villages, which is very easy for the Israelis because you come to an Israeli town to work there and you go back to sleep in your village, which is very close, and then you are not a cultural problem. The foreign workers from China or Africa now in Tel Aviv became a huge problem for Israelis but the Arabs are not such a problem. So what was a huge expectation from Israelis that you can work and then go to your village became also a part of our way to protect our identity. Then if you are an educated Arab man who decides to move from your village to a town, which must be a Jewish town or city, I mean, to look for a city life and not a village life, then you have a problem with your identity. It’s very complicated, it’s a huge struggle.

“And the language, of course, because after ’48, the Palestinian population who remained in Israel, the language became the most important tool to keep their identity. So it’s holy just almost like Hebrew, which is part of establishing Zionism, some people would say that Hebrew is the biggest success of Zionism, the project. So, I don’t know, but I do think there is something called an identity of the minority, and then an identity of a persecuted minority, and that’s the identity that I believe in, I think. Here in Israel, either you are Jewish or Arab, of course, generally speaking. And Arabs inside Israel need all the time to prove that they are Arabs….”

As much as Kashua spends his time carving out his own niche, he lives in a part of the world that demands conformity and fidelity, and he has been accused of being too critical of Israel, on one side, and “not Arab enough,” on the other. While his reception in the Arab world was lukewarm at best in the beginning, the tide has begun to turn.

“At the beginning, it was a little bit, not a little bit, really it was a huge problem. One of the reasons was that it was in Hebrew and the style of the writing. I was not writing novels in Hebrew and giving lectures against the occupation or something like that, it was new and yes, at the beginning, at least, I was criticized. But it looks much better now and I have to say that [my work is] accepted very well by Arab readers. It took me years to invest, but I’m very happy....”

Kashua is very aware of the expectation that Arab Israelis should be thankful that things are as good as they are, and that things could be worse – are indeed worse – elsewhere, in Syria, in Iraq, in Gaza; a fact that is no small comfort to those who experience prejudice or discrimination at home.

There is a moment in the 2009 Dorit Zimbalist-directed documentary on Kashua, Forever Scared, when he shouts, “Chag sameach! Chag sameach!” a simple expression of his desire to connect with his neighbors, on one hand, and to express aloud the absurdity of the situation of being an outsider in his own homeland. That need to have the message be palatable is palpable in Kashua’s work.

“I can’t really shout,” he said. “I have to find my way ... in a way that Israelis can understand, and sometimes I just really want to shout, but I know that it will be not very much help because immediately you become ‘The Arab,’ and what are you expecting from the Arabs. So, you always have to find your convincing way to shout and make people listen and not just to shout and make people hate you more or be more convinced of their faults. It’s a huge struggle and it’s not always easy. There are weeks that I just want to shout more than anything else, so that’s what … the chag sameach moment was, all about that.”

There are days when Kashua considers opportunities to go abroad. “To be honest, yes, very much, I would like to do that. I’m not sure that I would like to do that for the rest of my life, but I would be very happy to get away from here for awhile, for a year or so. Once in awhile there’s this opportunity and, till now, it doesn’t really happen…. We tried this program in Berlin and it didn’t work out. And I was expecting answers also from a few universities and colleges in the States, but I’m still waiting. It’s for a year. I think it would be also very helpful for me to focus on my novel, because I’m stuck in journalism and screenwriting, and one year abroad not to think about the life and the economy would be very much of a help for focus on writing a novel.”

Another offer that comes up from time to time is to publish his Haaretz columns in book form, but Kashua isn’t sure he’s open to that possibility, even with the demand.

“There were offers like that here…. [however] I switch ‘languages’ – if I go to a novel … I’m like a totally different person who writes them, it’s a different mentality. The column is a column and the novel is a novel and you don’t want to mix. I have this feeling that the column maybe as a book should be published only when I die and my wife needs some money or something.”

JBF director Nicole Nozick has been planning to have Kashua come to Vancouver for sometime and she looks forward to the discussion his visit will generate.

“One of the JCC Jewish Book Festival’s priorities is to showcase top-class Israeli writers and Sayed Kashua has been on our radar for awhile,” she said. “Kashua is hugely popular in Israel, and of the new generation of Israeli writers that includes Etgar Keret, Tsruya Shalev, Savyon Libricht, etc. While Kashua’s name may not be familiar to most Canadians, his writing deserves our attention and respect. We know Kashua’s fresh perspective, wholly original voice, intelligent sense of humor and world-class writing will speak to our audience.”

Sayed Kashua is in Vancouver on Saturday, March 9, 8 p.m, at the Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre. Tickets, $14, are available at 604-257-5111, in person at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver or online at ticketpeak.com/jccgv.

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