Making a home in Canada

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

In the title story of Ayelet Tsabari’s first published collection, The Best Place on Earth (HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., 2013), two places contend for that top honor, British Columbia and Jerusalem. Both in her writing and in her life, dualities abound for Tsabari, who will be in town for the Vancouver Writers Fest later this month.

Born and raised in Israel, Tsabari has traveled extensively, and the former Vancouverite now lives in Toronto. No wonder a sense of place figures so prominently in her writing, as she still struggles between the desire to wander and the desire to settle down.

“In my twenties, I romanticized my nomadic lifestyle,” Tsabari told the Independent in an e-mail interview. “I couldn’t fathom why anyone would choose to stay in one place, and I thought traveling was a more creative and enriching way to live. I think my convictions started to waver a bit as I turned 30. My wanderlust hadn’t died out, but I was feeling exhausted and alone. I realized that there is something to staying put, to having a community, to being a regular at a café and knowing your neighbors. I’m still feeling torn. I love Canada, which has been generous and good to me, but I miss Israel and toy with the idea of going back all the time. I also sometimes think about moving somewhere completely new, but I have an anchor now in my family: home is where my husband and my daughter are.”

In Israel, Tsabari was widely published, writing in a variety of forms, including poetry, and her first article, at age 10, appeared in a children’s magazine. She was also a freelance journalist, writing for several Israeli publications, including Maariv. Tsabari moved to Vancouver in 1998, and it was here that the current chapter, so to speak, of her life began. A graduate of Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio (2007), Tsabari studied film and photography as well, at Capilano University, directing two documentaries, one of which won the grand prize in the Palm Spring International Short Film Festival.

“I came to Vancouver following a guy I met in India,” said Tsabari about what brought her here. “I stayed much longer than the relationship lasted or than I had thought I would. Four years ago, I moved to Toronto to complete an MFA in creative writing at the University of Guelph at Humber.

“Toronto is a great city, and its literary scene is diverse and vibrant and inclusive,” she continued. “The Vancouver scene, though, has a casual and intimate feel about it. It’s the underdog of literary Canada and I generally go for the underdog.... I love Toronto but I miss Vancouver often. I did a lot of growing in that city, made lifelong friends, had a community of like-minded people in East Vancouver. It is where I started writing again in English. Where I met my husband. I mostly miss the people, but also the physical beauty, the green, the proximity to the Gulf Islands, the ocean (though not as much as I miss the Med, I miss the Med so much it hurts). Just today, I strolled along the lakeshore with two friends from B.C. It was beautiful but not quite what we are used to. We all agreed that we should pour buckets of salt into the lake. Maybe then it would smell right.”

Tsabari could be said to be somewhat torn between Toronto and Vancouver. However, as she wrote in an article in the National Post, it is Israel that inspires and haunts her “like no other place.”

“Every time I go home, I return to a part of myself that I left there, but at the same time, I find myself feeling a little more distant, more of a stranger,” Tsabari explained to the Independent. “I usually stay awhile, so this feeling tends to fade a little after a few months, which makes leaving again all the more difficult. I miss Israel all the time. It inspires me and haunts me because it is still home, my extended family lives there, and it’s the backdrop of my childhood, and I don’t think we ever get over or let go of our childhoods.

“I recently came across the term ‘distant author,’ coined by a Bangladeshi poet to describe those who write about their homes from afar. It’s a unique perspective. The distance that I gained over the years allows me to see Israel differently. I can see that it is a fascinating and crazy place that I’m lucky to know so well. Writing about Israel allows me to spend more time with it, I get to revisit it in my stories, and I also get to go there physically for research. It’s a way to keep it close to my heart.”

Despite the deep connection, Tsabari initially resisted writing about her first homeland. Some of her fears have materialized, such as when readers question her about, for example, the “underrepresentation of Palestinians” in her book. When asked about how she deals with being assumed to represent a larger body politic, i.e. to be “the representative Israeli,” Tsabari responded, “This was a major roadblock for me for a long time, so much so that I avoided writing about Israel in fear that someone might get pissed off. It was paralyzing. I needed to let go of that fear in order to be able to write what I truly wanted and needed to write. I believe a writer is responsible for telling their truth, with a small ‘t,’ not that of an entire nation or a people. That’s all I’m trying to do, and the only way I know to deal with it, is to guard that belief as jealously as I can.”

A multiple-award-winning writer in English, as well as a teacher of creative writing at the University of Toronto and the University of Guelph, Tsabari has obviously embraced and flourished in her adopted tongue.

“The experience of writing in a second language runs parallel to my search for a home and a self,” she explained. “It circles around the same questions of identity and place. When I first started writing in English, the language was a place to hide and to reinvent myself, the same way Canada was. I loved the anonymity it afforded me. But before I found that place, for a long time I couldn’t write in either language. I was in a state of limbo. I had to die a little bit, the writer in me that is, to be reborn in this new language. I still love Hebrew and sometimes feel guilty about ‘betraying’ it. But, for me, there was something good about starting new, about feeling challenged, and being more humble as a writer. It is an exercise in constraint. I think, in the end, it made me a stronger writer.”

No interview would be complete with an author such as Tsabari, whose stories wrestle with identity and belonging, about her own struggles with identity and belonging.

“I think reconciling the pressure to assimilate and the need to retain our traditions is a universal struggle,” she told the Independent. “As a child growing up in Israel, I rejected my Yemeni identity and picked up an Ashkenazi way of speaking and taste in music and in food. It was only later, in Canada, where my visible minority status became evident, that I lamented the loss of my tradition and began looking for a way back to it. It seems like a no brainer to me that living in a homogenized culture would be boring as hell, and I appreciate Canada for its celebration of different cultures, while in places like the U.S. or Israel, it seems like you are expected to erase your past and your ‘otherness’ in order to fully belong.”

Tsabari will participate in two panel events at the Vancouver Writers Fest: Faces in the Conflict on Oct. 25, 1-2:30 p.m., at Waterfront Theatre ($17/$8.50 for school groups); and Out of Place, with host Rhea Tregebov, on Oct. 26, 5-6:30 p.m. ($17). Other participating community authors include Dan Bar-El, Cary Fagan, Andrew Kaufman, Shar Levine, Anne Michaels, Alan Weisman and Frieda Wishinsky. For more information on the festival, which runs Oct. 22-27, visit writersfest.bc.ca.

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