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December 19, 2008
Sparks fly in Friendly Fire
New book by A.B. Yehoshua presents Chanukah in a new light.
RON FRIEDMAN
Chanukah is supposed to be a time of year when families get together. But Friendly Fire, the new novel by Israeli author A.B. Yehoshua (translated by Stuart Schoffman), takes place over the eight days of Chanukah and tells about a couple who don't spend the holiday with each other.
Amotz Ya'ari and his wife, Daniella, are in their 60s. They find themselves parting for the first time in years when Daniella, a school teacher, decides to spend the break with her widowed brother-in-law in Africa, in an attempt to help ease their shared pain over the death of her older sister.
Yirmiyahu, the brother-in-law, took a job as a project administrator at an archeological dig in Tanzania following the death of his wife. He isn't only mourning her though – he still hasn't come to terms with the accidental death of his son, who was killed by friendly fire in a botched military operation six years earlier. His move to Africa is more an escape from reality than a career move.
While Daniella is off observing genetically disfigured elephants and talking to scientists about the origins of humanity, Amotz is alone back home in Israel, attempting to hold down the fort while his wife is away.
With their son under base arrest for failing to show up for his reserve military duty, Amotz has to help his vain and distracted daughter-in-law entertain and care for his two young grandchildren who are out of school for the week. Though Chanukah is not an official state holiday, it seems that all of the workers at the firm have taken time off to be with their families, so it falls on Amotz to go to a newly built apartment building in Tel Aviv and inspect the tenants' claim of an insufferably loud wailing sound caused by his elevators.
On top of everything, Amotz also has to help his ailing father fulfil a promise to a (newly discovered) old romance.
Friendly Fire is divided into eight chapters corresponding to the eight days of Chanukah. Each day is made up of a series of short scenes, interchanging between Amotz and Daniella.
Yehoshua's writing is mature and fluid. He is experienced enough to consistently deliver passages that are informative, entertaining and insightful. His descriptions add a layer of authenticity in their precision and manage to make a statement at the same time.
"Amid the downtown skyscrapers, the looming colossi of the Azrieli project, and the proud tower at the Diamond Exchange, multicolored advertisements and the latest headlines alternate on huge digital screens, cropped haired, leggy women touting dishwashers and clothes dryers segueing into reports of the Iranian nuclear threat."
Yehoshua is the author of eight previous novels and screenplays and has written for numerous newspapers and magazines. He is a member of the "new wave" of Israeli writers, a group that includes authors like Amos Oz, David Grossman and Aharon Appelfeld. Like them, Yehoshua identifies with the left of the political spectrum in Israel. In this book, his political leanings come out through the voice of the disillusioned and bitter Yirmiyahu, hiding away in Africa, shutting himself off from his former identity:
"Here there are no ancient graves and no floor tiles from a destroyed synagogue; no museum with a fragment of a burnt Torah; no testimonies about pogroms and the Holocaust. There's no exile here, no Diaspora. There was no golden age here, no community that contributed to global culture. They don't fuss about assimilation or extinction, self-hatred or pride, uniqueness or chosenness; no old grandmas pop up suddenly aware of their identity. There's no orthodoxy here or secularism or self-indulgent religiosity and, most of all, no nostalgia for anything at all. There's no struggle between tradition and revolution. No rebellion against the forefathers and no new interpretations. No one feels compelled to decide if he is a Jew or an Israeli or maybe a Canaanite, or if the state is more democratic or more Jewish, if there's hope for it or if it's done for. The people around me are free and clear of that whole exhausting and confusing tangle. But life goes on. I am 70 years old, Daniella, and I am permitted to let go."
Yirmi's situation in Tanzania recalls a controversial statement by Yehoshua that only in Israel is it possible to be fully Jewish, which suggests the added insult (to Diaspora Jews) that people who live outside of Israel are somehow less Jewish.
One of the most interesting aspects of Friendly Fire is Yehoshua's treatment of the incident that gave the book its title. Yirmiyahu's son was killed by his own friends when they mistook him for a terrorist coming out of a Palestinian house under their surveillance. After the death, Yirmiyahu was desperate to find out the minute details of the incident. Disappointed by the lack of co-operation from the military, he took it into his own hands to go to the Palestinian village where his son was killed and see with his own eyes the circumstances of his death. His revelation and the conversation he has with a pregnant woman who dwells in the house, add gravity and context to the book as a whole.
The combination of a light and humorous account of a couples' daily life, together with the heady stuff that Yehoshua offers about Israeli society, makes for a read that is both enjoyable and interesting.
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