At a time when many Israeli literary works are withdrawing from the reality around them into private realms, others explore Israeli reality from the point of view of nostalgia and disillusionment, a kind of "unrequited love" that gives rise to protest and criticism. Hadara Lazar's new book is also about the disintegration of the bond felt towards one's place, though her writing belongs to a "softer," more personal tradition and by no means takes an unequivocal political stand.
For the heroine of "Locals," the "good old days" are the pre-state days of British Mandate rule, which she perceives as a time of harmonious existence among all those who "owned this country" by virtue of a native attachment to it, that is, primarily among the longtime Jewish settlers and the Arabs who had lived in Palestine for generations. Seen through the eyes of other characters, however, what emerges is a splintered, conflicted reality, within which the period of the mandate emerges as the root of the conflict between the two sides.
Did such a bond between the different groups who "belonged" ever actually exist, or is this, rather, the nostalgic view of a reality that never was idyllic? The book does not resolve the question. This chapter in Israeli-Jewish history has far-reaching implications for the political problematics of the present, but Lazar does not seem interested in constructing a "correct" version of the past. Moreover, her book presents the hypothesis that the only reality is that which exists within the subjectivity of the imagination and the soul.
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The plot is constructed as a saga, which unfolds the story of three families: Jewish-Ashkenazi, Arab and one of "pure Sephardim." The historical span of the book, with its impressive range and density, creates a continuum of times and places that form points of intersection in the days of early Jewish settlement in Palestine.
At the center of the saga is the Eastern European Jewish family, which has its roots in the Second Aliyah ?(the immigration wave of 1904-1914?). Each family member represents a chapter in the history of Jewish settlement: the grandfather, one of the pioneers of Zikhron Ya?akov, which was built on the land of Arab Zamarin; his sons, Avinoam, who collaborated with the Nili pro-British Jewish spy ring during World War I, and Zvi, who fought in the Lehi pre-state underground militia; and Avinoam's children − Shaul, who does business with West Bank Arabs, and Dina, the heroine. Dina took part in the Jewish struggle against the British, but dissociated herself from political reality after her uncle was assassinated by Lehi. Now she is a bystander, observing events from a speculative, personal position.
In the relations between Jews and Arabs, a more complex picture emerges: Although there are many cracks in the idyll, it is clear that the shared ownership of the "land" and a shared way of life transcend the political tension. And so, for example, even after the 1967 Six-Day War and the Israeli occupation, there is still a sense on both sides that the earlier days of coexistence were actually the "real" life. This view is presented by, of all people, Hussein, a Palestinian refugee from the Shuafat camp in Jerusalem, who works as a cleaner in Dina?s home: "Who needs all this, it's better if we are one country, we always were... We were separated for 20 years... What's 20 years?... we cannot separate."
But is it true that we "cannot separate"? "Separation" finds a violent expression in the 1948 conflict, when "we drove them out and destroyed the village, didn't leave one house standing." With the Six-Day War, comes a heroic view of Israel's military victory and of "united Eretz Israel." Alongside joy at the renewed connection there is fear of sumud; the Arabs' relentless clinging to their land: "And it does not matter what has happened in the meantime, all the wars, all the victories, all those who ran away and were expelled: They cannot be kept far from this territory, they won't stay away, not really, they always find a way back." The conclusion, therefore: "It's them or us."
From such a perspective, the shared "localness" of those who came to the country to make it their own and of the Arabs who had lived there for generations seems more like wishful thinking than reality. But the book does not strive to portray this partnership in order to shatter it; rather, it tries to illuminate its complexity from an optimistic approach, one that has not given up all hope. Therefore, the positions of the younger generation in both dynasties, Jewish and Arab, are very important. Although the descendants of the Arab family uproot trees and set fires to the land of their former "masters" (much like the acts of uprooting we now know from the other side of the divide?), the book weaves a mystery that finally reveals a blood-tie between the generations, and it is with the help of the Arab side that a member of the Jewish family escapes a menacing entanglement. Meanwhile, Dina's son Nathaniel is strongly opposed to Israeli policy regarding Arab land and joins the practical struggle against it. In this, the book portrays a picture that does not seal an end to the belief in coexistence.
The book's position remains less than completely clear, because it is a matter of emotion more than of consciousness; the essence of "Locals" lies in the heroine's longing for a sense of belonging, which is tied to another wish: "If only they would not touch me ... if only everything could be soft around me, and I could be somewhere, somewhere." The precise location of the heroine, the "I come from here" that she repeats like an oath, is "not from Haifa, not from the Carmel, not even from Israel; I come from the end of Hillel street, from here, from the balcony in front of the two cypress trees."
The private perception of "I come from here" may explain the blurring of the book's overall stance: The highly politicized reality it depicts is presented as one of involvement, but also one of detachment, and it is replaced by a personal, internal space. Clinging to space is a way of escaping Israeli time and its endless struggles, which are driven by unequivocal ideologies, zealotry and unquestioned belief. The gaze is turned inward, not toward external reality. And so, even though the book unfurls such a broad historical picture, its emotional core lies not in the turmoil brought about by time but in the safety and security of place. As a child, the heroine watched a movie and learned that she could freeze its progress and play it to herself even after it was over; in the same way, she now follows her own desires in "freezing" and appropriating "those days that, beyond the years that passed, are suddenly present; they are here, distant and complete."
The replacement of historical and political time by a protective, private place finds symbolic expression in the heroine's occupation; cartography, the drawing of geographical and archaeological maps. Dina does not see the imprinting of political time on the maps, the power of cartographic knowledge: "The thickness of the lines could determine where the boundary passes"; as Larry, her English lover, says, "A map, after all, does not depict a situation, it creates one... You'll see that forests which you planted are marked there, but olive groves that have existed since long ago are not. There is no map that does not contain values."
Dina, however, considers the maps she draws as a form of aesthetic, painstaking art whose correct color ("a kind of light brown, seemingly dusty") encapsulates the uniqueness of space, "without declarations." She draws maps out of an artist's inner drive, because like an artwork that creates fictional worlds, maps remove the obstacles of the here and now and "take you from where you are to where you are not."
Dina's attitude toward mapmaking symbolizes the poetics of the novel itself. The goal is to create a kind of painting that, with a single brush stroke, will capture the uniqueness of reality, a simultaneous picture that can be rendered real simply by using the right color. But can an art concerned with the aesthetic give convincing expression to such a complex political reality?
Indeed, there is something complicated about writing such a dense and convoluted historical story in a style that aspires to be succinct, aesthetic and private. The storytelling art of Hadara Lazar, a veteran and respected author, is of clear uniqueness, possessing a subtlety and verbal precision that are rare in contemporary writing. Her stylized cleanness and restraint, however, actually block direct and unmediated contact with the story's fascinating materials.
Dr. Hanna Herzig is a literary scholar and critic.
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