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We’re in the office of the deputy mayor of Lefkara, the city in Cyprus where we were married. This time we’re there to separate, but it turns out there’s a problem: My right arm is attached to his left one. The deputy mayor examines the connection with a magnifying glass and says he’s sorry, but surgery is not possible.
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I go to visit Ari in Ichilov hospital and wander from room to room with a bouquet of flowers trying to find him, but all the rooms are occupied by bald women who look like my mother, even though my mother actually died of a heart attack. When I go to the reception desk to ask where Ari is, the nurse checks the computer and tells me that he’s in Tel Hashomer hospital. How can you not know where your husband’s best friend is hospitalized? she scolds me and takes the flowers from me as if I had failed an exam and now all was lost. I drive to Tel Hashomer, and I even have the number of his room, twelve, but when I go inside, it’s my husband lying in the bed, hooked up to an IV, his eyes closed, and Ari is sitting at his bedside saying to me: I’m sorry, you arrived too late. I cry hysterically in the dream, not understanding how they had managed to hide the truth from me all that time. Is there any biblical character that is especially close to your heart?
Every now and then, I look for a pit in which I can hide from the world for a while. Like Joseph, Jacob’s favorite son, who was hated and shunned by his brothers. First, he withdrew from harsh reality into dreams, and when he could no longer dream, he withdrew into the pit. I know that isn’t the accepted interpretation of the events in that chapter, but that’s only because people don’t notice that the pit is dug between the verse “And Judah said unto his brethren: What profit is it if we slay our brother, and conceal his blood? Come and let us sell him to the Ishmaelites…” and the verse that comes right after it: “And there passed by Midianites merchantmen; and they drew and lifted up Joseph out of the pit, and sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver: and they brought Joseph into Egypt.” How can you explain the fact that Judah persuades his brothers to sell Joseph, but the ones who actually sell Joseph in the next verse—and earn twenty pieces of silver!—are in fact Midianites? There is only one satisfactory explanation: In the middle, between the verses, Joseph refuses to get out of the pit. He didn’t take hold of the rope his brothers threw down to him, so how could they pull him up? With his keen senses, Joseph realized that only there, in the darkness of the pit, could he dream without interruption, where his brothers couldn’t mock him for being a dreamer and no one could criticize him for the contents of his dreams.
For seven days and seven nights, Joseph dreamed about gold coins and many gods and a beautiful hand brushing a stalk of grain across his collarbone, dreams that the Bible didn’t dare, couldn’t dare, to include in the official story. During that time, Canaanites passed close to the pit he was hidden in, Jebusites and Hittites, but even though Joseph was very hungry, he didn’t call out to them. Absolutely not. He still didn’t miss real life and its pain enough.
In his last dream, on the final night, his brother, little Benjamin, was torn to pieces by a wild beast, and Joseph could not restrain himself and cried at his grave—
And only after he woke up from that dream, only after he wiped away the real tears on his cheeks—
He called to the Midianites that passed by the pit. He caught the rope they threw down to him. Used it to climb out into the dazzling light. And returned, his heart fluttering, to his role in the Bible.
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Sometimes, books are—for their readers and writers—a pit to burrow into.
This interview is that kind of pit as well.
You can’t imagine what is going on outside.
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Dikla called from the ashram on Saturday evening and said: I need a little more time with myself. Her voice was different. Politer. Sure, I said. Of course. Then she asked to talk to the kids. Then she texted me a list of chores related to the bat mitzvah that had to be done that week. I knew them all, but I still texted her back: Received. Will do. Enjoy. Love. She didn’t text me back. Or answer my calls over the next few days. I read on the Ashram in the Desert site that a Tantra festival would be held there the coming week, and the guests were invited to participate in workshops called “Unleash Your Inner Goddess,” “Dance of the Heart,” and “Until the Next Pleasure.” That did nothing to increase my peace of mind, but what could I do? I drove the kids to their afternoon classes. I drove them back from their afternoon classes. I drove them to birthday parties. I drove them back from birthday parties. I nurtured and nourished, explained and restrained, and after they went to sleep, I looked at Mayan’s picture for a while and watched TV until I fell asleep. I never fall asleep in front of the TV when Dikla is home.
On the third night, I remembered the moment when the boy in the movie The Life Before Us asks the old man, Hamil: Can we live without love? But I couldn’t remember Hamil’s reply.
On the fourth night without Dikla, it crossed my mind that maybe this week was her experimental dry run to find out what it was like for her to live apart. On the fifth night, I reached the conclusion
