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Apr. 8, 2021 8:39 PM
“Some say the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice. I say the darker the flesh then the deeper the roots.”
– Tupac Shakur
The newspaper on a bench at the entrance to the Lis Maternity and Women’s Hospital, in Tel Aviv’s Sourasky Medical Center, caught my eye. I picked it up and opened it to page 2. “Look,” I said to my mother. She blinked for a moment, not understanding. “Ah,” she cried out, surprised, and repeated my name apprehensively, as though its appearance in a newspaper rendered it foreign and she was trying not to mispronounce it. She looked pleased, but that didn’t draw us any closer. On the contrary: The permanent distance we carried with us everywhere like a moveable abyss, forged by an abundance of biographical details, became more concrete.