With their kids at day camp, Salim and Tamar Abadi enjoyed a beach day in Tel Aviv. Their transistor radio blaring beside them, they first heard the shocking news; Hadas, Salim’s sister, was murdered on the way from Haifa to Tel Aviv. Police investigation determined it was a terrorist attack. But Tamar, Salim’s wife, knew Hadas did not go to Haifa. She knew the gunman who killed her sister-in-law then shot himself. Tamar kept their secret affair for 15 years. Haunted by Hadas’ death years later, an ocean away in America, Tamar had a premonition their daughter’s life would also culminate in tragedy.
Exiled from Arab countries after the 1948 war, the Israeli government resettled Salim and Hadas, Mizrahi Jews, in Kefr Ma’an, an abandoned village near Tel Aviv where they resided for ten years. Volunteers at Kibbutz Ein Gev, teenaged Hadas and Tamar became inseparable. Hadas made a “shiduch” between Tamar and her handsome brother Salim. Though Tamar’s Ashkenazi mother warned her about marrying an “arabisher yid” (an Arab Jew), at seventeen Tamar and Salim married as did Hadas and Moti; they had two adorable kids Tehila and Barak. Tamar and Salim had three, Ari, Rachel and Ruby. Shortly after the 1967 war both couples relocated to Tel Aviv raising their kids together.
Hadas however, had another life in Kefr Ma’an. There she would meet poet Daoud Hamid, her Palestinian lover. A buffer between them, Tamar kept Hadas’ secret rendezvous from Salim. After years of intimacy the lovers had plans to leave Israel together. Dauod bought tickets for France where they would be more accepted. But Hadas backed away. She couldn’t’ leave her children, “until the world intruded.”
In shock inconsolable with grief after his sister’s death Salim relocated his family from Israel to safer shores in America. He promised Tamar a better life, and, after five years he promised to return to Israel – as a rich man.
Feeling exiled lonely, in New York, Tamar yearned to return to “home”, worried about her children’s diminishing Jewish identity in the American “sausage factory” culture. When the Mahmoudis from Jaffa moved upstairs things changed. Salim was overjoyed. The family spoke Arabic, Salim’s mother tongue. Faisal their son was an artist. Hussein a university student. Both good boys. Faisal was the same age as Ruby, Tamar’s eldest. Tamar and Radwa Mahmoudi became friends. They exchanged tabbouleh recipes. But Tamar fretted over Ruby’s increasing affection for Faisal. Their friendship “dredged up old anxieties” about Hadas. Tamar pleaded with Salim to end the relationship. When Salim refused to intervene, Tamar took it upon herself to stop it. It didn’t go well.
An all night read (because you won’t be able to put it down) author Zeeva Bukai hits it out of the park with her debut novel The Anatomy of Exile. An emotional heart-wrenching saga that speaks to the meaning of home and identity.
