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Excerpt from "Sodot" (A Minyan of Lovers)

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Ronen was watching television wrapped around my lap. Suddenly he said,

"A wall should be built around them."

"Around who?"

The child was silent, as if he had revealed knowledge we are not mature enough to grasp, as if shaming his elders. After the screening of the concluding ceremony he asked, Have they already finished the murder?

Instead of asking if the Olympic Games had finished.

He raced around the apartment shouting, "Kozo Okamuto".

"Kozo Okamuto was a murderer. He doesn't live with us anymore, right?"

"He received punishment."

"Mother, I remembered my dream. I will tell you and you will write."

"Yes."

"A ship sinks. The lifeguard too. But his pole (tower) is in the middle of the sea. You and father are running fast in the water. I am fighting with a soldier. That's it. I've got a suggestion. Copy all my dreams from the pages into a notebook."

"A notebook of dreams?"

"Yes. And we'll also make a notebook of life."

"How?"

"Like God does now on the Day of Atonement. I'll tell you and you will write:

Itzik is not yet dead

Einat died

Yossi is wounded

My cousin Yossie is not yet wounded and is not yet dead

I am not dead

You are not dead

Father is not dead

Yonit is not dead

That's it

When someone gets wounded we will cross him out and when he recovers we will write him in again."



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Translated from the Hebrew by Michal Sapir

(c) 2003 All rights reserved to Corinna Hasofferett



Sodot (HudnaPress, September 2003), my third book of literary fiction was published in Israel and awaits publication elsewhere.

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read it in Hungarian; in Polish;