My Island

It's 4:48 in the morning and I am happily at my computer. Writing.

Ages ago, in a different incarnation, I was a writer in disguise: mother, cook, cleaner, counselor - not necessarily in this order. We lived in a two-tiny-bedrooms apartment, and naturally those went to the kids. The living room doubled as the masterbed at nights.

A room of my own? Not even a bed, or a chair.

From time to time friends would give me keys to a vacant house, and I would sneak off for a day to write.

One day I discovered there are places known as Writers' Colonies. It gave me so much strength! So, there are places where not only writing but the writer herself is respected! I started telling people that we need to have such a place here in Israel.

To my great surprise, no one said, "Fine! I'm going to build one!" What they said - the ones who did not declare this a crazy idea - was: "Fine! Do it!"

Finally in 1984 I plucked up courage and established two residences for writers and artists, in Galilee and in the Desert. International they were, and the writers each had his/her modest renovated old apartment, for up to three months.

In exchange for this they contributed to the regional Jewish-Arab community actually over five hundred cultural and educational activities.

As for myself, I did have a room and a chair and a table and a bed - in the respective offices, or worldwide where I went to raise funds.

I was always writing in my head and on scraps of paper, in the bus, on planes, waiting for meetings. Then one day, eleven years later, my innkeeper, my devoted innkeeper which my body is, reminded me, not so gently, that it was time to have a room of my own before I collapsed.

Dutifully, I obeyed.

So here I am, in my large apartment, free at last and on my own. One room is my independent studio. Another room is the archive, with all my writing projects, except the current one, organized on files and far out of sight.

A third one is the room where I keep my sewing machine and ironing board and the winter clothes. I go there from time to time to dust and water the plants... Sewing, ironing, all those mundane "have-to's" can wait.

My apartment is filled with plants, the window frames and the doors covered with colorful paint. I'm surrounded by art and books and classical music. When people come in, they say, "It's like Nirvana here. So different from the violent world outside!"

But the outside knocks on my windows, seeps in through the radio news, throws itself in my face from the newspapers lined up outside kiosks down the whole length of the main and side streets.

So my working place, my faithful apartment, is my refuge, the only place where up to now I can be "the mistress of my destiny", sovereign.

I choose when to turn on the radio, open the door, answer the phone. Banished are the TV and all mobile phones.

I was a resident at two distinguished artists' colonies in the USA. The food is good, the country green and peaceful, (or so it used to be back then before 9/11); but nothing compares with my little tranquil island.

Here I'm closer to my colleagues, Palestinian and Israeli writers and peace activists.

In the Heart of Darkness, they are my island.

Once she was a child (Noffey Haneffesh: Soul Landscapes)

Soul Landscapes tells the universal story of childhood in times of upheaval, as conveyed by some of the most extraordinary international woman writers. Done mostly on location, these intimate encounters mirror a rainbow of human existence shaped by injustice, turmoil and struggle, and still victorious: six year-old Russian Svetlana Vasilenko awaiting death while caught between the Powers dueling with nuclear bombs; the little Italian child Dacia Maraini starved in a Japanese concentration camp; twelve-year-old. Belgian Am?lie Nothomb, reading by candlelight in a Bangladeshi lepers' house; five-year-old Leena Lander living in the Finnish prison for delinquent boys where her father worked as a supervisor, contemplating in fear and horror her sexually mangled doll found thrown in the forest; eight-year-old Palestinian Anissa Darwish torn by war from the Malkha village of her sweet childhood and the author herself - Corinna Hasofferett, born in Tecuci, Romania - all and each of the writers in this book map the way to survival and hope.
They ask us also to take a second look at our own life, and, well informed, to make sure the right decisions are taken in all that concerns this precious little world.

As a literary form, ONCE SHE WAS A CHILD is a hybrid: it owns the genes of literary fiction, with its attention to language, ambiguities and symbols, carved out by the author's mostly invisible questions, and editing; and it carries the genes of narrative nonfiction as those are real life stories of real, and most impressive persons, showing how gloriously they've survived Evil. Glimpses from The Past, of childhood recollections, set, like pearls on a string, with the author's journal as the connecting thread or background. The reader is invited to absorb. At the end of the book s/he'll discover in a separate section, as an addendum, how far they've reached in The Present.

HudnaPress. Hebrew Publication Date: Spring 2003
Rights information can be obtained at: hudnapress (at) gmail (dot) com

Excerpt:

In the Beginning

When my children were little we were standing one day at the bus stop. It was very hot, August. Suddenly, across from us, two children, suddenly one of them cried to his friend: 'You Arab!'

I looked at my children startled. The younger was then three, the same age I was when I came out of kindergarten and they threw stones at us and cried, 'Jidans, go away to Palestine!' Children I'd played with the day before.

I wanted my children to know that 'Arab' was the name of a people, not a curse.

So I made contact through friends of some friends with members of the Arab intelligentsia who lived in a village in the Galilee and we visited them, they visited us, a contact was made. Mahmud and Lutfia Diab, from Tamra, two hours from Tel Aviv. That was in 1970.

Three years later Lutfia's younger sister, Amal, married her teacher, Munir Diab. And Munir began in those years to manage there the first Arabic community center. So in 1975 the idea occurred to me to arrange a meeting between educated youths from Tamra and from a neighboring Jewish settlement with Jewish and Arabic artists. Munir loved the idea and thanks to him it really happened. We had meetings and conversations with Aharon Meged, Anton Shamas, A. B. Yehoshua. Once every two weeks. One time in Tamra and one time in Shlomi. Finally we had an evening of theater improvisation with the late Peter Fry. He came several times and prepared them.

From the start I'd limited my involvement in that for only half a year. I would come there every two weeks. Shlomi is located eight hundred meters, half a mile, from the Lebanese border. At that time terrorists murdered at night a mother and her two year old daughter, in Dovev. And still people came to the meetings and participated. Very willingly. But in one of the meetings, in Shlomi, someone said, 'Fine. Only you are returning to Tel Aviv and we are staying here not knowing what terrorist will roll upon us at night from the mountain.'

In my apartment in Tel Aviv we lived at the time five people in a space of four hundred and twenty square feet. No room of my own, there wasn't even a bedroom.

Then I thought, if there was a place to which artists would come for a stay of some weeks or months so they can be free to create, then both the artists and the community would benefit. It would answer to the needs.

I returned to Tel Aviv and began telling all kinds of people and organizations, that that was what they had to do. Some said, How come, and some would say, 'Why not, do it.' In those days the world was divided for me into dreamers, and doers. Two separate groups. Me, do? I come up with ideas, and they should do. But all the time it still bothered, burned in my bones. In 1984 I suddenly got up and said, 'I am acting to found such a place.' Now I understand that in that moment I turned from a child citizen into an adult citizen. Very difficult. You need to go to the world, and bow down. It's impossible without money.

Within all these hardships, in Europe as well as in the United States, I would go into bookstores, to find solace. And I would think, So many books, So many woman writers! Who are they?

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Destiny's Choice

Paris, Thursday, 31 August, 1995

Thin, tall, a pure beauty as if emanating from the soul. Moves like a silk scarf and so does her voice.

She opened some albums. The daughter-in-law, in her twenties, came in with the baby, a ten months old guy full of force. They live in Beirut and are visiting for the summer.



I asked, How is life now in Beirut? And she answered in a gentle voice, "Not good. Israel is in the south of Lebanon, invaded it, we are under occupation, you know... It's a real war." She didn't say, y o u occupied. "You", in English, is both singular and plural. All these years I've been washing my hands -I am not "they", I am Corinna, don't put me into any drawers.



But it is a fact that I didn't go to the fence to stop the fighters on both sides with my own two hands.

The baby Alexander gargled sweetly in his international language, with a trusting smile as he stretched out his hands and Venus said, glowing, "Write about him, how wonderful he is! Will you write about him?"

In two weeks he will return to Beirut and he doesn't know and his parents don't know what is waiting for them there.



Venus lives on the ground floor of a building surrounded by a large garden, next to a park. Through the panoramic windows of the enormous living room, snapdragons and roses were blossoming, dozens of flower varieties that Venus, my sister in the love of gardening, had sown and planted and nurtures.



Venus Khoury-Ghata:



I hate my name. When I was born, my mother gave me a very beautiful name. Dianne. Like Diana, the goddess from Greek mythology.



A week later, one of the neighbors, a doctor, bought a dog. And he called his dog, "Dianne".



My mother was very angry and she picked up the dictionary to look for an e v e n m o r e important goddess than Diana. She found Venus - the goddess of love and beauty.



I liked the name when I lived in Lebanon and was young and beautiful. But for some years now I hate my name. I see myself in old age, and with this name.



Today I presented a new book to my editor at Jean Claude Latess. I asked them to print it under the name, V. Khoury-Ghata.



They told me, "You've published twenty-two books under the name Venus Khoury-Ghata, and now you want us to take out Venus and put just the letter V?"



In my youth in Lebanon I was beautiful. Foolish people gave me the title of "Miss Beirut 1959."

Then the name Venus fitted me.

Now I'm not a Miss. I'm a writer, and I lead a very austere life, and the name doesn't fit.



(excerpt from ONCE SHE WAS A CHILD)

Niam el Baz, in Cairo

The conversation with Niam el Baz was done in Arabic, with Atidal, an Israeli Palestinian, translating for us.
A full translation of the tape was done in Israel.
The following is an excerpt.

Ni'am: Why have Israel come to this plot of land? Why haven't they taken a different plot for themselves, why haven't they conquered for themselves an empty plot?
There is an answer to that.
Ni'am: I promise you that if there had been an empty plot on the map and on it the Israelis had built a state, then I would have admired, and forgiven them. And then I would have worked and done anything. Why have they come to this plot of land?
There is an answer.
Ni'am: Tell me.
It's a joke.
Ni'am: I don't want a joke. I want an answer.
I will give you an answer as well. But first the joke.
Ni'am: All right.

Moses Our Teacher had a stammer --
Ni'am: Do you know why? Because he was the only one who God was talking to. It is a special thing that has never happened, only to him. God marked him with a sign to testify for that. In Arabic he is called Kareem Allah, Beloved of God.

OK. Here is what happened when God spoke to him:
He went up to God in the mountain and God told him, Take the people of Israel to Canada!
He went back down to the people, and the people were impatient, so he started saying, We should go to C-C-C-C-,
Atidaal: (in Hebrew) He stammered...
Yes. So the people said -- To Canaan? All right. We'll go to Canaan.
Atidaal: (laughs, and translates)
Ni'am: (laughs as well, and says with a regretful voice) Look what this
joke has done. (The three of us laugh).

Ni'am: I'm blaming the Palestinians as well, since they sold the land. And
it can happen to me in a hundred or two hundred years. In my opinion, I am protecting my legitimate rights, because it has to do with heritage. Look, you have in the Knesset a map of Israel from the Euphrate to the Nile!
Where did she take this from?!
Ni'am: What, you don't believe that Israel should stretch from the
Euphrate to the Nile? No? Are there many people in Israel who think like you?
Atidaal: There are many.
Ni'am: No, ask her.
Atidaal: No, I know that there are many members of the Knesset who think
like her.
Ni’am: Ask her.

An Apple For My Name

A telephone call from a morning show on the radio. Asking me to prepare 150 words for the item "The Male-Chauvinist of the Week: The male-chauvinist of the week is the Hebrew Writers' Association."



I started writing the introduction she had dictated to me.

'Hello, this is Corinna. I am a writer --'



And then the same assistant called back:

"You forgot to tell us your family name!"

"I don't use one."

"No, you can't do it without a family name. How are people going to know you."

"If I give you a family name, I'll be totally anonymous."

"We have to introduce you. How can I introduce you without a family name?"

"You can say, 'Hasofferett. The writer Corinna'."

"Listen, it's a very important program, very prestigious."



Now I'm listening to this program and the editor-interviewer says, introducing her guest: "The wife of Minister such-and-such."

The guest says, "You can introduce me as the chairperson of The N. Institute."



When the assistant called me in the morning, she asked how much time I needed to prepare the item and I said, "Ten minutes," and she said, "Fine," and that someone named Edna will call to record me. And after about two minutes I get a call from a young woman who introduces herself as Edna and I say, "Hold on, can I get a little more time? It's only been two minutes," and she says, "No, first I have to tell you that you must introduce yourself with your full name, first name and family name, that's the rule, the instruction. From the editor."



They have a quiz on the show and someone guesses that the answer is a certain female writer, and that editor-presenter-interviewer says, "Yes. By the way, she's the wife of so-and-so who was just in the news."

And she says, "Why did I have to say that, such an insignificant detail."



But twice during the broadcast she introduces a woman as the-wife-of and if that's why she needs my name, to map ownership like you mark sheep in the flock, who the proprietor is...



Esther Eilam, the woman who founded the first hostel for battered women and a personal friend, phoned them upon my request, and heard the same 'spiel' from the assistant.



I ring Ariel Shemer and talk to a lawyer in his office without telling her which program I'm talking about, until I tell her the whole story and when I say, "for the item Male-Chauvinist of the Week," she bursts out laughing, "Male-Chauvinist of the Week, huh? It's The Others who are wrong..."



That week there was no male-chauvinist to be found in our midst. The Writers' Association held its biannual conference like in all the seventy-five years of its existence, in which the association’s monthly literary magazine has been edited only by men, and on the stage, like it said in the invitation, stood only male writers and lectured words of wisdom to an audience of mostly female writers.



An actor read from a poem by Mr. Tchernichovsky, after whom the Writer's House is named:

"A queen awaits her bridegroom -- "



and the well known poem by our one and only national poet Mr. Hayim Nachman Bialik:

"Take me under your wing and be a mother and sister to me..."



Two weeks after the radio incident, I approached one enlightened newspaper with an article on the professional discrimination of women writers.

The editor called to say that she would like to print it, but,

"You forgot to write your family name."

Oh.

"I don't use one."

"There's no such thing. How are we going to introduce you."

"You can write, the writer Corinna."

"No, you must write a family name, we won't print it without it."

And they didn't print.



By December 1995 I rang up the Registry of Residents and asked them to send me a name-change form.

The form has a clause that asks you to give reasons.

The clerk looked at the form, read from it out loud, "'I am a writer, and this is the name I have made for myself,'" and gave me back the sheet: "You have to explain, to specify, that's not enough!"

I said, "Fine, if you don't accept it, I'll go to the High Court of Justice ."



Two weeks later I told Esther Eilam, I've solved the problem. I have a family name now, it's registered in the Registry of Residents."

"No way! What name?"

"Hasofferett. The Woman Writer."

Now when they ask me for a name I say, "The Writer Corinna".

And then they look at me, and say,



"O.K., but what's your f a m i l y name?"



****************************************

Excerpt from Once She Was a Child.






Read it in Polish; in Hungarian;

Hanne Marie Svendsen

"...In my childhood I had a feeling that everything that was real fun, that was different from the daily routine -- was connected to him.

He had a desk in black oak with legs like the claws of a lion. I would sit under his desk, hug its leg, and dream. When I was four, five years old.

When I lay in my bed trying to sleep, I was imagining the bed was a boat. I had a swing in the garden and sitting on it I was imagining the swing was a boat.

He died when I was eight years old.

It was a shock.

I felt betrayed. Such treason! Why should he die, how could he do that. I didn't want to mention his name anymore..."