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Don't Judge a Book by Its (Tablet) Cover

At 6:30 in the morning on Wednesday, September 25th, sirens went off, warning of an impending rocket attack on Tel Aviv. Along with the other passengers on the train that had departed from Modi’in half an hour earlier, I lay on the floor. The train slowed as it neared the Tel Aviv University Station. When it came to a stop, I rushed off and took shelter in the arrival hall below the tracks.

It was the first time that a missile fired by Hezbollah came close to striking Tel Aviv in the ongoing and escalating conflict. The IDF Army confirmed it had intercepted the surface-to-surface missile after it was launched from Lebanon. There were no reports of casualties or damage.

I breathed a sigh of relief and hurried toward the station’s exit. As I walked, I adjusted my backpack and found that one of the pouches was unzipped. I felt inside and discovered that my tablet was missing. Maybe in my rush to get off the train I had placed it inside another pouch? Had I had left it on the train?

I need my tablet to read

My journey to work on the early morning train lasts 37 minutes, and I utilize the time to read. That morning, I had been just a chapter or two short of finishing Songs for the Brokenhearted by Ayelet Tsabari, an excellent novel by a highly talented writer. I was thoroughly enjoying the book and planning to write a very complimentary review. But when I arrived at my office and checked my backpack, I confirmed the fact that I had lost my tablet.

I opened a ticket on the Israel Railways website reporting the loss. I joined several Facebook groups—Lost and Found, Lost and Found in Tel Aviv, and Lost and Found on the Train. I posted a quick note about losing my tablet and provided a brief description. I checked my Facebook feed every hour to see if anyone reported finding it.

A few words about my tablet. It is a very old, outdated Samsung model, dating back to 2013. I only use the tablet for reading. I don’t watch videos on the tablet; I don’t play games. My tablet serves me solely as a digital book.

The most distinguishing feature of the tablet is its black cover. The cover is as old as the device and shows extensive signs of wear and tear. It’s faded and starting to come apart. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a picture of the tablet to post on Facebook.

One of the first thoughts that went through my head was how would I finish the last pages of Tsabari’s novel? I downloaded the Kindle app to my phone and on my return train journey home, I read the ending of the book on a very small screen.

I order a new tablet and then…

A week and a half passed, and I had given up hope of ever seeing my tablet again. I went online and searched for a new tablet to buy. I didn’t want anything fancy, and I certainly didn’t want an Amazon Kindle, a device that continues to frustrate my wife months after she purchased it. I found an affordable model and made the order. The tablet would be ready for pickup at an electronics store down the street from my office the very next day.

And then I got a phone call from Israel Railways.

“Do you have a white tablet?” someone asked me.

I didn't know the color! I couldn't remember ever seeing the tablet without its fraying cover.

“Does it have a start button at the bottom, like an iPhone 4?”

“I don’t know what an iPhone 4 looks like,” I admitted.

Don't judge a digital book by its cover

After work, I went to the Lost and Found department at the Savidor Center Train Station. The clerk couldn’t find a record of having called me that morning, but he did have my report of a missing tablet listed in his files. “Is this one yours?” he said, holding up a huge device.

“My tablet is smaller.”

“What about this one?”

“No, mine is much smaller”

“And this?”

I immediately recognized the tablet by its old black cover. “That’s it!”

As the clerk wrote up his report, I turned on the device. Amazingly, after having gone missing for a week and a half, the battery was at 75%. And the Kindle app opened to the exact page in Songs for the Brokenhearted that I had been reading when the siren went off.

“You seem surprised,” the clerk said.

“I can’t believe that I found it.”

“There are good people in this world,” the clerk said, referring to the honest anonymous train passenger who had turned my tablet into Lost and Found. “And your tablet is a very old model that no one uses anymore.”

No one uses? My tablet had just survived a missile attack and reappeared after disappearing for a week and a half! Even after all these years, it is still a suitable device for reading, especially when it comes to excellent novels like Songs for the Brokenhearted by Ayelet Tsabari.

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Review of 'Songs for the Brokenhearted' by Ayelet Tsabari

If there’s a soundtrack to Songs for the Brokenhearted by Ayelet Tsabari (Random House, September 10, 2024), it probably sounds very much like Ofra Haza's ‘Yemenite Songs’ album. Like the album, this outstanding novel is a stage for Yemenite women sharing the traditional, sinuous tunes of a culture where singing is a day-to-day activity.

“You know how it is with Yemeni people. Singing is in our blood,” says one of the characters in the book. “We sing when we clean, we sing when we cook. We sing when we’re happy. We sing when we’re sad. In celebrations. Even in death.”

It is a death that brings Zohara, a 31-year-old PhD candidate, back to Israel. Zohara’s mother, Saida, has died. The two hadn’t always gotten along. ‘Only after I moved to New York had we reached a quiet, dignified truce,’ Zohara tells herself. ‘I finally made it home again. and she wasn’t here.’

Along with her sister Lizzie, Zohara sets out to purchase a gravestone and pack up their mother’s home in the Sha’ariya Yemini neighborhood of Petach Tikva. At the grocery store down the street, Zohara meets Nir, with whom she went to elementary school. Nir’s mother, Yael, introduces her to the sisterhood of women who gather at the community center to sing. As women traditionally play secondary roles in Yemeni households, Zohara ‘started thinking of the women’s songs, that insistence to be heard, as subversive, audacious, feminist even. I liked the idea of the women using their creative expression as a form of protest.’

When she discovers a set of old cassette tapes, the music 'brings Zohara closer to her mother, to understand her more after she died than she did when she was alive.' ‘It made me see my mother in a whole new light.’ Zohara is shocked to learn that her mother not only sang but was also a talented poetess. A woman capable of writing explicit lyrics.

‘If I were grapes strung on a vine, I’d squeeze the flesh of my fruit and pour juice into your mouth’.

At its heart of Songs for the Brokenhearted is a love story. It is the tale of Saida and Yaqub, who first met in an immigrant camp in 1950, shortly after their arrival in Israel. “My heart is full of rain. If it bursts, it might flood the whole time,” Saida sings, and the young girl's beautiful voice captivates Yaqub. “Singing is the one thing that keeps me sane in this place,” she tells him. “I miss the way we sang in Yemen, all the women together.”

Zohara’s discovery of her mother’s musical talents makes her reconsider the subject of her dissertation. She also reexamines her connection with Iggy, a former lover and her current best friend. Or maybe her friendship with Nir can advance to the next level, she wonders.

Tsabari, author of the award-winning The Best Place on Earth short story collection, populates her pages with true to life characters. Zohara’s nephew, Yoni, struggles to find meaning during the politically charged weeks leading up to November 1995. Lizzie’s frustrations with her sister are easily understood, and readers will readily connect with Zohara, as she is drawn closer to her mother and learns more about herself in the process.

You can almost hear Saida singing her original lyrics to traditional Yemenite songs as you read this moving, highly recommended novel.

Ayelet Tsabari’s debut collection of short stories, The Best Place on Earth, won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award. Her memoir The Art of Leaving was a finalist for the Writer’s Trust Hilary Weston Prize, and the winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for memoir. She’s the co-editor of the anthology Tongues: On Longing and Belonging Through Language and has taught creative writing at Guelph MFA in Creative Writing and The University of King’s College MFA.

 

Originally posted on The Times of Israel.

Related articles:

Review of 'The Art of Leaving' by Ayelet Tsabari

Review of 'The Best Place on Earth' by Ayelet Tsabari