"The Baker" - short story

“I’ve heard you have the best pitas in all of Sofia.”

“Who am I to argue with what people are saying?” Jamal said, looking up from the cash register to find a well-dressed middle-aged man drumming his fingers on the counter. “What can I get you?”

“Would it be possible to make an order for one hundred and fifty?”

Jamal stepped back, not surprised at the large order but rather that the man was speaking to him in colloquial Arabic. “I’m sure that can be arranged,” he said, turning to his brother for confirmation. Standing near one of the ovens, Amar nodded his consent.

“Good,” the customer said. “I will pay you now, in advance. Could you have the order ready if I come by tomorrow at three?”

Jamal rang up the purchase and handed over the change and a receipt. “Dovizhdane,” he said, instinctively saying goodbye in Bulgarian.

“Shukran,” the man replied in Arabic as he left the bakery.

Read the rest of the story on Isele Magazine.

The Mousetrap

We first sensed something odd in our kitchen when we noticed that the top part of a Shabbat roll had been pulled off. Maybe one of our granddaughters had torn the bag open as part of a pre-dinner “I am starving!” tantrum? The next morning, we discovered a damaged section of banana bread.

And then there was a fruit platter left out overnight. Pomegranate seeds were spilled all over the counter. A week later, a purple plum fell to the floor during the night. Maybe someone had bumped into the fruit bowl?

But when we found tiny chewed-up pieces of beet all over the side of the stove, we realized this was no accident. We had had kubbeh soup for dinner, so there were plenty of beets around. One of them, apparently, was left out on the counter and it had been attacked overnight.

The final straw was when we woke up to find that a ripe plum had rolled across the kitchen floor. It was chewed into small little pieces. We had a mouse!

We borrowed a mousetrap and primed it on the kitchen floor before going to bed. First, we tried a piece of yellow cheese. Nothing. And then half a plum. Nothing. A piece of chocolate. Chocolate coated in peanut butter. These all resulted in an empty trap.

Maybe the mouse was gone for good? We went about our normal business. On Friday morning, Jodie stood at the stove preparing chicken soup for Shabbat. She heard something and looked down at the floor. A tail! A very long tail!

The animal escaped into the front room and we set the mousetrap on the floor and closed the door. Suddenly, there was a noise of something falling! I opened the door and entered slowly. One of my daughter’s artworks on canvas had fallen from a small ledge. I put it back in place and closed the door. A short while later, the picture fell again! No sign of a mouse, but we knew it was in there, even though we couldn’t see or hear it.

We kept the door closed all day. When we needed to go into the front room—to take clothes out of the dryer, retrieve a cookbook, get onions, or to check the computer—we entered cautiously, closing the door quickly behind us. We were careful to avoid the mousetrap. Apparently, the mouse was avoiding it as well.

Dinnertime. We sat at the Shabbat dinner table and enjoyed our meal. After dinner, a quick check of the front room to see that the mousetrap was still empty. Dinner dishes washed and put away. Desert served. Family time in the living room. The family left, things quieted down, and we turned on the television.

And then, a noise from the front room.

It was in the trap, pacing back and forth. And it was much bigger than we had imagined, with a very, very long tail. This was no mouse!

“House mice measure 12 to 20 cm in length, including the tail.” On the other hand, “rats may grow to be as long as 40 cm or more and weigh considerably more than mice.”

We had a rat in the house! I found it quite cute, actually—standing in the cage staring at me with its curious eyes. Jodie found it disgusting. “A rat! Get it out of here!”

I put on heavy gloves, covered the cage with rags, and carefully carried it across the street. I bent down, opened the mousetrap, and the creature dashed out and disappeared under the bushes. Maybe the rat would survive. Maybe it would be attacked by the stray cats that hang around the trash barrels. Not my problem. It was on its own!

The rat is gone, our plums and beets are safe. Still, we will not leave Shabbat rolls or banana bread unprotected overnight. Maybe the rat has brothers and sisters.

My granddaughters just became Romanian citizens, and I’m ok with that

This week my three young granddaughters and their parents showed up at the Romanian Consulate in Ramat Gan and submitted their request for passports. The girls’ pictures were taken, and they waited—impatiently as it turned out, and the guard at the door asked them to go outside—while their father filled in the details on the application form. The clerk informed them that the passports would be sent in the mail.

Why Romania? My son-in-law’s mother, who passed away two years ago, was born and raised in Romania. According to that country’s rules and regulations, ‘you can apply for Romanian Citizenship by Descent if you have a parent who was a Romanian citizen at any point in their lifetime; or if you have a grandparent who was a Romanian citizen at any point in their lifetime.’ In recent years, many Israelis have applied for foreign citizenship, including those who took advantage of Portugal’s openness to descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled during the Inquisition.

Romanian passports are accepted in countries where Israelis cannot set foot. Romanian citizenship gives my granddaughters a wide range of possibilities, both in that country and all over Europe.

When I asked my eight-year-old granddaughter why she was getting a Romanian passport, she told me it was so that she could “go places.”

My daughter is not a Romanian citizen, but rather has dual Israeli-American citizenship. Because my wife and I are both American citizens, we registered all three of our children at the American Embassy in Tel Aviv shortly after they were born. Although there is a ‘grandparent clause’, we could only pass citizenship down to our granddaughters if we had lived for two years as adults in the United States.

But why does an Israeli need a second citizenship anyway? Is it an insurance policy that if things get really, really bad in Israel, there is an escape route guaranteeing a life elsewhere, where things are safer?

That is not why we registered our children as Americans.

My wife and I both made aliya with our parents as children. We were born American and it was not our choice, as minors, to move to Israel and become Israeli. When we reached adulthood, however, we were free to decide where to live and we chose to remain in Israel.

By registering our children as Americans, we knew that when they grew up, they would be free to choose as well.

My daughter and her family have no plans to move to Romania, as far as I know. But who knows? One day my granddaughters may make that decision. Or they may move elsewhere. They will have more than one option available to them. 

A second citizenship gives my granddaughters greater freedom when deciding where to live, whether in Israel or abroad. They will have additional places where they can study, more employment opportunities. They will be free to travel the world without the limitations of an Israeli passport. They will able to cross borders without the need of a visa. 

In short, like my granddaughter said, with a second passport they will be able to “go places.”

My granddaughters are both Israeli and Romanian. And that’s just fine with me.

Photo credit: Shutterstock

Short Stories Ahead!

Lately I have focused my creativity on writing short stories and several of them are now on submission at various online literary journals.

I am proud to announce that two of my stories will be published in December and I’m eager for you to read them!

Here is a short description of the short stories ahead:

“The Bear” – an elderly man was collecting firewood in Bulgaria’s Rhodope Mountains when he was attacked and killed by a wild bear. Two brothers set out to track down the bear, each for his own reason.

“The Baker” – a Syrian refugee starts a new profession in the Bulgarian capital where he is called upon to deal with a gypsy woman and her daughter, and meets an Israeli under unusual circumstances.

I will share these stories as soon as they are published, as well as any other story as soon as it is accepted.

 

Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash

Review of ‘The Last Interview’ by Eshkol Nevo

The protagonist of The Last Interview by Eshkol Nevo, translated by Sondra Silverston (Other Press, October 2020) was supposed to be writing a novel, but instead he is answering a very long interview sent to him by the editor of a website. Faced with the typical questions given to a novelist, such as ‘Did you always know you would be a writer?’ the unnamed protagonist decides to answer each and every question truthfully, with nothing held back. 

Answer by answer we learn more about his life, about his broken marriage and his daughter who has run away from home. About his ongoing war with dysthymia and his chronic low-grade feeling of depression. About his childhood friend who has disappeared, and much more. Family and friends play a huge role in these answers and, as he keeps on writing, what was intended as a simple, but in-depth interview becomes a story itself. Not only that, the protagonist realizes that he has no idea where this story will end.

‘How autobiographical are your books?’ is one of the questions.

The readers of the protagonist’s novels want to know what is real, and what isn’t in his books. By asking this question, readers show that they are “determined to get to the biographical core of the book, based on the erroneous assumption that it will help them understand it.”

As readers of The Last Interview, we may be asking the very same question. While we never know the name of the book’s protagonist, his answers tell us that he is the grandson of Levi Eshkol, the third prime minister of Israel. Eshkol Nevo, the real-life author of The Last Interview, is in fact the late prime minister’s grandson. When asked in the book what legacy his grandfather had left him, the fictional author answers that no matter how hard he tried, he was never able to mourn him personally. Was this also the case in real life?

The fictional author, in his apparent role as Nevo’s alter ego, responds to his readers’ questions by saying “the more he ‘lies’, in biographical terms, the closer he gets to the deep truth that is beyond the facts.” And the opposite could be true as well, he says. 

The book’s narrative walks a thin line between truth and lies, between fact and fiction, but The Last Interview is far from confusing. In its unique format, the ‘interview’ provides answers that dig deeper and deeper into the protagonist’s life, with all its love and misery, friendships and heartaches, and the contradictory facets of his public and private identities. And in the process, The Last Interview proves to be a highly engrossing and page-turning read.

Eshkol Nevo is an Israeli writer who has published a collection of short stories, five novels, and a work of non-fiction. His novel Homesick was awarded the Book Publishers Association Gold Prize (2005) and the FFI-Raymond Wallier Prize at the Salon du Livre (Paris, 2008). Nevo is the grandson of Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, for whom he was named.

Sondra Silverston is a native New Yorker who has lived in Israel since 1970. She has translated works by Amos Oz, Etgar Keret, Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, and Eshkol Nevo. Her translation of Amos Oz’s Between Friends won the 2013 National Jewish Book Award for fiction.

Originally posted on The Times of Israel.

Intriguing Plotline That Is Chock-full of Significant Detail

There is a vivid, life-like element to Valley Of Thracians by Ellis Shuman. Perhaps it is because of the author's expertise on Bulgaria, or because of the timeline of history that is refreshingly accurate. Regardless of the reason, the end product has proved to be something quite special.

As the novel opens we meet Simon Matthews, a man on a mission. Simon's character evokes the reader's empathy as his heart-wrenching situation comes to light. He has traveled to Bulgaria to answer a question that had been plaguing him, what has happened to his grandson?

"It was a feeling he had -a gut feeling that was burning inside him and growing in intensity from day to day."

No body had ever been produced from his grandson's death. And as Simon begins his quest, digging into the truth behind the mysterious death, he uncovers something incredibly sinister.

"The bus speeds east through the dark and forbidding Bulgarian night. The rhythm of the tires on the asphalt pavement soothes my worries, and I close my eyes, eager to forget the strange happenings that have led me to this unexpected journey."

With the help of Sophia Ivanova, an expert in Thracian culture, he is able to traverse throughout Bulgaria on an amazing journey filled with the languid rhythms of culture, and subtle clues of muddled deception.

"Simon wiped away a tear that threatened to cascade down his face, something that surprised him each time he thought deeply about his beloved grandson even after all this time."

Shuman's writing style ensconces the reader in an intriguing plot-line that is chock-full of significant detail. His past experiences provide a compelling narrative. Valley Of Thracians is a riveting fiction debut that will enrich each reader to the savoir-faire of Bulgaria.

Originally published on Bookend Chronicles in August 2013.

Israeli Embassy in Bulgaria Promotes "The Burgas Affair"

2020 marks 30 years of restored diplomatic relations between Israel and Bulgaria. On this occasion, the Embassy launched an "I read Israeli authors" campaign—in posts and tweets—in which it presented books published in Bulgarian over the last three decades.

“We have chosen to present the works of some of the most prominent and world-renowned authors from Israel,” the Embassy stated. Bulgarians had already met in person many of the authors, the Embassy noted, including A.B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz, David Grossman, Etgar Keret, and Meir Shalev.

In its series the Embassy highlighted The Burgas Affair. “It intertwines real facts from the investigation with fictional storylines to offer us a tense and intriguing thriller.”

Summing up the promotion, the Embassy said it hoped Bulgarian readers would “find their next read in the rich palette of genres, plots, and stories,” in the Israeli books published in Bulgarian.

Israel and Bulgaria established diplomatic relations in 1948, but Bulgaria cut diplomatic ties with Israel after the Six Day War. Diplomatic relations were restored in 1990.

The Burgas Affair was published in Bulgarian as БYPГАСКАТА АФЕРА by Ciela Books in 2016.

Israel in Bulgaria official Facebook page

Israel in Bulgaria official Twitter account

The Night I Chased a Pack of Wild Boars from My Garden

It was just before one in the morning when my daughter woke me up. She had heard noises outside and thought it was someone trying to break into our house. But then she heard grunts. Within seconds I was running to the back door, ready to confront the wild boars that were ravaging our garden.

I ran up our deck pathway barefoot, shouting, and suddenly I was surrounded. They were kicking up dirt, grunting, storming through plants and bushes. The boars were desperately searching for a way out of our fenced-in backyard.

I stood there, phone in hand, ready to take a once-in-a-lifetime photo of the wild animals racing around me, but my camera was mistakenly set to selfie mode.

In any case, it was too dark and I never really saw any of the boars clearly, only fast-moving shadows. 

My daughter, standing on our patio, called out a warning as more boars dashed out of the bushes behind me. Fearing they would attack her she went back inside. She said there were at least six of the animals, but she couldn't say for sure if they were big or small.

The gate we had put up at the entrance to our garden/the garden next door was open. I assume it was not closed that night, but even if it was, the boars could have forced their way through it. At this stage it was good that it was open because it offered the boars an escape route. One of them ran instead for the fence and dug its way out as I watched.

I was upset with myself for playing with my phone, but there was nothing I could have done better. The beasts were frightened by my shouting, by my stomping noisily up the pathway, and by my presence. I certainly didn't want to throw stones and agitate them further.

One neighbor did throw stones at them for ten minutes. The boars did not run away but they didn't go into his backyard. Our next-door neighbors were not so lucky. They have invested a lot of money in their garden and the boars thoroughly destroyed their grass (and this was the second time they've done this).

The boars were possibly digging for bulbs (they did not eat any flowers) but it was more likely that they were searching for water. The extensive damage in the neighbor's grass was surprisingly in a straight line, probably where the irrigation tubing was laid.

Needless to say, our neighbors were heartbroken the next morning. Our grass is not in as good shape as theirs and as they say, the grass is greener on the other side, so that is what spared us. Until next time.

This was not my first encounter with the boars who have made the hills and forests around Moshav Neve Ilan their home. I have written about them twice before:

** Last Night Encounter with My New Neighbors

** Boar Meet

Boars are a protected species in Israel, but they constitute a serious problem. There are neighborhoods in Haifa where packs of boars roam the streets, even during the daytime hours. Municipal councils are not allowed to set out poison or attempt to kill them in any other way. Boars have no natural predator in Israel, and as neither Jews or Muslims eat boars or pigs, there are no incentives to hunt them for food.

The video does not show the boars in my garden, but rather boars elsewhere on Neve Ilan the same night. The video was filmed by a neighbor and shared on social media.