The Pale of Settlement by Margot Singer

Author:Margot Singer [Singer, Margot]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780820335865
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2007-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

Nostalgia

In the morning, while the girl sleeps, Avraham stands in the kitchen, watching the pigeons pecking in the gritty light. Already it is hot. He collects a place mat, a cup, a plate, and silverware, lays them out on the dining table for the girl when she wakes up, the way Eva used to do when Eitan came home from the army or university. The box sits on the table by the phone. How different, he wonders, are its contents from the stuff he’s sifted through so many times in excavating the destruction layer of a tell, the debris of ancient fire. Often you found the best things there, buried in the ash, the most telling clues: abandoned vessels, cult objects, tablets, seals, bits of carbonized wood and bone. He loved the way it all came together on a dig, the way you had to turn and twist the pieces in your head until they fit. He used to laugh at the volunteers who’d arrive at the site filled with visions of ancient splendor and grow so quickly disappointed when they saw only piles of dirt and rubble, half-dug holes. But where’s the city? they’d complain. Look, he’d point out, here’s a foundation stone, here’s a cistern, here’s a retaining wall. But they saw nothing but destruction, a heap of broken stone. Tȩsknota: the Polish word for “nostalgia” comes to him suddenly, a word he didn’t even know he knew, with overtones of sadness and longing the Hebrew did not have. But whatever Avraham might be nostalgic for remains as deeply buried as the rest of his mother tongue he has forgotten or repressed. He considers nostalgia an unnecessary indulgence, like too much chocolate or cigarettes. He pushes his glasses up his nose. Perhaps Zalman was the smart one, to leave it all behind. Perhaps he’d had no regrets, after all.

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