This piece is part of our Wit­ness­ing series, which shares pieces from Israeli authors and authors in Israel, as well as the expe­ri­ences of Jew­ish writ­ers around the globe in the after­math of Octo­ber 7th.

It is crit­i­cal to under­stand his­to­ry not just through the books that will be writ­ten lat­er, but also through the first-hand tes­ti­monies and real-time account­ing of events as they occur. At Jew­ish Book Coun­cil, we under­stand the val­ue of these writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ni­als and of shar­ing these indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ences. It’s more impor­tant now than ever to give space to these voic­es and narratives.

That Time

Lev­inas says our main prophet

was slow of speech and slow of tongue.

No one lis­tened to him.

It’s hard to give the stammerer

time when we’re in a hurry

to hear the truth.

*

Jabes says one needs to leave the city 

to hear the noise,

to back away from trauma

to recov­er one’s voice.

*

At the Upper Lid­des­dale cottage

the sky grey and full of 

lumi­nous light. On screen,

the par­ents of a hostage

speak at the Democratic 

Con­ven­tion. Bring them home

they plead. Applause. Chants.

Is any­one listening?

What I love most are the sheep,

like sculp­ture, a still-life

even in the downpour

they stay sta­tion­ary, rocks

white on deep green,

the grass they nib­ble motionless

and the sky that out­lines their

earth­ly exis­tence and the quiet

move­ment of clouds above them

all a wist­ful won­der they

sleep and wake and graze 

in the mead­ows amid the tufts

and trees and then slow­ly tread 

soul­ful and serene. I hold on for dear life

and press my hip to the right

as if to keep the car from falling over

or on impact crashing

with the oncom­ing news.

Two flat tires between

Stir­ling and Fort William.

A vaca­tion in the hills along a lake

while the dead are piled up at home

and the par­ents of the not yet released

speak and speak. Almost from the start 

we have seen who is not listening,

hands over ears, eyebrows

arched like the cones of violent

moun­tains. We knelt on the narrow

road to locate the num­ber on the tires,

our clothes soaked. And yet nothing, 

noth­ing could have been safer or calmer 

as if that stop on the way did not 

hold us up in a world gone awry. 

It was hard to go away

when war was tear­ing us apart

at home. And yet it wasn’t hard

to be there, the sheep and bulls,

the fer­ries that took us from Strontian,

to Mull, the cas­tle we didn’t visit,

the taxi dri­ver who waved

“God bless your country!” 

It wasn’t hard to come back

either. It’s only hard to be here

now. Bring them home. Now.

This piece is part of a longer work.

The views and opin­ions expressed above are those of the author, based on their obser­va­tions and experiences.

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