A Family Suffers Fallout from Israel’s Tragedies
In our current discourse with its rigid binaries, we need Israel-set stories that paint a layered, not easily labeled portrait of a society and its people. I felt this years ago when I first read authors such as Amos Oz and David Grossman, who gave me a more nuanced perspective on the country than anything I had learned growing up. And I had the same feeling while reading The Anatomy of Exile (Delphinium Books, $28), a moving debut novel by Zeeva Bukai.
Bukai’s novel tells the story of the Abadis—Tamar, an Ashkenazi Jew, and Salim, her Mizrahi husband—and the secret that tears them apart. In the wake of the Six-Day War, they learn that Salim’s beloved sister, Hadas, has been killed in the village near Tel Aviv where the family had once lived. Tamar soon discovers that Hadas was not the victim of a terror attack, but in fact a murder-suicide by a Palestinian poet with whom she’d had a longstanding affair. Tamar keeps the truth to herself, vowing never to tell Salim about Hadas’s forbidden love or her own previous complicity in hiding it.
The consequences of her decision reverberate across oceans, as a heart broken Salim moves the family to the United States. In New York, Tamar tries to reconcile her longing for home with her sense of obligation to the husband she’s betrayed by hiding the truth. Despite the deep connection between them, Tamar and Salim’s marriage starts to come apart. Beyond their disagreements about the length of the family’s “exile” in America, the couple faces a cultural divide. Tamar is a native-born Israeli whose parents escaped Poland, while Syrian-born Salim wrestles with his identity as both an Arab and a Jew. At one point, Tamar asks him what it was like to be “an Arab Jew in Arab land.” Salim curtly replies, “Not much different from being an Arab Jew in Jewish land,” as if she “couldn’t grasp what it meant to be an outsider.”
By contrast, Salim feels a rapport with the Mahmoudis, a Palestinian family who moves into their Brooklyn apartment building. Tamar, however, is uneasy, especially after her teenage daughter, Ruby, takes up with the Mahmoudis’ son, Faisal. Fearing history will repeat itself, Tamar resolves to put a stop to the budding romance. Yet her meddling causes anguish and deepens the familial rift. As Salim grows more distant and determined to settle permanently in the United States, Tamar feels a stronger urge to return home.
Torn between her allegiance to her country and the family she’s created, she contemplates where she sees her future—and with whom. As the Yom Kippur War breaks out and drives the family further apart, she must confront her own fears and biases. In these moments of inner conflict, Bukai’s writing truly shines. With Tamar, she gives us an authentic portrayal of a woman grappling with loss, displacement, and divided loyalties as she faces a tragic reality: “The country she loved would destroy the boy her daughter loved.”
Through this family’s story, Bukai weaves a tapestry that feels as textured and complex as the history of the land itself. With vivid prose and rich characterization, the author explores themes of marriage, motherhood, and the meaning of home. It’s a tale that defies easy distinctions between victim and perpetrator, oppressor and oppressed. While there is no redemption or neat resolution, it offers hope that a love that transcends identities and borders might prevail, against all odds. In these times of wide-spread violence that contain countless small tragedies, there is no more urgent message.
Kate Schmier is a writer from Metro Detroit who lives in New York City.
