At "The Little Prince": Emigration Journals

Yet sooner than expected one would find himself at home in certain places, or as Eveline's son would put it... not at home in more than one place. A cafe-bookstore and a tavern, both imported from the heavenly Jerusalem, the most dreadful and deadening of all places on earth... "The Litte Prince", that's the name of that such place... Unreadable and old Hebrew books furnish the walls and all the students chatter with each other on books and matters of the day, and how I wished to be part of those conversations! The urgency took over me again, proving that the outside is always troubled with me, but perhaps it's no willy-nilly, it isn't the catastrophic finances even, but more like that enormous fear of arriving in Jerusalem tonight, to close a deal with that awful place, to grant her a divorce. Bringing all my books and papers to the great misery ("t'aluva") that composes the landscape here. Most often I don't wish to leave the house, as of usual fearing accidents and more troubled environments, entanglements with new people that might just make matters worse than they've been until now. Emigrating to this new city is like changing one's name, everything suddenly turns so comfortable and familiar yet only because of that priceless gift of anonimity.

The conclusion is that one can't live with any situation and that's why they're so bearable even at the point when one's lost all courage. Changing the city or the country doesn't alter anything, it's like taking up citizenship in a foreign country, you can't care that much. One just can't survive in any city, because the bags don't differ between geographical loci, the language doesn't change and in this loneliness I only wish I were among those old friends, complaining about our miser situation with all possible virtuoso performance, as though on a stage. Only the songs save one from losing the language so entirely, when all the languages one writes in are foreign and untouchable. You might have fled leaving others on their own, without exit visas, betraying a little so to speak and this, despite the totality of the experience, doesn't contain any moral worth; yet one's attempting to overcome the curiosity of Lot's wife and by tour de force, becoming one another Noah in his boat, turning the waters upside down. The appalling distance from all living material that one gains in exile is nauseating at times, so that you run and hide in yourself, only in order to become so frightened as to eliminate all desire to survive again. Years passed by since I spent those awful hungry nights in the north of Tel Aviv writing those ridiculous musings and little stories that would save me from collapsing. By then, I had almost forgotten all Greek, except for the parts strictly necessary to remain alive yet one day more... in the hometown there were always friends to help and conversations, free hot meals and warm beds, counsels and a lot of empathy... Here it all seems so far, and you embrace your security as though it were at all, but those of us who have spent years in the abyss know this to be otherwise. Only the little pasts with those moments of truth can help one not to collapse at every juncture of the hour. It's about time to unlive the truth for a while, to work on oneself and to be rehabilitated for life, we'll live again, she said to me... and I hope for those days only because I want to believe they're distant from the here and now that has already fallen into a black hole where only remembering can provide any solace, can erase the towers and dry the sea, to reveal the Judean desert again, only that can hush the parties to let those angry godless prayers be heard, only that can dissipate the securities in order to show how much we fear. In exiles language is always turned around, it's never lost... simply translated, and that's what causes a little pain sometimes. With a little Greek I arrived home, and with that same little Greek I left.