Ayelet Tsabari
In “A Simple Girl,” published in Ayelet Tsabari’s new memoir, The Art of Leaving, and excerpted in the 2019 issue of Paper Brigade, Ayelet Tsabari describes grappling with Mizrahi stereotypes as a child — and the inspiration she found in Ofra Haza, Israel’s iconic, Yemini singer. In the essay below, she shares a “strange, unexpected postscript” to the story.
“Doppelgänger,” read the subject line. The email had been sent by someone named Hayim, which was enough to get my attention — it happened to be my late father’s name, and not one I’d often encountered after moving to Canada from Israel. “My wife, Aya,” Hayim wrote, “is also Yemenite Israeli and was confused for you in our neighborhood in downtown Toronto.”
Hayim told me that Aya had been pushing her stroller in a park, when a man had approached her. “Ayelet?” he said. As it often happens when native English speakers try to say my name, something in his pronunciation was off. Aya heard an “a” and a “y,” and said “yes?” Just to make sure, the man asked more questions: “You’re Yemeni Israeli, right? You just had a baby? You live in this neighborhood?”
“Yes, yes,” Aya answered, growing uneasy. “Can I help you?”
“I’m a big fan of your work,” the man said. “I follow you on Twitter!”
“Um, I’m not on Twitter,” Aya said. “You must be confusing me with someone else.”
“Ayelet, right?” the man said. “You’re a writer?”
Aya laughed, relieved, and told him he had the wrong person. When she came home, she told the story to Hayim, who quickly looked me up online. “We should all meet up for a coffee,” he wrote. “At the very least, there’ll be a great story behind the question, ‘how did you meet?’”
Then, in parenthesis, Hayim mentioned one more detail — one that made this lucky accident appear almost magical. “Aya is a Haza,” he wrote. “Ofra’s niece.”
—
Ofra Haza, one of the most renowned musicians to ever come out of Israel, was my childhood idol. Her posters graced my bedroom walls; magazines with her picture on the cover were piled in my drawers, her records displayed on my shelves. And I wasn’t the only one — Mizrahi girls all over the country looked up to her. Her success gave us permission to dream big. My best friend Michal and I — both of Yemeni heritage — performed Ofra’s songs at school assemblies, dreaming of one day becoming famous singers just like her.
Like many legends, Ofra appeared otherworldly, larger than life. But she also exuded a sweetness that made her seem as if she would be approachable, despite her international success. That feeling of kinship may have had something to do with our shared heritage, too. “She looked like family,” I wrote in my essay “A Simple Girl.” “Like one of my more beautiful cousins.”
“How will you recognize each other?” Hayim joked when we finally arranged to meet at Christie Pits Park in Toronto. Despite the auspicious beginning, it was a while before we found time to get together. We were both in the throes of raising a baby, those first few months when there are no days and no nights.
When I saw Aya walking with a stroller down the park trail in a long, sweeping dress, I didn’t think we looked alike at all (although I was flattered — Aya was stunning). Still, I knew what that man in the park had seen. Had I passed her on the street, I would have surely made eye contact and smiled, shared a flicker of recognition. We could have been related: the head full of curls, the olive-brown skin, the distinct Yemeni-ness. That spring day, we sat on a bench at sunset, watched our kids crawl around in the playground, and chatted. I liked her instantly. Our conversation was effortless, her demeanor comforting, sincere.
After a few hesitant get-togethers, we became friends. We met again and again, at her house, at mine, in the park. Our friendship grew and deepened until one day it seemed like we had always been in each other’s lives — until Aya and her family became a part of what Toronto meant for me, and I couldn’t imagine living there without them.
I had been living in Canada for fifteen years by the time I met Aya, and had been blessed with a strong community, a tight-knit group of friends on whom I could count for support: when I hurt my back severely while my partner, Sean, was away, my friends took turns taking care of me. But becoming a mother changed everything. My needs changed, my priorities, my preoccupations. For the first time since I’d moved to Canada, I started to long for my family intensely. I missed my mother and my sister who lived in Israel, missed being able to drop by their houses and call them up for help. I wished I could sit in their kitchens idly with my baby, the way I’d seen my aunts do when I was growing up.
Perhaps the problem was that none of my close friends in Toronto were parents at the time. My friends did their best to help, two of them even offering to babysit so I could have time to write — probably the kindest thing a friend can do for a mother who’s also a writer. Still, I spent most days alone with my baby, growing isolated and depressed. I loved that I could talk to my friends about literature and art and their lives — it was a welcome distraction from the hardships of caring for a newborn — but sometimes I needed to talk about motherhood with someone who understood. I found myself courting mothers at the park, seeking their company, feeling exceedingly lonely — almost as lonely as I had been during my first year in Canada.
I also didn’t have many Israeli friends in Toronto. I lived downtown, whereas most Israelis lived on the outskirts of the city. Truth was, I hadn’t actively sought them out. I preferred my friendships to evolve naturally. But now, as I longed for the closeness of family, I found myself also longing for identity, for a sense of home. As a mother, I felt a new responsibility to pass on my traditions to my daughter, to educate her about her Yemeni Israeli heritage, to teach her Hebrew. I wanted to find ways to celebrate Jewish holidays — which, until then, I had done sporadically and noncommittally.
Once, early on in our acquaintance, Hayim said to me, “Our kids are going to grow up like cousins.”
I smiled and said nothing in return. It seemed too fast. We had just met.
Now we celebrated the Jewish holidays with Aya and Hayim’s family, had Shabbat dinners at their house. Through them, my daughter was exposed to the Jewish customs I remembered from my own childhood. And she loved it. She looked forward to singing the prayers on Friday evenings; she was the first one rushing down the stairs to light candles with Aya. And when Hayim blessed his daughters at the kiddush, he blessed mine, too.
Finally, I had a friend with a kitchen where I could idly sit while our daughters played and cookies baked in the oven. Aya and I watched each other’s children, picked them up from school when the other couldn’t, made each other soup (Yemeni soup, of course!) when the other was sick. Remarkably, all four of us got along — not just as a group, but also in pairs. I hung out with Hayim and the girls while Aya and Sean worked. Sean and Aya did the same. When my mother came to visit, we all rented a lakeside cottage together, showed her the Ontario countryside. We also did this when Aya’s mom, Shuli, visited. Shuli, who had been Ofra Haza’s confidant and best friend, who resembled her famous sister so much, and was warm and lovely and kind.
Once, early on in our acquaintance, Hayim said to me, “Our kids are going to grow up like cousins.”
I smiled and said nothing in return. It seemed too fast. We had just met.
But he turned out to be right. Our lives became entwined, bound together. Aya offered a reflection, or projection, of my own longing for my background, my family, my self.
—
A couple of years ago, Aya and I crossed paths in Israel for a couple of days. She was there for an event in Tel Aviv honoring Ofra. I was at the tail end of a two-month winter vacation in Israel — a chance for Sean, our daughter, and I to spend time with my relatives while soaking up sun. For as long as I’d lived in Canada, the idea of returning to Israel never left me. Now it seemed more urgent as Sean and I watched our child spend time with her grandmother. Why not try, at least? If not now, when? What do we have to lose?
Aya and I didn’t get to see each other on those two overlapping days, but as we were taking a taxi to Ben Gurion Airport that night, to fly back to Canada, she called. “I love being here,” she said, sighing. “Sometimes I feel like moving back.”
“I think we’re going to do it.”
“Seriously?”
“We’re thinking summer 2018,” I said.
“Hmmm,” Aya said. “Maybe we should join you.”
—
“You planned it together?” people in Israel ask, surprised, when they realize we’d already been friends in Toronto. “You moved here at the same time? With your families?”
Some days — as we all sit among the citrus trees in Aya’s grassy backyard in Mazkeret Batya, or in my Tel Aviv living room, or on the beach on a sunny day in February we almost can’t believe it ourselves. Only a few months ago, we’ll say, shaking our heads, we were sitting in Aya’s living room in Toronto. Only last summer, we’ll remember, we were all hanging out at the farmers’ market in Dufferin Grove Park. And we congratulate each other for making a bold choice and acting on it, for having the courage to change our lives. For creating our chosen family, and then moving it across the world.
We congratulate each other for making a bold choice and acting on it, for having the courage to change our lives. For creating our chosen family, and then moving it across the world.
Like any family, we don’t always agree. We’re not aligned politically or spiritually. And our personalities, obviously, differ as well. Aya knows she won’t be going back to Canada; “my neshama, my soul, is home,” she says. It’s the kind of thing I might roll my eyes at. (A recovered cynic, I find it hard to break old habits.) I’m more cautious, still nervous that it might not work, aware that it is too soon to tell.
Even now, in Israel, we see each other more than many of our old friends, or our extended family, who’d become used to us living faraway. Even now, surrounded by our actual relatives, Aya and I consider ourselves sisters. We tell each other how lucky we are to have the other here to soften the landing, to share the unique experience of returning home after many years abroad. Here, too, we mirror each other’s stories and experiences: we are home, yet we still stand out.
—
In the original version of my essay “A Simple Girl,” I mentioned my meeting with Aya, the story of our friendship. I had to, I thought. How could I write a tribute to Ofra Haza without including this extraordinary twist of fate? I tacked a short summarizing paragraph at the end of the essay—A strange, unexpected postscript, I called it.But ultimately I decided it didn’t belong there. It was too much to touch on in passing. It was a story in itself: a story about chance encounters, about chosen families, about the randomness and miracles of friendship.
Instead, in the acknowledgments for my memoir, in which “A Simple Girl” appears, I dedicated the essay to Aya and to her mother, Shuli Haza—who look like family, I wrote, because they are.
Ayelet Tsabari was born in Israel to a large family of Yemeni descent. After serving in the Israeli army, she traveled extensively throughout Southeast Asia, North America, and Europe, and now lives in Toronto, where she teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto. The Best Place on Earth won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.