A year or two ago, I got a phone call from a Dutch publisher asking whether I was interested in writing a preface for the Dutch publication of the book Gaza Blues. It was a collaboration between the Israeli author Etgar Keret and the Palestinian author Samir El-Youssef. I said yes, mainly because I had read a collection of short stories by Keret which I liked. Samir El-Youssef was unknown to me, but it was El-Youssef who turned out to be the biggest surprise of Gaza Blues. I liked his work a lot. That still left me with the question what I should do with the preface. It was clear that I was asked to write this preface to push Gaza Blues a little bit in the Netherlands, but a preface should not be a blurb.
Although I was supportive of Gaza Blues, I pooh-poohed the idea that bringing a Palestinian and a Israeli author together in one book would make a change. What I was saying was that do-gooders should do their thing but leave literature alone.
Last week, I traveled to Lebanon to write a series of articles for the Dutch newspaper I work for on a regular basis. And this week, I traveled to Tel Aviv. From Beirut to Tel Aviv it’s only a few hundred miles, but it’s not the easiest route you can take. Upon arrival in Tel Aviv I was briefly detained. Probably the authorities thought that I was the first Jew ever to become a senior member of Hezbollah.
Before going to Lebanon people had warned me: don’t tell anybody that you are Jewish, don’t tell anybody that you have been to Israel, especially don’t tell anybody that you go there.
I met people from all the important parties in Lebanon, including Hezbollah. Nobody asked me about my religion and my travels to Israel. Maybe in Lebanon they have the same policy as the U.S. Army regarding homosexuality: don’t ask, don’t tell.
There were some moments, especially when I traveled to the southern part of Lebanon, that I didn’t feel completely safe and I just hoped that nobody was going to confuse me with a Mossad agent.
Anyhow, the idea that literature has no dog in the fight against sectarianism changed during my travels from Beirut to Tel Aviv.
My preface to Gaza Blues would have been different now.