Page 19 - Shalom Toronto Lifestyle Passover 2020

GILA GREEN’S BOOKS
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Excerpt from “Passport Control”
My back straightens at the word pig. I am used to French Canadians complaining against discrimination in the workplace, in the government, in the media, but somehow Farzeen disarms me with her accusations against a state I’d lived in only for two hours in a taxi, except, of course, I have that vein that connects me with my Jerusalem-born, Arabic speaking father, but I’m cutting him out of my life. Still, as jet lagged and disoriented as I am, that vein begins to pulse. "I really don’t know much about it. I mean, that’s why I came here to study it, isn’t it?"
White Zion
(White Zion is a novel in stories released by Cervena Barva Press W. Somerville, MA (September 2019)
The novel takes readers into the worlds of 19th century Yemen, pre-State Israel, modern Israel and modern Canada. You will hear the voices of a young boy marveling at Israel's first air force on his own roof, the cry of a newly married woman helpless to defend herself against her new husband's desires, the anger of the heroine's uncle as he reveals startling secrets about his marriage and the fall-out after generations of war.
“White Zion” Excerpt from “The End of Jewish Jerusalem” I pictured my father then as a twelve-year-old boy in
Israel’s first year of life: 1948. He was late for school again. He had spent too much time in the provisional control room on his roof, inhaling the sights and sounds of the emerging Israeli air force. There were pilots practically within arm’s reach speaking in low tones as they boiled water for their first cup of coffee. A few of them were sleeping in makeshift tents or single worn- out sleeping bags, but most had already scraped the last of the dysa, a hot breakfast cereal, out of their bowls and were preparing for another day of war.
"Assaf, get the leftovers while they are still hot. Assaf!" his mother called to him in Arabic. She does not speak Temani like his father, only Hebrew and Arabic.
Assaf scattered the rest of the yellow grains to the five rust-colored chickens they kept in their front yard and began to climb the wooden ladder the soldiers had attached to the back wall of their stone house: these were the stairs to the airport headquarters.
No Entry
In No Entry, Canadian teenager, Yael Amar, signs on to an elephant conservation program and ends up coming face to face with violence, greed, and murder and the taste of a very real danger for all of us: elephant extinction. The story takes place in South Africa’s famous, breathtaking Kruger National Park. A few other publications have asked me, so yes, Yael Amar is Jewish and so is her boyfriend David.
Continued on Page 22 SHALOM TORONTO Passover 2020 Page 19