A few people have been asking me where they can read articles I've written for publication. Not many of them are available online, so here is one of my favourites - it was published last April in an Israeli newspaper (in a supplement that few people bother to read). There are photos of the event described at the beginning of the article here.

Writing about the human condition

Two months ago, I met Etgar Keret at a literary event called "Voices From Two Sides of the Bridge." The "bridge" was the Sheikh Hussein border crossing between Israel and Jordan. Here, in this no man's land, a group of Arab, European, Israeli and Palestinian-Arab writers sat in front of a multi-national audience and talked about how place and language affect a writer's identity. It was supposed to be a non-political event; however, most of the Palestinian writers who initially accepted the invitation declined at the last minute to attend - lest their presence be interpreted as a step toward normalisation of relations with Israel.

In their rush to report the "sensational story" - the absence of Palestinian writers whose names appeared on the program, most of the media neglected to mention that some Palestinians did attend. Among them was Samir el-Youssef, who grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. This year, the Swedish PEN granted el-Youssef the prestigious Tucholsky Prize.

Shortly after the Passover bombings of 2002, el-Youssef called Etgar Keret, who is a best-selling author in Israel, and suggested that they produce a collection of short stories together. The result is called Gaza Blues. It was published last year in the U.K., by David Paul Books, and has gained wide critical acclaim.

Keret and el-Youssef first met and became friends in 2000, at a meeting of Arab and Israeli writers in Switzerland. While everyone else at the event was busy flinging out the usual tired old political slogans and playing the blame game, Etgar and Samir discovered that they had a lot in common. They were both born in the 1960s and came of age during Israel?s invasion of Lebanon - an event that affected their lives profoundly. Neither identifies with a political leader: El-Youssef is critical of Yasser Arafat, and Keret of Ariel Sharon. And both believe that the human connection is more important than politics. Change, said Keret, will come from the bottom up - when people from both sides of the conflict transcend the political framework, leave aside conventional ideas and thus humanise each other.

Keret?s stories are anything but conventional. He has a wild imagination, a fantastic sense of humor, and he takes his readers on crazy trips with totally unpredictable twists and unexpected endings. He writes about intimacy, love, death, grief, and friendship - all the things that are so much more important than the most recent speech given by a famous politician. And he makes you think.

In Surprise Egg, a pathologist performs an autopsy on a woman who was killed in a suicide bombing and discovers that her body is riddled with malignant tumors. If she hadn't been killed in the bombing, she would have died in a week. Should the pathologist tell the woman's husband? Would knowing that his wife was about to die anyway make the man feel better or worse?

Keret's second book to be translated into English is The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God. The title story is about a man who wanted to be God, but settles for being a cranky bus driver who never, under any circumstances, opens the doors for people who are late -not even old ladies carrying bags of groceries. For the bus driver, this is a matter of ideology. But one day he takes mercy on shlumpy Eddie, who is late for a doomed date with the girl of his dreams. The date is supposed to be at the Dolphinarium. And no, you can't guess the end of the story: It was written in 2000, more than a year before the infamous suicide bombing in the Dolphinarium parking lot.

All of Etgar Keret's books have been bestsellers in Israel, and critics commonly count him as one of Israel's most important writers. He has received the Prime Minister's Prize for Literature, and the Ministry of Culture Film Prize (he has written scripts for and directed several prize-winning films, and teaches film-making at Tel Aviv University). He is often referred to as "the voice of Israel's youth."

To which Etgar responds, "Which youth? The ultra-Orthodox girl from Jerusalem? The Arab boy from Taibe? The Jewish girl who lives on a settlement in the West Bank?" He has received letters from them all.

Readers from diverse backgrounds identify with his stories, says Keret, because he does not pretend to know and understand the "Other." He is unafraid of admitting that he doesn't know the answer and not concerned about being ambivalent.

Listening to Etgar Keret tell a story is a fascinating experience. He has a knack for seeing the humour and absurdity in ostensibly banal events. At "Voices From Two Sides of the Bridge," he told a story that made the audience roar with laughter. It goes like this:

Recently, he and Israeli-Arab writer Sayed Kashua appeared at a reading in France. While waiting to speak, they discovered that they were both worried about the event. Keret told Kashua, "The audience is sure to be full of anti-Israelis. There's always someone who stands up and accuses me of being a baby killer."

Kashua responded, "But there are so many right-wing Jews in France. There's sure to be someone who will accuse me of being a terrorist, or supporting suicide bombers."

Scanning the audience, Keret spotted a restless woman with an aggressive, pointy chin. "I said to myself, that's the one who will stand up at the end and attack me." But as soon as they were finished speaking the woman stood up and said, "I've been sitting here for an hour, listening to you both, and I'm confused: Which of you is the Arab, and which is the Jew?"

Keret's stories have been translated into several foreign languages, including Arabic. Keret says that The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God sold out of Ramallah bookshops during the height of the second Intifada. At "Voices From Two Sides of the Bridge," he told reporters that the book was a bestseller in Ramallah because the title led West Bank purchasers to believe it was about suicide bombers. I'm still not sure whether he was joking or not.

Last month Keret's third collection of stories translated into English, The Nimrod Flip-Out, was published by Chatto & Windus, and can be purchased at English-language bookshops in Israel. Reviews of the book have been excellent - even from the venerable Times of London.

But reading these reviews, one has the impression that non-Israelis don't really know what to make of Keret's stories - that they are so accustomed to thinking of Israel in terms of its violent conflict with the Palestinians, they can't quite wrap their minds around the idea of an Israeli author writing stories with non-political, universal themes.

Israeli commentators have also tried to pigeonhole Etgar Keret. Leftists have called him a fascist, and rightists an anti-Semite. "Everyone," commented Keret, "Is looking to see what bumper stickers I have on my car. But the thing is, I don't have a car."


Addendum: Farrar Strauss Giroux published Keret's "Nimrod Flipout "shortly after this article went to print. Etgar and his wife, the actress Shira Gefen (sister of pop singer Aviv Gefen), are expecting their first child in December 2005.

When I'm in East Jerusalem I like to drop by a well-known English bookstore that's owned by a Palestinian man who lived for a couple of decades in the USA. He and I first made contact when I was assigned to write a puff piece about his shop for an Israeli newspaper. The deadline for the piece was too tight to allow for a trip to Jerusalem, so I just interviewed him over the telephone. "Iyad" was charming and he loved to tell stories. I could tell that most of his tales were apocryphal, 'though he told them well, but since the point of the article was to advertise his shop I didn't mind writing up his yarns - as long as they were prefaced with the caveat "he said" or "he claimed." And besides, I've always been more interested in why people tell certain stories than in whether or not they are true.

Several weeks after the piece I wrote was published, I stopped by the shop and we finally met face to face. Iyad turned out to be a well-dressed, immaculately groomed middle-aged man who clearly fancied himself a bit of a skirt chaser. He greeted me warmly and we ended up talking for quite a long time.

Among the many stories he told me was the one about the time he took his mother on a trip to the Golan Heights. Shortly after they started out on the return drive to Jerusalem, Iyad's car started acting up. He drove to a nearby garage and was informed by the mechanic that the repairs would take several hours. By then it was already quite late, so Iyad told his mother that they would have to spend the night in a nearby Zimmer, which is what Israelis call a country B&B.

"Stay in a place owned by Jews?!" exclaimed his scandalised mother. "Absolutely not!"

Iyad explained to his mother that the only other option was to sleep in the car, and in the end she capitulated.

The proprietor of the Zimmer, which Iyad said was a beautiful place, turned out to be a 60-something woman named Aliza who had been born in Yemen and immigrated to Israel as a teenager. And to Iyad's surprise, Aliza - who spoke fluent Arabic - and his mother got along fantastically well. They spent hours sitting on the porch of the Zimmer, gabbing away and sipping tea with fresh mint.

Early the next morning, Iyad left his mother - still sitting with Aliza on the porch - and went to fetch the car from the garage. When he returned to pick his mother up for the journey back to Jerusalem, she told him she was having such a lovely time that she'd just as soon stay for another day or two.

Iyad laughed heartily after delivering his punchline, clearly delighted by this little tale of unexpected friendship between putative enemies.

After a while I told him that I had to go and took out my wallet in order to pay for the book I'd selected. He made a pushing-away gesture with his hands, and insisted on giving me the book as a gift.

I thanked him and he shook my hand with a warm grip.

"Well!" he said enthusiastically, still holding my hand, "I must say, this has been absolutely delightful. It's not often that I get to meet such charming young ladies from Tel Aviv."

Still smiling, he added, "But tell me, you're not a Zionist - are you?"