City of a Thousand Gates
Page 38
Thank you to my wonderful workshopmates at UCI for your insights and camaraderie.
Thank you to my actual angel of an agent, Joy Harris. In you I have found a reader, a champion, and a dear friend—you’re the best birthday present I ever gave myself! Thank you to Terry Karten at HarperCollins, whose insights and care touched the heart of this novel. My gratitude goes to Jonathan Burnham, president and publisher of the Harper division of HarperCollins, who gave his full support to Terry, and to Jane Beirn, who shared her enthusiasm with me early on. Everyone at Harper took such care with this novel. Special thanks to Amber Oliver and Milan Bozic (that cover!). Thank you Patrick Crean for bringing my book home to Canada.
Thank you to those whom I learned from in discussion: Omar Hmidat (teacher and friend), Farouk Yasseen, Karen Isaacs at Achvat Amim, Noa Levy and Tair Kaminer at Hadash, Aryeh Bernstein, Tal F., Elad (“Max” no more!) and Naama Ariel, Debbie and Yair Amichi, Inbal Oychon, Rotem Kahalon, Sunny Nagra, and especially the musician Muhammad Mughrabi (Jabid), who invited me to Shuafat camp and showed me a video I couldn’t unsee. Thank you to Sarai and the whole Darmon family of Kibbutz Regavim—your home is a refuge.
I am indebted to the following books and articles: Adam Afterman on the Jewish theology of revenge; Svetlana Boym’s The Future of Nostalgia; the poems of Mahmoud Darwish, especially “Ana min hunak”; Matti Friedman’s Pumpkinflowers; Stathis Gourgouris’s Dream Nation; Sayed Kashua’s Let It Be Morning (trans. Miriam Shlesinger); the stories of Etgar Keret; Amos Oz’s Between Friends (trans. Sondra Silverston) and A Tale of Love and Darkness (trans. Nicholas de Lange); Sherri Mandell’s The Blessing of a Broken Heart; the works of Edward Said, especially Orientalism; Raja Shehadeh’s Palestinian Walks; A.B. Yehoshua’s The Lover (trans. Philip Simpson). I was fortunate to take Professor Liron Mor’s incredibly rich course on the Palestinian novel in UCI, where I encountered Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s In Search of Walid Masoud (trans. Roger Allen and Adnan Haydar); Elias Khoury’s The Kingdom of Strangers (trans. Paula Haydar); Adania Shibli’s We Are All Equally Far From Love (trans. Paul Starkey) and “Out of Time”; and Helga Tawil-Souri’s article “Checkpoint Time” in Qui Parle. Professor Radhakrishnan’s course on Fanon, Said, and Humanism at UCI introduced me to Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (trans. Richard Philcox). I also owe a debt to the films of Elia Suleiman, especially The Time That Remains; Hany Abu-Assad’s Omar; Rana Abu Fraihah’s In Her Footsteps; Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort; Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir; Talya Lavie’s Zero Motivation; Mor Loushy’s Censored Voices; and the TV series Megiddo directed by Itzik Lerner.
Thank you to my UCI classmates in both Liron and Radha’s courses: being present for those discussions helped me grasp the structural violence and white silence that correlate the Black Lives Matter movement and the Palestinian struggle.
Any errors and misrepresentations in this book are entirely my own.
For encouraging me to keep at it, thank you to Vu Tran at the University of Chicago (the writing I did in your workshops continues to bear fruit), Clare Needham, Richard Stamelman, Benjamin Balint, Jen Percy, Dave Morris, Adrienne Gaffney, Dana Brown, Wayne Lawson, Daniel Levin, Miles Parnegg, Sydney Kim, and Haley Morris.
Thank you to my Arabic and Hebrew teachers at the following institutions: Tel Aviv University; the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; the University of Chicago, especially Osama Abu-Eledam; the Divinity School at the University of Chicago; Raheela Maniar at UCI; Mary and Freida at Yafa Bookstore in Jaffa; Taghreed at the Polis Institute in Jerusalem; and This Is Not an Ulpan, Tel Aviv.
Along with a stipend from the English Department at UCI, the following sources allowed me the time I needed to write: the Joseph F. McCrindle Foundation’s Henfield Prize in Fiction Writing, judged by Varley O’Connor; the David Israelsky Graduate Award from UCI; a Mellon Foundation Documenting War Sawyer Seminar Fellowship (my gratitude to Professors Carol Burke and Cecile Whiting); a Jewish Studies Research Grant from UCI. Were it not for such generous funding, I would still be writing this novel.
Thank you to the Rona Jaffe Foundation for a scholarship to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 2015. Thank you to Dartmouth College for the James B. Reynolds Scholarship which, along with a grant from Masa Israel, allowed me to move to Tel Aviv in 2012.
My ability to write bravely was aided by the work I do with Dr. Ronnie Lesser. Thank you for sticking with me.
I’m grateful to be part of righteous and vibrant Jewish communities. Rabbi David Minkus at Rodfei Tzedek in Hyde Park, Chicago—thank you for bringing me in. Thank you to the dear friends I have found through IKAR and Nefesh in Los Angeles.
Last and most deeply, I thank my family, starting with my beloved grandparents: Grandma Betty, a model of hard work; Grandpa Steve, the first to read these pages, who continued to ask about them even as he lost his sight and hearing; Emmy, who has supported me and who taught me what it means to know yourself; and Louis, who opened his bookshelves to a young girl, gave her Mann and Musil and Beckett, and made her feel—first and indelibly—that her mind was precious. I miss you.
My love and gratitude to my parents, who have encouraged me as I pursue one insane dream after another—what a joy that our relationship continues to grow. I love you. Pater, thank you for teaching me. Mom, you are so proud of me!
Always, to my sister, Katie, a precious and fearless little bird. I love you. BNG.
About the Author
REBECCA SACKS holds degrees from Dartmouth College, Tel Aviv University, and the University of California, Irvine. She lives in Los Angeles with her dog, Pupik. This is her first novel.
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
city of a thousand gates. Copyright © 2021 by Rebecca Sacks. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
first edition
Cover design by Milan Bozic
Cover painting: Construção, by Ione Saldanha. Oil on canvas, 1956 © The Adolpho Leirner Collection of Brazilian Constructive Art, museum purchase funded by the Caroline Wiess Law Foundation/Bridgeman Images
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication information is available upon request.
Digital Edition FEBRUARY 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-301149-6
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-301147-2
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