Losslessness / An Arrow A Wing
Yvette Haviv (center) with her sister Lily (left) and father Shlomo (right).
The following is an excerpt from Tom Haviv’s book A Flag of No Nation, published in 2019 through Jewish Currents Press. LOSSLESSNESS spins a lyrical oral history comprised of voice recordings and emails from Haviv’s grandmother Yvette, while AN ARROW A WING, the book's penultimate section, offers a cascade of meditative poems.LOSSLESSNESS
PROTI | ANTIGONI | HALKI | PRINQUIPO
Dear Tom,
I try as hard as I can
to prevent a spider
from installing his web
(although delicate)
on my mind, my memory.
89 in 4 months.
Here and there
flashbacks
of childhood —
what I was told,
school, Istanbul, the islands —
Proti, Antigoni, Halki, Prinquipo.
The sea
everywhere...
swimming, dancing
in the evenings.
Before that
much before
in a southern little town
by the Mediterranean.
The beach, the delight
in plunging
into high waves,
coming out, waiting
for another wave…
The sea
always calm —
lying on it —
eyes closed seeing
colors, eyes
opened eyes
closed. You play
water carrying
you, embracing you.
Love, Yvette.
A SIMPLE WORD
Voice recording of Yvette
(2015)
I have the impression
of losing something
of my vocabulary.
You know, one night
I was looking for a word.
I thought of a word, I don’t
even remember which one…
I tried to find it
in French, I couldn’t
in English, I couldn’t
in Turkish, I couldn’t
I couldn’t sleep.
I said why try so hard?
It was 3 a.m. and I opened
the computer, put
it into Google
and I found it.
On the other hand
it may be good to find
it by thinking, by trying to remember,
but then maybe by opening the computer
it is better to choose the easy way,
since I wanted to sleep.
It was a simple word.
I can’t remember it now.
AN ARROW A WING
WE THEY I
We read the news.
(a sundered fruit)
It is a hand tearing at leaves.
They are everywhere.
(they are surrounding us)
We I
Remember
The words,
Hebrew forms.
שקט. מספיק. די.
They remember.
They forget.
They sleep.
We awaken.
We lose time.
We are lost.
We rush.
We regret.
We fear.
I We
remember him.
His words
echoing. Did they
no longer love
each other?
She refers to herself by her maiden name: Karillo.
(Other loves?
Figures
nameless)
Pear.
Apple.
Habib.
Karillo.
A broken
Mediterranean.
I THEY WE
I left my
Jewishness
for shame of
a broken story.
I return to these
details to understand
what was lost.
How we lost
our pathway back
through the hills
past an old border.
New borders
of mind
preventing
return.
They are us.
We are I.
I am they.
They is I.
I is we.
We is they.
Happiness is
an open
palm
the sun pulsing
at center.
He gripped
his chair
on the balcony
in Ramat Aviv.
He no longer read.
Bats fluttered
in the courtyard.
He listened
to the melody
of Ellington.
He followed it
out of the poem.
And out of his life.
*
I grip your shoulder.
You grip my shoulder.
We are blind.
The white light
fractures the mind.
To tell a story
you must
break a story.
(the news is a hand tearing at leaves)
To break a story —
must you
believe in a story
too much?
Or not at all?
Is it to know
some memory
follows us
so far
we wonder
will it follow
our children
and their children?
Or will it
stop
on the imagined border of
this white
page?
Or will it
turn back
toward
the
unmade road
across
uncrossed
borders
mountains
unmet
toward
that temporary heat
that follows us
over centuries?
Yvette Haviv (née Karillo) was born in 1928 in Istanbul, Turkey. At 15, she joined the underground Zionist movement, and soon after married Israel “Izzy” Haviv and moved to Israel. She and her husband worked in the foreign service for many years, serving across the world. She also worked as a speechwriter for four Israeli presidents and received a master’s degree in art history from Tel Aviv University in 1978. A Peace Now activist in the ‘80s and ‘90s, she was awarded a presidential medal for her service. After her husband passed away, she moved to Herzliya, then to Virginia, then to Toledo, Ohio. She passed away in May 2019.