Livin’ on a prayer

Answered or not, here it comes | Non-Fiction | Fresh Soup

Image from the Keret Family Album

I’ve only managed to write one story since October 7. And when I finally did, instead of being a mensch and publishing it here, I sold it for lucre to a bunch of starchy Brits. So first of all, I apologize. I’d like to say it’ll never happen again, but I know myself too well to promise that. What I have done, to make sure this message isn’t completely frustrating, is write a very sincere post about how I wrote this story that jumpstarted my writing engine. But beware – the post below is full of spoilers, so I highly recommend reading the story in The Observer first, here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/03/intention-a-short-story-written-in-the-aftermath-of-hamass-7-october-attack-on-israel-by-etgar-keret

I wrote “Intention” after a long phone call with my big sister, who lives in Jerusalem. She is ultra-Orthodox, has eleven kids and over fifty grandkids, and along with my big brother she’s one of my favorite people in the world. It was a slightly odd conversation. On one end of the line was me, shattered and confused, trying to find my way out of the crisis we’d all been in since the October 7 attacks. On the other end was my luminous sister, telling me about her prayers: what she was praying for and in which order. We didn’t fight, but it was a very tense conversation, at least from my perspective. In retrospect, I think I was angered by my sister’s relentless optimism and the huge importance she attributed to her prayers at a time when our world was filled with raging, barbaric violence. How could she speak so confidently about a merciful God when children were being murdered and kidnapped, women raped, and thousands of homes leveled?

I almost never get angry at my sister. Not because I’m so good-natured, but because she’s a person who doesn’t provoke anger. And my anger this time was soon followed by guilt, because it occurred to me that I hadn’t done much except make a futile attempt to throw a wrench into my sister’s optimism and her faith that redemption was awaiting us around the corner. Out of this guilt was born a story: a story that was supposed to be about my sister, but ended up being about me, too.

Writing stories, just like praying, is a way of speaking honestly and intimately to someone you can’t be sure is really there. Every time I write a story, I wholeheartedly believe there will be a reader out there who will understand me, what I feel, and what I’m trying to say—just as my sister believes there’s someone out there listening to her. Without faith in the existence of a reader, and of a god, there would be no more stories and no more prayers. And without those, how would we remember what we had, what we lost, and above all—what the hell we want?

Translated by Jessica Cohen