Jew in the water

“He’s a little like Woody Allen’s ‘Zelig’ in a Middle Eastern setting, a Jew among Jews, an Arab among Arabs, a Lebanese among Palestinians, Syrian for the Syrians, a feminist with women, masked among masks, Iranian with the Hezbollah, French in France. We slept on a terrace in Jaffa, it was summer. I was filming him, he didn’t believe in it at all, we argued, he spoke in order to calm me. I had asked him to tell me specifically about all of his meetings with the Palestinians. It’s from within this chaos that his tale unfolds: the adventures of a man with a complicated identity who goes anywhere, since everyone takes him to be one of their own. We delve into his depths, going beyond that which exceeds us, this story, which causes us to scratch our head for such a long time, becomes clear, we follow him, we take the plunge with him.”

Yolande Zauberman