We are drugged with romantic novels and Turkish films and sayings like, 'Everything will be better when you're married', and we rush panic-stricken t… - Dorit Rabinyan

"If you could just for a moment come out of yourself and see what I see...you wouldn't stop looking at yourself. But unfortunately you need a mirror to do it, my poor beauty.” (p148)

(Do you classify yourself as a Sephardi writer?) I am in the middle, neither here nor there. I have a sense of comradeship with people like me, who were caressed by the same accent when they were babies, who had the same taste on their tongues.

Art and literature are about a magical appeal to identity and empathy. How an identity in literature is transferred into your own identity so that you care for a fictional stranger so that you get into his skin and wear his gaze. This is what is so powerful. It is an antidote to the armoury we are requested to put on. This shield of ignorance and indifference and apathy. Because if you really sense everything, if you don’t wear this shield, it is painful.