Growing up, I had often felt out of place in my own country, a feeling I couldn’t comprehend or name until much later. It had to do with my father; g… - Ayelet Tsabari

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Growing up, I had often felt out of place in my own country, a feeling I couldn’t comprehend or name until much later. It had to do with my father; grief shakes the foundations of your home, unsettles and banishes you. It might have also had to do with the exclusion of my culture from so many facets of Israeli life, with not seeing myself in literature and in the media, with being taught in school a partial history about the inception of Israel that painted us as mere extras. Or perhaps that failed sense of belonging was an Israeli predicament, because how does one feel at home when home is unsafe, forever contested? When the fear of losing is so entrenched in us it has become a part of our ethos?