Nava Semel (b. 1954) is an Israeli writer, playwright, screenwriter and translator born in Tel Aviv. He has published six novels, a collection of short stories, a collection of poems, nine children's books, and a number of plays and television scripts. His books have been translated into ten languages, including English, Italian, German, Romanian, Spanish, and Chinese.
Semele's works have been extensively adapted for radio, film and television and stage in Israel, Europe and the United States, and his novel The Mouse Laughs has been adapted into an opera. She has received numerous literary awards, including the National Jewish Book Award for Children's Books, the Mediterranean Women Writers Award, the Israeli Prime Minister's Award, the Austrian Award for Best Radio Drama, the Rosenbram Award for Performing Arts, and the Tel Aviv Woman of the Year Award.
Selina Park, 1997
Nava Semele
The park is five minutes away from home. Tel Aviv's sweltering heat, or the laziness of it, often makes me not want to go there. My son tugged at my clothes, and his little hands were quite strong. He wears a "Chicago Bull" hat on his head. What did you look like when you grew up?
Long bar.
Flowers and grass decorate this small field. Despite the meagre salaries paid by the city, the gardeners created a little beauty.
Mom, is the park close or far away from us?
My children are too young to know how to measure distances, how to calculate and measure. That kind of complex knowledge can be learned in a few years. You'll know it when you grow up.
Go, go.
Mom can't let you go there on your own. Not yet.
But their grandmother, my mother, begged me bitterly: What shall I tell them? They are at the age when they ask questions and ask you to answer.
Not the whole fact, I once wrote. Jumping around with thoughts, facts. She speaks whatever she says.
I'm not a hedgehog anymore like I used to be. The thorns on his body have softened with the passage of time...... At the age of forty, my edges and corners were as soft as the balls of thread we brought to the park.
The children left me behind and rushed to the door. I won't have any more children. My daughter is different from her twin brother and is very strong. Determined to survive and navigate the world in your own way, my mother said, I don't know if it was out of fear or pride.
I bury myself in the debris of wood to write novels. It's like an old planer for carpentry that continues to move by inertia. I scrape the logs relentlessly, careful not to let the debris get into my eyes.
I followed the children. When I walk down the street abroad, no one knows me. No one pointed a finger at me. When I lived in New York, I had a little ritual every day: I stopped and announced to the sky that no one in the world knew where I was now.
We're finally here. Arrived at the center of the park. The daughter bounced lightly and rhythmically. The metal hook with spikes in the safe four-syllable step resembles a bell tied to the nose of a beast.
My son was standing on a rolling bucket and could neither go in nor fall. My mother was never allowed to play games like this.
They replaced the most dangerous piece of equipment on the playing field with a stone ball. The children stepped forward. They can already read. Read the words slowly, carefully lest you make mistakes.
Selina Park. Remembering a girl who died in the Holocaust in the Spring of Life. Parental donation.
I haunt the corridors of memory. It's a dark and cramped place, and you don't know if it's going to let you in or if it's going to throw you out. My mother said that memories don't have a living room. What she remembers, she remembers. The rest is never to be talked about again.
She won't live to see my child's child. My youngest child's child. I became my mother's silent companion and accompanied her through aging. Ultimately, it is the death of nature, as if death is truly an integral part of nature. There is a question, like a toothless mouth, still with a wide open mouth - where does the pain go?
We have to control ourselves. Injuries should not be abused.
The abacus stretches from tree to tree. The children added one by one. How old is Celina?, my son asked. He mused: if she lived, she would be a child.
He threw his "Chicago Bull" hat into the air. Being a basketball player, like an American, that's what he wanted to do when he grew up.
No, his twin sister argued. Selina must be old. She was killed a long time ago. These days, the pain is becoming a carefully measured part. We have to be accurate. But what is the timing, and who decides? Of course, there are therapists, drug therapies, and ways to relieve pain. The percentage of successes is unusual. After all, this is the 21st century.
The mind returned to the park. The management replaced this dangerous equipment. They put on a sign: For your pleasure, please note.
Celina, where are you?
I corrected my son's pronunciation. The children quickly wrote Celina's name on the ground. They started making games. Take off your shoes and put your feet on the soft sand.
Mom, can you bury me?
Stop. I'm not going to make games.
Hot winds and winter rains darken the colour of the trees. War and vanity burn the land. The border is not really the border, and children are being harmed there. There was a scar on my palm. Only the leaves here are alive. They're always watering. There are benches for parents around. That's the right way to protect your child. She never took me to the amusement park. Childhood without Ferris's wheel. The home itself became a place of persecution. We went on a trip last week. My mother and I have been sitting together on the bus for many years. The natural beauty of the country. The bay is covered with light smoke and greenery. She took in everything and said, "Do you remember?"
I was silent.
People say, you remember for her. They accused the embezzlement. Does her pain belong to you? But I'm a guide dog, patiently picking up the memories of blind people. There's light here – feel it.
There is no self-pity. There's no reason why there aren't books on how to be parents. After all, we've so far gone from being completely shattered to a fragile tinkering stage. Father, mother, boy, girl. In that order. The beginning of time.
Celina.
Celina.
Paul Celan.
Searle.
In the archives I found: born in Katowice. He was sent with his parents to the Plazo concentration camp on the outskirts of Krakow. The child is taken to the "children's home" together with the parents. Located in the Fifth Block, the Nazis decorated it like an ordinary kindergarten, claiming that it would allow parents to work with peace of mind. On a beautiful spring day, Selina and the other children are sent to Auschwitz to the melody of "Mommy, buy me a pony." Their fate was unknown for months. The SS escorting them returned and told the parents of the children that they were playing in a wonderful park and were taken care of by special nannies.
Serina is gone. Her parents survived.
It's been a long time since I asked my mother to sign a small slip of paper allowing me to participate in a school tour. She is now calling, morning and night, to confirm the account of her survival. I nodded yes, and right now, my blood was flowing. That's enough for her.
These are my youngest children. I will be buried next to her. Parents and children are arranged according to geometric figures. One day the children of my children will come here and point to the grave and say, "This is my grandmother, this is my mother." That's in the right order. A world of colored sticks that they use in school to learn arithmetic.
But one plus one doesn't always equal two. 1938 to 1944. Serina is exactly the age of my children. Her Park, 1997. When they kill you, you're like a child, it's not fun, my kids say. One park is not enough, they say. We're going to do more. For example, name a candy store after her.
My residential area. Tel Aviv. The carnage on the playground, in a corner of my heart. We will be buried together, Mother. This is the only way to cure.
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