A Jew in an Arab city

I've been living in Sakhnin for three months now, and for the past month and a half I've been recording my experiences here in a Hebrew blog. Upon reading it, one subscriber promised me that I would be famous if I translated it into English, while another assured me that an international version would draw a far greater audience. So I took a few shots at translation, and I missed them all.

Which should have come as no surprise, considering that I just spent three and a half years translating in the army. Which isn't to say that I defrauded the Israeli Defense Forces ; just that translation, as one of my teachers in the military would exuberantly exclaim, is itself a form of fraud, or at least an exercise in futility, as Borges showed in his famous Averroes's Search. Besides, the army did much worse unto me. But anyway, the conclusion I came to was that if it is a future in writing that I aspire to, it is my past in translating that I must leave behind. And so it is from scratch that I begin.

Or rather, a clarification: it's not fame that I'm after, nor an expanded readership, although the latter would be nice, and I'll take this opportunity to cordially invite you to send this to anyone who may find it readable, especially anybody who could help me achieve the former.

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