Before October 7, in Israel it was considered a book full of pain, after the Hamas attack the same anthology of stories became a comfort, because ‘Legami’ – the new publication by Eshkol Nevo, which inaugurates Feltrinelli’s Gramma series – talks about invisible wounds and how to heal them, or at least start to do so.
“We must recognize that there are wounds – one of the most beloved Israeli writers tells ANSA – for years there was no concept of post traumatic stress: our fathers returned from the war destroyed inside but didn’t show it, while today my daughter and her generation recognize these invisible wounds. Seeing your own wounds means being able to imagine those of your enemy and this is the beginning of healing.”
And this book of stories is a journey in installments from pain to healing, where it is desire that takes the reader by the hand in the process of mourning until it leads him to catharsis and, finally, to rebirth. It is no coincidence that ‘Legami’ opens with the last moments shared by a son and a father on the verge of death, a few days to say goodbye, but only after singing ‘Hungry Heart’ together at a Bruce Springsteen concert. The close link between individual and collective wounds is revealed in the story that gives the title to the anthology, ‘Bonds’, set in the psychiatric hospital of Kfar Shaul, built on the ruins of Deir Yassin, the Arab village where, in 1948 , the Israelis carried out one of the most horrendous massacres in their history. “The truth never disappears, it waits for the best moment to re-emerge”, says Yonathan, one of the protagonists of the story, to his friend Dave, warning him that “if you try to erase the past, it will explode in your face”. It is only by recognizing the invisible wounds that, according to the author of the best sellers ‘Three Floors’ and ‘The Symmetry of Desires’, we can begin to build something new.
“Since October 7, some children of my friends, my students, have died in Israel today – underlines Nevo – the whole society suffers from post traumatic stress. We need to start recovering, but first the war must end in order to then rebuild our souls and relationships with our neighbors”.
In one of the stories, a character says that today it would take a Nelson Mandela to achieve peace: “both sides would need it, today we have an effective peace agreement with Egypt, but our fathers waged war, the However, the leaders of the time were people of great courage, they understood that peace was the only solution.” For this reason, it is his hope that “looking at history we can hope that a great crisis, like the one we are experiencing today, can be followed by a new beginning”, he concludes. Like the one narrated in ‘Campane’, the story set in Turin, the city where Nevo teaches at the Holden school and where a writer returns to life after the death of his mother.
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