Writing Until My Walls Come Down

Cover Design: Matthew Fielder

My family story wasn’t something I discovered when I started writing Until the Walls Come Down. I first heard it when I was probably about twelve. My paternal grandparents came to Israel shortly after the state was established from a refugee camp in Germany, where they found themselves after WWII. When they arrived, a truck took all the men to find houses, with women and children following shortly after. My grandfather was with my grandmother’s brother and another friend they made in the camp, and all three of them jumped off the truck and ran to grab a house together. They found a large house with an inner courtyard surrounded by rooms on all four sides. They each took a side of the courtyard, with another acquaintance grabbing the fourth side. They lived in that house in Jaffa for a few years. My dad was born in that house, but in the late 1950s, the family moved to a new development in Bat Yam, a city just south of Jaffa.

When the second UK lockdown was imminent, my partner and I decided to go to Israel. The kids would be “learning” on Zoom anyway; we would be working from home anyway, and in Israel at that time, they were starting to vaccinate people, and the lockdown measures were easing. We figured, worst case, we’d at least have grandparents to help with the “homeschooling”.

After a ten-day quarantine, we settled into my in-laws’ place. Within about a week, I set myself a little writing corner in my mum’s flat, which was blessedly free of grandparents and children. I started having an inkling about the story I wanted to tell.

There wasn’t really a lightbulb moment for me. A lot of things happened since I first heard my family’s story and the time I realised that the house was occupied until probably days before my grandparents arrived. I had moved away, first to Canada, then to the UK. I had read a lot of books, slowly becoming aware of my home country’s troubled history.

At some point, I read The Book Thief and realised that German cities were also bombed during WWII and that maybe there was more to that war than the Jewish lens we had covered exclusively in history class. At some point, I asked my sister-in-law, a long-time activist for Palestinian rights, for history book recommendations. I had to unlearn my history and relearn what really happened.

I also had to write a lot of words before I could believe that I could actually tell this story. At this point, I had been writing fiction for a few years and started to realise that, really, I had always found ways to write. I connected the stories I used to invent for my friends on hikes with blogging, which I started in 2004, and the fact that I always owned academic writing books. I realised I was a storyteller at heart, and I should start acting like one.

And it all came together in that second lockdown at my little writing corner. I began working with purpose. I researched the 1948 war and city planning in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. I developed the story of the siblings.

The story went through MANY drafts, but the house in Jaffa was always at the heart of it. I talked with my uncle (my dad’s older brother), who remembered the house from his childhood. I interviewed experts and activists who work tirelessly to document the whole history of Jaffa and fight daily for justice for its residents, whether Jewish, Muslim, or Christian. I have read many books on the subject, books that no history class covers.

I also worked diligently on crafting the story. I wanted this book to do justice to the mosaic society currently existing in Israel/Palestine. I wanted it to encompass the many facets that get lost in the binary media coverage of the conflict. I wanted to examine our flaws but also show how amazing it is and how people come together in ways I haven’t seen in any other place. People care deeply about each other in my home country, and I wanted that to shine through in the story. It was important to me that there would be no villains in the story. Only people trying to do the right thing, trying to live their lives.

Throughout writing this story, I had to come to terms with my family’s history and understand that running away wasn’t the best way to deal with it. I also had to learn to do audacious things like call myself an artist. Basically, writing was my way to grapple with the topics that occupied me.

Then, when I was about two-thirds into the almost final draft, October 7th happened, and I watched my beloved people lose thirty years of peace work. I watched Jewish Israeli society react with a trauma response that they cannot now roll back. I watched my social media feed explode with heartbreaking news from every direction. I watched the people on both sides being taken hostage by fear-mongering and violent rhetoric. It took me a while to go back to writing, but when I finally did, I knew that the thing I could do for my people was finish this book. Imagine a better ending for this story. Imagine a future in which we all try to talk despite our fear and trauma. A future in which we accept each other’s histories and don’t flinch from the damage we caused each other. A future in which we have difficult conversations and then have a meal together.

My debut novel, Until the Walls Come Down, will be out on July 22nd. You can pre-order it here.