272 · Carmela Saranga and Rachel Sharaby
Yehoshua is a political writer, and his worldview crystallizes in his
books into a clear and concrete outlook, with the borderless Israeli zone
at its center. Disputing and neurotic figures move within this zone in a
continuous journey. Some are accompanied by an escort who is also a
driver, a messenger—a demon who leads them into a parallel land, a
parallel space, and an existence that has a grotesque and distorted decor.
He connects the individual’s neurotic existence with that of the people
and applies the principle of “life on the brink” and “on the brink of catas-
trophe” in his stories.^8 In Yehoshua’s work the space is found at the cen-
ter of the Israeli’s awareness. He enters and leaves the space as someone
possessed. His wanderings exaggerate his disturbed mental condition
and his rejection of the idea of being a child of the land and its master.
Gurevits and Eran also point to the Israeli’s reluctance to be totally in-
volved in the land.^9 In their opinion, the Israeli existence does not connect
the Israeli with his country. On the one hand, the place is the country and
everywhere else is “the other place,” and on the other hand, the place,
in the thoughts and beliefs of the Jewish people, is outside of the place
and is not identical with the land. The Israeli place is depicted as a site
of ambivalence, of belonging and alienation, of being close and distant,
of lowering and raising, of freedom and commitment, of realization and
abstraction.
In his essay “Exile as Neurotic Solution,” Yehoshua claims:
With us, the elementary and primary relation between a people
and its homeland is not natural. We were melted as a people in
exile, and exile as our melting pot has penetrated into the cells of
our existence. The special relations that were formed between the
people and God begin in the desert, in a no-man’s land, in the in-
termediary zone between the exile and Israel. We will see how the
people always return and search for this no-man’s land throughout
its history, and especially when it wants to find an answer or seeks
spiritual renewal.^10According to Yehoshua, the Jew carries two essences within him: one of
leaving Israel and one of coming to Israel and settling there. The nation
revives in the desert, which is a place of death, but is also sterile and
pure. However, the renewal of the people in its land is dependent on a
conquest that has a spiritual meaning. According to Yehoshua, the desert