284 · Carmela Saranga and Rachel Sharaby
Israeli space, which is the basis for the Israeli’s identity. In this space the
borders are breached, the laws are broken, and a “disturbed internalness”
bursts out. In this space, the cultural forms are in a constant process of
hybridization originating in cultural variance and interpretation.^51 With
Yehoshua, this hybridization creates a demonic web encompassing he-
roes and space.
If we were to draw the desired geographical map versus the existing
map to which Yehoshua directs his worldview, and we labeled it with a
colorful legend, we would obtain a map in which space consists of clear
borders. The non-united Jerusalem that existed until 1967 was a kind of
Paradise painted in colors of tranquility, perhaps pink, and its other part
in a spiritual color that expresses the lack of its physical belonging to its
inhabitants, and that it is only a spiritual element that exists over the sur-
face, a kind of Jerusalem in the heart or a divine Jerusalem. However, this
map, which may perhaps have three dimensions, would have cellars that
are to be avoided even if there is a tunnel or detour that leads into them.
These cellars are located under the areas of the West Bank and under uni-
fied Jerusalem. In contradistinction, the colors of the map for the north,
the Galilee and Haifa, would be chosen from harmonious green colors.
It is possible to draw another map in which all the colors are mixed
together, and one color sometimes dominates the others, like tiny spots
or bold strokes of the paintbrush. This map will be suitable not as a geo-
graphic map but as a surreal and terrifying map. It is definitely a map
that should be made known, as are Yehoshua’s stories, which contain
physical and spiritual journeys. These journeys take place in a space that
is a Paradise, in both its lower and upper compartments.
Notes
The research for this article was supported by the Research Authority of the
Ashkelon Academic College.
- E. Soja, “The Socio-spatial Dialectic,” Annals of the Association of American
Geographers 70 (1980): 207–25. - H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 54.
- Ibid.; A. Bluman, “Space and Periphery: Introduction to the Other Place
of Women,” in H. Dahan-Calab, N. Yanai, and N. Berkowitz, eds., Women in the
South: Space, Periphery, Gender (Beer-Sheba: Ben-Gurion University, 2005), 20–27
(Hebrew). - M. Foucault, “Questions on Geography,” in Power/Knowledge (New York: