Noli Omer, “The Honeycomb”, Catharsis, 127 p.
Anat Gov’s “Best Friends” meets David Grossman’s “One Horse Enters the Bar”? Not really, because this surprising and endearing work is really unlike anything else, and its internal compass leads to places we haven’t been before, but that’s how they might try to label it in a world full of labels.
It’s a story that begins with being pushed down the stairs by a pathological liar of the type who can justify being burned by an electric kettle by saving a baby girl from a burning building in Argentina, and ends with a meeting with the Monty Python gang (which will be titled “Laughter of Fate”), when along the way creators such as Pina Bausch (which is a piece of needlework) by Noli Omar, which is a tribute to Bausch’s dance, “March of the Seasons”, makes up the beautiful cover) and Samuel Beckett.
But despite all the big names, there is not an iota of self-importance in Omar’s writing. vice versa. She rushes to blow up any balloon that threatens to inflate near her. If “waiting for Godot”, then in an amateur student production. If it’s British nobility, borrowing from Jane Austen, then “on prudence and restraint”. And if a lump is placed on the back of one of the characters, it might be a ridiculous metaphorical armadillo and not the weight of existence itself, God forbid. Omar does not pretend to be an “important” writer, and most of the time she also does not try to be funny, as one might fear that one of the most talented comedians in the country would do, but is funny (very) only when necessary (and when not necessary, between us?), with complete naturalness, and emotional precision all the time; The result deserves the most serious treatment there is, even if it is not adorned with the mutterings “look how serious I am” that many of the local women writers (and of course the local writers as well) flaunt for their own pleasure – and in most cases for their own pleasure only.
The pathological liar from the beginning is not the only liar in the plot where most of the characters lie, if not to the environment then to themselves. It seems that none of them are living the life they wanted to live, or that they believed they deserved, or that their parents, for example, demanded that they live, but the “lies of lies” that they sell to others, like in a fake shop window, are stronger than them. Omar, on the other hand, tells the truth all the way, without mercy And without compromises, which is exciting and even mesmerizing. The way in which she presents and analyzes, as if in passing, relationships between people (especially between women) and between themselves, never ceases to strike with its sharpness and authenticity. Whenever it seems that she falls into a caricature design of characters, it soon becomes clear which is a mistake, and she writes flesh and blood human beings, round and full, as well as empty and hollow (and let’s face it, we have met such human beings in our lives), who make mistakes, discriminate, hurt and get hurt and in the end don’t ask for much, just love in fact. Or is it more than asking for a trillion dollars, who knows.
Even when Omar enters the territory of characters she has portrayed herself over the years, as an actress and stand-up artist/anthropologist-researcher of the multifaceted Israeli society, such as the one who is “married to the salt of the earth plus three”, or the knowledgeable witch with the particular vocal range, she is educated not to stumble into the pitfalls of the laugh-without- justification. Her language is a colorful wash of a thousand concoctions, antics and stunts; Standard and “custom made” it is not, but that’s all the beauty. “The floor is bright, sparkling. Why does she never manage to make the floor sparkle like that?”.
Her heroes are 50 plus or minus, the ones who mingle with us at Shufersal and in line at the ATM. Here is the single Pilates teacher, and the divorced psychotherapist, and the not-so-senior screenwriter who is not entirely happily married to a former stand-up artist (she approached him after a show and looked to him like a “coffee flower”, what a lovely expression. “Want to have a drink with me? I’m full of adrenaline. She answered yes. Ai Du”) which today is considered a “dead horse”. What a terrible phrase.
Omar probably contributed from her personal experience to the last character, who knew peaks of success and then was somehow thrown out of the brass and forgotten by the fickle and treacherous audience. She also knows a thing or two about an only son who lives abroad and whose longing for him is almost unbearable (the book is dedicated to her son Yonatan, who stuck a stake in Germany). But there is no point and no need to play the guessing game, when it comes to a creator who has always eluded any possibility of labeling anyway. Omer is A multidisciplinary artist in the full sense of the term, she is here, there and everywhere, and shows brilliance and originality in every field.
“The Honeycomb” (an excellent name that strikes at the unity of the contrasts of life itself, which is stark and bitter at the same time) is for some reason defined as a novella, but it is actually a very complete novel, which manages to encompass an entire life in a short span. Three girlfriends from elementary school – actually two girlfriends and one who observes them from outside the circle – roll through the ruts of time, each with their own troubles. All of them encounter men along the way with “an emotional depth of two centimeters, like puddle water”, and are surrounded by an entanglement of smells and aromas – from the intoxicating of a cinnamon cake hot from the oven, an indelible childhood memory that produced the “fainting dance”, to an imaginary body odor, the ancient origin of which is revealed in one of the most intense scenes in the book.
There are pairs here and also one pair – one of Omar’s many linguistic inventions, which was also immortalized in his book “The caprice and the pair, a comic dictionary for women and men” – that is, a pair that is a pair, and there is no possibility of speaking independently with one of its sides, because there it is only “we would be happy if Come to our place for coffee.”
In one of the most beautiful moments in “The Honeycomb”, a strange soul gives a guest appearance. “Heart-shaped head, chocolate candy eyes, and she looked at her with a wonderful look, moved her head to the side – and her heart expanded and softened. how is it? What’s the matter with a visit by an animator in an apartment inside a building in Givatayim?”. Another character has “eels in his stomach”, and it’s clear that the notebook is a unicorn. And the heart expands and softens, especially when Omar accepts her heroes in “Rage, Sorrow and Love”, and the compassion is great but not excessive (when you have to turn the wheelchair of an annoying disabled person, who asks for help “like a sprayed cockroach”, they do that too).
When I was in high school, I read a novel by Ehud Ben-Ezer called “Peace of Mind”. I haven’t returned to it since, but I remember to this day that there was something wonderful about it that captivated me, in the description of the lives and relationships of some friends who seemed to me to be elderly at the time (when in reality they were maybe 40 years old). That book did not receive the respect it deserved at the time, but it is a fact that its readers did not forget it. Ben-Ezer also wrote a book called “Days of Lenten and Honey” (about the poet Esther Rab), a strange coincidence of this strange life. Noli Omar’s “Honeycomb” also has something wonderful, and I hope that it will receive the full recognition it deserves. In any case, there is a fear that anyone who reads it will crack at the end of the fainting dance.