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Dorit Rabinyan’s All the Rivers is about a Israeli women and Palestinian man who meet in New York. An immediate best seller in Israel, the novel was named one of the ten best books of 2014 by Ha’aretz newspaper and won the Bernstein Award for Literature. In January 2016, the Israeli Ministry of Education banned the book from high school curriculum.

Marcela reads parts of this novel, including this excerpt from :

““Here’s the thing about me.” He put his right hand on his chest like I had done. “There are three things I don’t know how to do.”
“Only three? That’s not bad.”
“Three things a man should know.”
“Should?”
“Yes. A man should know how to drive, and I don’t. I’ve never driven.”
“Walla?” I said, expressing my surprise.
He grinned as he had on the previous times I’d used Arabic words like walla or achla.
I held up my thumb, starting to count his flaws: “You don’t drive.”
“I don’t know how to shoot a gun.”
Unintentionally, my thumb and finger formed a childish pistol.
“Yes . . .”
“And swimming. I can’t swim.” He saw my face fall. “I was born and raised in Hebron,” he said as if by way of apology.
“There’s no sea there.””

Text:
All The Rivers by Dorit Rabinyan. Translated by Jessica Cohen. Penguin Random House, 2017.

Music:
Medjool live on the roof
Jimi Hendrix – 12 String Blues

Producer: Ariella Plachta
Technical producer: Tammy Goldenberg