EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT FROM THE WOMAN BEYOND THE SEA By Sarit Yishai-Levi

EXCERPT FROM THE WOMAN BEYOND THE SEA

By Sarit Yishai-Levi

(Amazon Crossing; March 21, 2023)

THE WOMAN BEYOND THE SEA by renowned Israeli journalist Sarit Yishai-Levi, author of the #1 international bestseller-turned Netflix hit , The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, is a mesmerizing and immersive novel about three generations of women who have lost each other – and the quest to weave them back into a family. Deftly translated by Gilah Kahn-Hoffmann, THE WOMAN BEYOND THE SEA will be published in English for the first time by Amazon Crossing on March 21, 2023.

“THE WOMAN BEYOND THE SEA is a very personal novel that emerged from longing and pain. But at the same time, it’s a book about forgiveness and acceptance and love that conquers all,” says Yishai-Levi. “Gilah’s translation is wonderful and I’m excited to bring this story to English readers.”

This beautifully written, multi-generational story traces the paths of three women who lead entirely separate lives. There’s Eliya, a young woman who thinks she has finally found true love with her charismatic and demanding husband, an aspiring novelist, until he ends their relationship in a Paris café, spurring her suicide attempt; next is Lily, Eliya’s mother, who vanishes for long hours every day, and Eliya has no idea where she is; and a third, mysterious woman who has abandoned her newborn baby on the doorstep of a convent on a snowy night in Jerusalem.

Seeking to heal herself, Eliya is compelled to piece together the jagged shards of her life and history. Her heart-wrenching journey leads her to a profound and unexpected love, renewed family ties, and reconciliation with her orphaned mother, Lily. Together, the two women embark on a quest to discover the truth about themselves and Lily’s origins…and the unknown woman who set their stories in motion one Christmas Eve.

As each woman confronts upheavals in her life, Yishai-Levi, a truly gifted storyteller, masterfully ties the three together, striking chords of love, hate and despair.

EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT 

On some days Lily felt mellow, at peace in the world. She listened to the silence disturbed only occasionally by the chirping of birds, was aware of the rustle of the leaves, and inhaled the wonderful sweet scent of the citrus orchards mingled with the hyssop growing wild among the orange trees. 

And to think that she experienced this beauty, this smell, the smell of life itself—of all the places in the world—here in the children’s section of the cemetery at Kiryat Shaul. It remained the only place where she could breathe easily, where she felt at peace. The only place in the world where she really wanted to be, and when the sky was streaked with shades of gold, she could even smell the sea. 

Only here, near the grave of her baby, did she feel serene. No one disturbed her, as no one disturbed the rest of the dead children. Sometimes cries of grief broke the silence, but even they couldn’t disturb her tranquility. Those cries, like the funerals, were far away from her, on paths that didn’t lead to the children’s section. More than once she had witnessed the funerals of dead children, seen them dig the new tiny graves, observed the tombstones, the candles in the lanterns placed there by the devastated parents, the statue of an angel set atop the resting place of a little girl. But as the years passed, the children’s section filled up, and a new section was cleared. God didn’t distinguish between adults and children; both continued to die. How unjust the world was, Lily thought. One person just began a life and died, and an elderly person who lacked the strength to go on with his life and longed to die continued to live. A sick person who yearned to remain alive weakened and died, and a healthy person wanted to die, slit her wrists, and lived. Lily could not understand the choices God made. Why did one receive such a short allotment of time while another was granted long life? What divine logic could explain why a woman carried a child in her womb for nine months and was overjoyed by him for a year only to have him cruelly wrenched from her? 

The bishara had told her that God only took from those who had great emotional strength, from those who could withstand the pain. “Be comforted that God thinks you are strong,” she had said. But it was no comfort at all, not then and not now. After the bishara died, she searched for answers from others. Went to everyone who she thought might be able to tell her why her baby had died, why God had taken him so soon. She sought out those who read tea leaves and those who read cards, went to mediums who held séances using cups and those who preferred candles. Each of them was paid with money she didn’t have, and no one ever gave her an answer. And after consulting a woman who spoke with the dead, who told her, “Only people who have done something truly terrible in that world are punished terribly in this one,” she finally ceased her quest. 

She was exhausted from trying to understand. From the day when her baby had died, so many years ago that she had stopped counting, she had been a bereaved mother in hiding. She never dared tell anyone that every day she traveled on two buses to reach the cemetery where her baby was buried. 

Shaul preferred to forget, not to talk about the baby, not to recite the mourner’s Kaddish hymn, not to visit the grave, not to remember. And when she lit a candle every year on the anniversary of his death and placed it next to the photograph on the night table by her side of the bed, he never said a word. 

Shaul had never come to the cemetery, and Eliya, what did she know? She had no connection to her dead brother. After the tantrum she’d thrown when she was ten, when she’d hid his photograph, she had never asked about him, not even once. She behaved like an only child, as if another child had never existed before her in her family. God had punished her twice, Lily felt, first taking her cherished baby and then giving her a child who only embittered her life, a daughter who seemed like the child of some other woman who had been planted in her womb. What had she done to deserve such punishment? She took a deep breath. Thinking about Eliya always confused her. When Eliya had refused to get out of bed for a year, when she’d tried to kill herself, when she’d wanted to be institutionalized, Lily had thought to herself, Good Lord, this is even worse than when baby Chaim died. The baby died and that was the end of the story, but Eliya continues to wreck our lives and her own life every day that she lives. God forgive her for the thoughts she harbored. How could a mother think such things about her daughter. 

It was only when Eliya was in mortal danger that Lily finally felt close to her. When Eliya was weak and exhausted and her lifeblood nearly streamed out of her, Lily preserved that life with her very fingers, pressed down and prayed that the blood would stop flowing out of her daughter’s body. That was the first time she had felt that Eliya was her child, and she would do whatever it took to save her. But the moment Eliya began to improve, they had reverted to sinking knifelike words into each other’s flesh. She knew it was she who had cast the first blow, suddenly terrified by the closeness that had developed between them. By trying to push away Eliya, she could return to that safe place of anger and alienation, a place where there was no kindness or compassion. Lily knew she was not permitted to truly be close to another human being, not even her daughter, her own flesh and blood, because if she ever again felt destiny’s boot smashing into her belly, she would die.

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Sarit Yishai-Levi was born in Jerusalem in 1947 to a Sephardic family that has lived in the city for seven generations.. Before turning to journalism, Yishai-Levi acted in theater and film for several years. Yishai-Levi has published four non-fiction books. Her first novel, The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, a bestseller in Israel. It is now being made into a feature film.

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Category: On Writing