FAMILY / HISTORY / THE SELF

Photographs with the missing head

Self-reflection — a history based on a critical examination of myself and my family

For as long into the past as I remember, a glass-framed black-and-white photograph hung on the wall above my grandparents’ bed, which I could almost reach when I stood on top of the bed. In a large chest of drawers, more photo albums were kept in the bottom drawer where the past could be paraded in disjointed events before my eyes.

The photo above the bed featured the head of a younger version of my mother next to the head of an unfamiliar man who closely resembled my uncle. Boobe’s eyes welled up whenever she looked at the picture and then at me. Everybody cried around me: an uncle who came from America to visit every two years, my uncle and aunt who lived in Binyamina, Boobe’s sister who lived in Haifa, and my cousins. What was this sadness about? I waited for some sign to explain the offenses they believed I had committed against them.

I was a walking question mark.

Was it a weekend or a summer holiday? Who could remember now? But I recall my older cousin’s question, uttered so suddenly that I was struck by the oddity of it. We had been sitting in the kitchen, illuminated by a…