"Part comedy of manners, part psychological mystery . . . Issues of nationalism, religion, and passing collide with quickly changing social and sexual mores." Boston GlobeFrom one of the most important contemporary voices to emerge from the Middle East comes a gripping tale of love and betrayal, honesty and artifice, which asks whether it is possible to truly reinvent ourselves, to shed our old skin and start anew.
Second Person Singular follows two men, a successful Arab criminal attorney and a social worker-turned-artist, whose lives intersect under the most curious of circumstances. The lawyer has a thriving practice in the Jewish part of Jerusalem, a large house, a Mercedes, speaks both Arabic and Hebrew, and is in love with his wife and two young children. In an effort to uphold his image as a sophisticated Israeli Arab, he often makes weekly visits to a local bookstore to pick up popular novels. On one fateful evening, he decides to buy a used copy of Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata, a book his wife once recommended. To his surprise, inside he finds a small white note, a love letter, in Arabic, in her handwriting. I waited for you, but you didn't come. I hope everything's all right. I wanted to thank you for last night. It was wonderful. Call me tomorrow? Consumed with suspicion and jealousy, the lawyer slips into a blind rage over the presumed betrayal. He first considers murder, revenge, then divorce, but when the initial sting of humiliation and hurt dissipates, he decides to hunt for the book's previous ownera man named Yonatan, a man who is not easy to track down, whose identity is more complex than imagined, and whose life is more closely aligned with his own than expected. In the process of dredging up old ghosts and secrets, the lawyer tears the string that holds all of their lives together.
A Palestinian who writes in Hebrew, Sayed Kashua defies classification and breaks through cultural barriers. He communicates, with enormous emotional power and a keen sense of the absurd, the particular alienation and the psychic costs of people struggling to straddle two worlds. Second Person Singular is a deliciously complex psychological mystery and a searing dissection of the individuals that comprise a divided society.
Second Person Singular is a story of two men living parallel lives, connected by one woman and the truth surrounding a love letter. One is a successful yet cripplingly insecure lawyer, referred to as the lawyer” throughout, the other a young man attempting to form an identity. Based in Jerusalem in a split society, both men are Arabs trying to come to terms with their culture and the Israeli perceptions of the Arab culture. The lawyers account spans the short time surrounding his discovery. The young mans story progresses seven plus years to that time, slowly uncovering the core mystery of the letter found by chance- or fate. The lawyer must confront the question, can you ever truly know someone, while the young man lives one answer: identity is created and modeled by a divided society.
The lawyer enjoys reading classics and often stops at a local used bookshop, though always claims they are gifts. He wants to seem sophisticated, a complex created by his insecurities and the stereotypes Israelis project onto Arabs. On this fateful evening, the lawyer buys Leo Tolstoys The Kreutzer Sonata.
After a book club dinner party, which focuses more on proving status and wealth, ends. The guests, all Arab, want to seem elite and cultured, Western to match the Israelis. Retiring to his daughters bedroom, where he always sleeps since his young son wakes him, the lawyer starts reading The Kreutzer Sonata. A piece of paper falls out. Its a love letter. He recognizes the handwriting. Its his wifes.
Consumed by blinding rage, the lawyer charges into the kitchen and grabs a knife. All he can think of is betrayal, what neighbors will say and if they already know, humiliated and shamed by a woman he now believes he doesnt know. Storming upstairs, bursting into the bedroom they no longer share, the lawyer glares down on his sleeping wife, sprawled across the bed, sleeping while she can. He thinks of strangling her and watching the life drain out of her eyes. He thinks of her would-be forever motionless body, of killing her, but anger ebbs away replaced by hurt and confusion. The lawyer then thinks of his daughter finding her mother murdered and he can no longer act, leading the lawyer to feel cowardly and weak, a cuckold husband.
The lawyer realizes there are other ways to kill a woman, however. Divorce. If he could just beat her to court to file, he could have the children, strip his wife Leila of her honor, and leave her destitute. The key is to pretend nothing is wrong, that he never discovered the letter; then take action.
Returning to look at The Kreutzer Sonata, there is a name in the cover. Yonatan.
The story flips to an unnamed narrator, younger and attendee of Yonatans funeral.
A social worker who works with drug addicts trying to recover finds his job unfulfilling and is painfully shy. He lives in a dingy apartment with two friends who are never home. He decides to take a job working the night shift as the caretaker of a paraplegic, Yonatan. Completely paralyzed, Yonatan is completely dependent yet has haunted, probing eyes.
A lively, pretty woman in college comes to work as an intern at his office. She likes him and invites him out to a party. After asking Yonatans day caretaker to cover for the evening, she sees what he is going to wear. In a motherly fashion, she persuades him to wear Yonatans expensive, unused clothes. This is only the beginning of their lives intertwining.
The date doesnt go well. Feeling uncomfortable in someone elses clothes, too shy to talk and too awkward to dance, the narrator leaves early and decides that evening to quit his job at the social work office.
As he goes into work early the next morning to drop off his resignation letter, he finds a note from his date, saying she waited for him, had a wonderful time and asked if he would call her. His date was a girl named Leila.
As the story progresses, the lawyer continually vacillates about running to court to file for divorce. He searches for Yonatan, tracking down a man who may be Leilas lover. He constantly questions where she is, thinks of his revenge and her demise at his hands. The lawyer finally confronts Leila about the note. She denies it is hers, cries, fears his almost insane rage.
The lawyer calls in a favor and has an expert confirm it is her handwriting. After again beginning confronted, she claims she forgot she wrote it since it was such a long time ago, after one date with a guy she never saw again. The lawyer pretends to believe her.
The lawyer and Yonatans caretaker continue to live parallel lives.
To occupy the long nights watching Yonatan, the still unnamed narrator listens to Yonatans CDs, reads his books, all with Yonatan written on the inside cover, and searches the room. He discovers an expensive camera with film still in it, not fully used. During the day, he explores and takes photos. When the roll is developed, the pictures on the camera taken by Yonatan are photos of him hanging himself.
Spending more and more of each day taking photos, focusing on people, this mysterious narrator applies for photography school
under Yonatans name. He assumes Yonatans identity as an Israeli from a rich neighborhood. He cuts all ties with his mother, his only family. Yonatan is accepted into photography school and begins his new life. However, not before Yonatans mother Ruchaleh discovers what he has done. Ruchaleh, a distant woman who never goes to Yonatans hospital-like room, drinks alone every night working.
His acceptance letter comes to the house, not the P.O. Box Amir Lahab opened in Yonatans name. Instead of being angry, Ruchaleh merely hands Amir the letter and prompts him to open it. Well, did you get in? as if she knew all along, seemingly omniscient though never in the attic room. At that moment, Amir begins to become Yonatan.
The lawyer discovers Amir worked with Leila when she interned at the social worker center. He finds his ID number and travels to the Triangle where Amir grew up. Calling in another favor, the lawyer learns Amir disappeared. He is determined to uncover the truth.
Yonatan tries to kill himself again by spitting up food, refusing to eat. He eventually must go to the hospital and Amir finally sees Ruchaleh cry. While Ruchaleh and Amir are home alone, she admits her hatred for Yonatans room. She always looks toward the ceiling where she found her only child hanging with a kicked over chair below him. Ruchaleh believes this fresh attempt at suicide is a continued act of revenge. Amir feels it was now directed toward him as well since he took over Yonatans identity.
Yonatan comes back to the house with a feeding tube, forcing him to live for four more years. Amir, on the other side, begins to finally live. He gets a girlfriend, becomes a son to Ruchaleh, and learns to be more cultural. He also learned what Israelis thought of Arabs- horny, unpredictable, short-tempered, primitive and obsessed with honor, especially the honor of their "sisters pussies."
Ruchaleh one day told Amir she wanted to sell the house. And that it was time for Yonatan to get what he wanted, death. She devised a plan. Amir would be out. She would ignore the beeping of the oximeter that indicted the breathing tube had fallen out, wait 15 minutes and then call an ambulance. It would be too late. All that was left to be decided was which ID card Amir would give her since he had updated Yonatans ID card with his own picture.
When the designated night came, Amir gave his ID card to Ruchaleh. By handing over Amir Lahabs ID card, Amir fully and permanently became Yonatan Forschmidt. The real Yonatan died that night as Amir Lahab. Amir had taken care of Yonatan for over seven years.
The door bell rang as Yonatan waited in the living room for the realtor, sitting among boxes and covered furniture, Yonatan dead, Amir Lahab dead. He opened the door. The lawyer stood outside.
The lawyer probed and pushed, asking for Amir and Yonatan, demanding to know who he was. Yonatan realized the lawyer would not leave without the whole story. Yonatan revealed his true identity and his journey from a lost, shy Amir to a confident, career-driven Yonatan. He denied remembering the letter, the party, or more than a vague memory of the intern Leila.
The lawyer believed Yonatan and they even spoke a few times after their initial meeting. He fell back into his regular lifestyle, even tried to sleep in the same bed as his wife, though it did not last long. As the lawyer says, ". . . with all due respect to love, you sleep much better alone." Yonatan mentioned his graduating classs year-end photography show. The lawyer decided to stop by before attending another book club dinner party with friends.
As he thought of the show, the lawyer felt jealousy begin to build. Why?- The mere thought of Leila possibly having a relationship with an extremely talented photographer. As he walked around looking for the room with Yonatans hanging photos, he overheard a couple talk about an outstanding photographer, Yonatan Forschmidt. The lawyer experienced his usual insecurity and deeply examined the twelve photographs, eleven of which were portraits stunningly capturing facial expressions of everyday people.
The last photo was of a naked womans back, from her neck, covered with a few curls of hair, to where her behind rested on the bed in a darkly lit room. With his nose pressed against the frame, the lawyer reached out to touch the familiar hips and could have sworn they were Leilas.