THE UNFORGIVING NEGEV DESERT IS BACKDROP FOR THREE SPELLBINDING NOVELLAS

Sand Devil by Michael Bornstein available from Toby Press

Behold, a great wind will arise from the wilderness and sweep toward the daughter of my people. A wind not to reap or winnow, but a wind stronger than my enemies. And I will judge them. - Jeremiah, 4:11

The parched Negev Desert with its blistering sun and vicious pillars of wind is the setting for the three novellas in Michael Bornstein's new collection, SAND DEVIL (Toby Press, Summer 2001, paperback, ISBN: 1-902881-43-5, $15.95). Combining his intimate familiarity of the harsh Israeli landscape with his skills as a historian, Bornstein has penned three riveting stories where the desert becomes a metaphor for evil. Bornstein pits his protagonists against an anthropomorphic desert where, in the hypnotic swirls of the sand, good and evil become enmeshed, both prisoners of the land.

In the title novella, "Sand Devil", Bobby, an adolescent boy, succumbs to the hypnotic power of his harsh environment.

At last, the devil comes to the desert. A pillar of wind which feeds on sand and drills down to bedrock, It churns, so strong it can tear a man to pieces. Not even a giant could stop it, Iblis once said. Spinning, it turns skin into shreds and bones into powder. It comes. Like a madman it whirls. Like David, naked and dancing.

Bobby becomes Bubi when he is uprooted from the slums of Chicago to the arid, rocky wadis of the Negev where he is held hostage by his fundamentalist father and the unforgiving land that surrounds him. Bubi sees few people outside the flaps of his tent except Yoni who arrives weekly in a rugged jeep to deliver essential supplies, and Iblis, whom Bubi meets secretly in the Firing Zone. It is Iblis, less multiple body parts devoured by the mines, who convinces an impressionable boy on the verge of manhood that the desert is alive with unconquerable spirits. Mingling with his father's ceaseless readings and rantings from the bible, with Iblis' admonitions, Bubi imagines himself like David slaying the giant. When a fiery young anthropologist is sent to study how Bubi and his family live, Bubi's burgeoning adulthood is set aflame, only to be devoured by forces he can't control. When the sand devil finally arrives, Bubi is swept beyond the point of return.

Trapped by the dull routine of her life, intrigued only by the monotony of the vast desert that surrounds her, Batya, in the novella "House of Bondage", experiences the extraordinary, albeit fleeting, triumph of love over evil but then becomes prisoner once again.

Ours is a world of bondage, she understands; moons chained to planets and planets to stars, circling the universe's yard. Brains in their cavities and hearts behind ribs. All people are prisoners, she knows, some of them to each other.

In the boondocks of Israel with Haifa and Tel Aviv to the distant north, Batya rides the number 4 bus every weekday to her tedious job at the registry. On Saturdays she is trapped in her mother's kitchen, where she must endure her mother's profound disappointment in her continuing unmarried status. The raucous children in the living room and the still frequent presence Rami, her ne'er do well suitor, only adds to the oppression she bears. When Batya's world is invaded by an evil brute, an escaped murderer, she finds beauty in ugliness, grace in crudeness and is freed from her chains and tames the beast. In the end, though, she is once again held hostage - as blessed as she is cursed.

In "The Maestro of Yerucham", Roman Tolchowsky, a virtuoso who has survived the Soviet regimes, the Nazis and debilitating ailments finds himself at the end of the line in Yerucham. There amid the parched sand and the craters of the wadi, he finds his salvation and his doom in a young girl whom he believes to be the heir of his fortune.

It was that audition, in Vilnius - before the Soviet massacres, before the war, that labeled Roman Tolchowsky a prodigy and sent him all over Europe in a whirlwind of ovations and bravos and encores. But after the Russians and the Nazis, Roman could no longer stand up tall, nor would his 4 and ½ fingers allow him to play his beloved violin. And so he conducts orchestras playing to smaller and smaller audiences until he finds himself in a tiny broken down town in Jerusalem's distant surroundings. There he teaches Jasmin, the daughter of the richest and most powerful man in town. Haunted by dreams that blur reality, Roman pins all his hopes and dreams on Jasmin and so constructs his own demise.

MICHAEL BORNSTEIN OREN lives in Jerusalem with his wife and three children. He served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, and as advisor to the Israel delegation to the UN and to the government of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. An historian with degrees from Princeton and Columbia, he has written extensively on the Middle East, including Six Days of War, recently nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He is also the author of several works of fiction and screenplays.