Genre Fiction
![Omer Friedlander - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B099SBF163.jpg)
The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land: Stories
A brilliant young author's stunning fiction debut: gorgeously immersive and imaginative stories that transcend borders as they render the intimate lives of people striving for connection
"A beautiful debut by a deeply humane writer. Every story is a vivid world unto itself, intensely felt, and often revelatory."-Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love
The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land announces the arrival of a natural-born storyteller of immense talent. Warm, poignant, delightfully whimsical, Omer Friedlander's gorgeously immersive and imaginative stories take you to the narrow limestone alleyways of Jerusalem, the desolate beauty of the Negev Desert, and the sprawling orange groves of Jaffa, with characters that spring to vivid life. A divorced con artist and his daughter sell empty bottles of "holy air" to credulous tourists; a Lebanese Scheherazade enchants three young soldiers in a bombed-out Beirut radio station; a boy daringly "rooftops" at night, climbing steel cranes in scuffed sneakers even as he reimagines the bravery of a Polish-Jewish dancer during the Holocaust; an Israeli volunteer at a West Bank checkpoint mourns the death of her son, a soldier killed in Gaza.
These stories render the intimate lives of people striving for connection. They are fairy tales turned on their head by the stakes of real life, where moments of fragile intimacy mix with comedy and notes of the absurd. Told in prose of astonishing vividness that also demonstrates remarkable control and restraint, they have a universal appeal to the heart.
"A beautiful debut by a deeply humane writer. Every story is a vivid world unto itself, intensely felt, and often revelatory."-Nicole Krauss, author of The History of Love
The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land announces the arrival of a natural-born storyteller of immense talent. Warm, poignant, delightfully whimsical, Omer Friedlander's gorgeously immersive and imaginative stories take you to the narrow limestone alleyways of Jerusalem, the desolate beauty of the Negev Desert, and the sprawling orange groves of Jaffa, with characters that spring to vivid life. A divorced con artist and his daughter sell empty bottles of "holy air" to credulous tourists; a Lebanese Scheherazade enchants three young soldiers in a bombed-out Beirut radio station; a boy daringly "rooftops" at night, climbing steel cranes in scuffed sneakers even as he reimagines the bravery of a Polish-Jewish dancer during the Holocaust; an Israeli volunteer at a West Bank checkpoint mourns the death of her son, a soldier killed in Gaza.
These stories render the intimate lives of people striving for connection. They are fairy tales turned on their head by the stakes of real life, where moments of fragile intimacy mix with comedy and notes of the absurd. Told in prose of astonishing vividness that also demonstrates remarkable control and restraint, they have a universal appeal to the heart.
Editorial Reviews
"In these wise, capacious, achingly beautiful stories, Omer Friedlander maps the hidden geography of the human heart like a young Chekhov. Each one feels like a fresh new discovery, and collected together, The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land becomes a sustained feat of imaginative compassion."-Anthony Marra, New York Times bestselling author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
"Innovative in conception, classical in spirit, these stories, set largely in Israel, resonate with international ramifications. Rarely do we encounter a writer so young but also this wise. . . . A splendid literary debut."-Ha Jin, National Book Award–winning author of Waiting
"Friedlander blends fable and realism in extraordinarily imaginative ways. Again and again, he achieves a fine balance between the tragic and the absurd. Every one of these stories moved me and taught me something I did not know before."-Sigrid Nunez, National Book Award-winning author ofThe Friend
"As outrageously funny as they are outrageously tender, Friedlander's stories conjure complex and often difficult emotions with perfect acrobatic skill. This terrible world, he seems to be telling us, is so terribly wonderful that it is perfectly all right to laugh and cry at the same time. A superb collection."-Kiran Desai, Booker Prize–winning author of The Inheritance of Loss
"The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land is a beautifully written collection, and Omer Friedlander is an exceptionally thoughtful writer. He tells these stories with care and attention equal to the complexities of the people and places that fill their pages. I'm already looking forward to what he'll do next."-Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds and A Shout in the Ruins
"With Omer Friedlander as our guide, we are expertly transported over their topographies and even across their respective borders. He is a remarkable talent."-Elliot Ackerman, author of Red Dress in Black and White<...
"Innovative in conception, classical in spirit, these stories, set largely in Israel, resonate with international ramifications. Rarely do we encounter a writer so young but also this wise. . . . A splendid literary debut."-Ha Jin, National Book Award–winning author of Waiting
"Friedlander blends fable and realism in extraordinarily imaginative ways. Again and again, he achieves a fine balance between the tragic and the absurd. Every one of these stories moved me and taught me something I did not know before."-Sigrid Nunez, National Book Award-winning author ofThe Friend
"As outrageously funny as they are outrageously tender, Friedlander's stories conjure complex and often difficult emotions with perfect acrobatic skill. This terrible world, he seems to be telling us, is so terribly wonderful that it is perfectly all right to laugh and cry at the same time. A superb collection."-Kiran Desai, Booker Prize–winning author of The Inheritance of Loss
"The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land is a beautifully written collection, and Omer Friedlander is an exceptionally thoughtful writer. He tells these stories with care and attention equal to the complexities of the people and places that fill their pages. I'm already looking forward to what he'll do next."-Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds and A Shout in the Ruins
"With Omer Friedlander as our guide, we are expertly transported over their topographies and even across their respective borders. He is a remarkable talent."-Elliot Ackerman, author of Red Dress in Black and White<...
Readers Top Reviews
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter 1
Jaffa Oranges
We are a fruitful, many-branched, and sprawling family, ranging from Jaffa to Haifa, and our business is oranges. I will be eighty-seven at the turn of the new millennium, and I own one of the last true shamouti orange groves, where the fruit is sweet and the peel is thick. My four children-three sons and a daughter-work in finance and law, and my grandchildren-all nine of them-can't tell the difference between a shamouti and a mandarin. From time to time, they come visit the grove in HaSharon, help pick the fruit, wrap it individually in waxed paper, and pack it in crates, which are later sold in the farmers market. I'm always reminded of a poem by Yehuda Amichai when I think of my children and my grandchildren. It's called "Eyes," and I know it by heart. My eldest son's eyes are like black figs for he was born at the end of the summer. And my youngest son's eyes are clear like orange slices, for he was born in their season. And the eyes of my little daughter are round like the first grapes. And all are sweet in my worry. And the eyes of the Lord roam the earth and my eyes are always looking round my house. God's in the eye business and the fruit business. I'm in the worry business.
When I stumble across the young woman wandering around the grove, I'm preparing for the spring. Since dawn, I've been clearing out the unripe fruit clogging the irrigation canals. I'm wearing my tembel hat, its brim hardly covering my large ears, which stick out. My movements are slower than they used to be, my bones ache. The woman, wearing a button-down blouse, billowing beige pants, and sandals, is accompanied by one of my workers, an Arab man who guards the grove, whose hands are always clean and spotless, fingernails clipped and neat. The woman does not seem surprised to see me. In fact, she's been looking for me. She is starkly beautiful with radiant olive skin, dark, tumbling curls, and black eyes under unusually large lids. She tells me she is the granddaughter of my childhood friend Khalil Haddad, a Palestinian whose father owned one of the largest orange groves in Jaffa during the British Mandate.
I can see the resemblance immediately in her eyes. He had the very same ones, dark as coal, heavy-lidded. I try to control my breathing, as we walk through the grove, the light golden on the plump fruit. Her hands cradle the oranges, she presses her ear to them, as if they might whisper a secret. What does she know? What has Khalil told her? My heartbeat is rapid, my hands shake. I have not spoken Khalil's name aloud for years and years. None of my children or grandchildren know his name. The soft grass is spotted with fallen fruit, buzzing bees flit from purple lemon flowers to white lime flowers. Lilah explains that Khalil told her about me-his devoted childhood friend, his only Jewish friend-countless times. When her grandfather died several months before, she decided to come here to ask me about him. She loved him very much, but she feels like she doesn't know much about his past in Palestine before he lived in London, before the war, before al-Nakba.
"It wasn't an easy trip for me," Lilah says.
Despite her British passport, she tells me that she was interrogated by the border control officers for hours at the airport.
"And what did you tell them? That you were just going to talk to an old man about his oranges?"
"It doesn't matter what I told them. I am Palestinian, so they were suspicious."
I never saw Khalil after he departed with his family. So many Palestinians fled by sea and land, after the heavy bombardment of Jaffa. The port was overwhelmed with refugees crowding small boats. The Haddad family, like the other orange growers, dismantled their water pumps and deserted their grove, carrying with them only a small portion of their belongings in handcarts. Jaffa was burning, the trees in the orchard were burning, the oranges were burning, and the flames spiraled up into the sky, and for days, ash floated in the air, blanketing the abandoned city in a haze. I don't like to think back to those moments.
"Khalil and I packed the oranges together into crates in your great-grandfather's orchard. We wrapped each orange individually in waxed paper."
I pick an orange and withdraw a pocketknife, flick the blade open. The blade glints in the sun, and I see my own face reflected in it, splotched with cancer spots and a sprinkling of veins like the rootstock of a tree. Without noticing, I've grown old. Rot sets quickly in an orange, infecting the entire fruit. The trick is to squeeze it firmly and listen to its sound. You can tell by the fermented smell that it's spoiled. But the orange in the palm of my hand is young, unblemished. I disse...
Jaffa Oranges
We are a fruitful, many-branched, and sprawling family, ranging from Jaffa to Haifa, and our business is oranges. I will be eighty-seven at the turn of the new millennium, and I own one of the last true shamouti orange groves, where the fruit is sweet and the peel is thick. My four children-three sons and a daughter-work in finance and law, and my grandchildren-all nine of them-can't tell the difference between a shamouti and a mandarin. From time to time, they come visit the grove in HaSharon, help pick the fruit, wrap it individually in waxed paper, and pack it in crates, which are later sold in the farmers market. I'm always reminded of a poem by Yehuda Amichai when I think of my children and my grandchildren. It's called "Eyes," and I know it by heart. My eldest son's eyes are like black figs for he was born at the end of the summer. And my youngest son's eyes are clear like orange slices, for he was born in their season. And the eyes of my little daughter are round like the first grapes. And all are sweet in my worry. And the eyes of the Lord roam the earth and my eyes are always looking round my house. God's in the eye business and the fruit business. I'm in the worry business.
When I stumble across the young woman wandering around the grove, I'm preparing for the spring. Since dawn, I've been clearing out the unripe fruit clogging the irrigation canals. I'm wearing my tembel hat, its brim hardly covering my large ears, which stick out. My movements are slower than they used to be, my bones ache. The woman, wearing a button-down blouse, billowing beige pants, and sandals, is accompanied by one of my workers, an Arab man who guards the grove, whose hands are always clean and spotless, fingernails clipped and neat. The woman does not seem surprised to see me. In fact, she's been looking for me. She is starkly beautiful with radiant olive skin, dark, tumbling curls, and black eyes under unusually large lids. She tells me she is the granddaughter of my childhood friend Khalil Haddad, a Palestinian whose father owned one of the largest orange groves in Jaffa during the British Mandate.
I can see the resemblance immediately in her eyes. He had the very same ones, dark as coal, heavy-lidded. I try to control my breathing, as we walk through the grove, the light golden on the plump fruit. Her hands cradle the oranges, she presses her ear to them, as if they might whisper a secret. What does she know? What has Khalil told her? My heartbeat is rapid, my hands shake. I have not spoken Khalil's name aloud for years and years. None of my children or grandchildren know his name. The soft grass is spotted with fallen fruit, buzzing bees flit from purple lemon flowers to white lime flowers. Lilah explains that Khalil told her about me-his devoted childhood friend, his only Jewish friend-countless times. When her grandfather died several months before, she decided to come here to ask me about him. She loved him very much, but she feels like she doesn't know much about his past in Palestine before he lived in London, before the war, before al-Nakba.
"It wasn't an easy trip for me," Lilah says.
Despite her British passport, she tells me that she was interrogated by the border control officers for hours at the airport.
"And what did you tell them? That you were just going to talk to an old man about his oranges?"
"It doesn't matter what I told them. I am Palestinian, so they were suspicious."
I never saw Khalil after he departed with his family. So many Palestinians fled by sea and land, after the heavy bombardment of Jaffa. The port was overwhelmed with refugees crowding small boats. The Haddad family, like the other orange growers, dismantled their water pumps and deserted their grove, carrying with them only a small portion of their belongings in handcarts. Jaffa was burning, the trees in the orchard were burning, the oranges were burning, and the flames spiraled up into the sky, and for days, ash floated in the air, blanketing the abandoned city in a haze. I don't like to think back to those moments.
"Khalil and I packed the oranges together into crates in your great-grandfather's orchard. We wrapped each orange individually in waxed paper."
I pick an orange and withdraw a pocketknife, flick the blade open. The blade glints in the sun, and I see my own face reflected in it, splotched with cancer spots and a sprinkling of veins like the rootstock of a tree. Without noticing, I've grown old. Rot sets quickly in an orange, infecting the entire fruit. The trick is to squeeze it firmly and listen to its sound. You can tell by the fermented smell that it's spoiled. But the orange in the palm of my hand is young, unblemished. I disse...
