Reading by Tom Haviv
Cinematography by Hannah Roodman
Direction by Tom Haviv and Hannah Roodman
Editing by Hannah Roodman
Assistant editing by Tim Slusarczyk
Sound by Ryan Dieringer
PROTI | ANTIGONI | HALKI | PRINQUIPO
Dear Tom,
I try as hard as I can
to prevent a spider
from installing his web
(although delicate)
on my mind, my memory.
89 in 4 months.
Here and there
flashbacks
of childhood —
what I was told,
school, Istanbul, the islands —
Proti, Antigoni, Halki, Prinquipo.
The sea
everywhere . . .
swimming, dancing
in the evenings.
Before that
much before
in a southern little town
by the Mediterranean.
The beach, delight
in plunging
into high waves,
coming out, waiting
for another wave . . .
The sea
always calm —
lying on it —
eyes closed seeing
colors, eyes
opened eyes
closed. You play
water carrying
you, embracing you.
Love, Yvette
About Tom Haviv:
Tom Haviv is the cofounder and executive director of Ayin Press. His debut book of poetry, A Flag of No Nation, was published in 2019 by Jewish Currents Press. He is also author of two children’s books, Woven (Somewhere, 2018) & The Porcupine Prince (Somewhere, 2023), and the creator of The Hamsa Flag Project.
About Yvette Haviv:
An idealist, multilinguist, and painter, Yvette Haviv (née Karillo) was born in 1928 in Istanbul, Turkey. She is the granddaughter of a rabbi of a Portuguese synagogue in Odessa. A Pisces, she was educated in Notre Dame de Sion school in Istanbul, where, as the top student of her class in 1936, she was asked to deliver flowers to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. At the time, a progressive nun in her school, Mère Emmanuelle, encouraged her to pursue her Jewishness against the backdrop of World War II and the Shoah. At fifteen, she joined the underground Zionist movement, and soon after married Israel “Izzy” Haviv and moved to Israel.
She and her husband worked in the foreign service for many years, serving in Ethiopia, Romania, and France. She also worked as a speechwriter for four Israeli presidents. In 1978, she got her master’s degree in art history from Tel Aviv University and began to paint with oils and acrylics. A Peace Now activist in the ’80s and ’90s, she was awarded a presidential medal for her service. After her husband passed away, she moved to Herzliya, then went to live with her sister in Virginia, and later joined her son and grandson in a small town near Toledo, Ohio. She passed away in May 2019.