From Egypt to Israel: Silenced and Explosive Footsteps According to The Sound of Our Footsteps, by Ronit Matalon

Abstract

The complexity of Jewish immigrants’ life who were forced to leave Egypt and settled in Israel more than half a century ago did not mean for many of them a possibility of advancement in life; rather, the old position of accommodation was replaced by an unexpected demotion that would only reach a desired equilibrium in the next generation. In this semi-autobiographical novel, Kol tseadeinu (The Sound of Our Footsteps, Am Oved, Tel Aviv, 2008), Ronit Matalon – daughter of Egyptian parents - exposes the family situation itself. The true or fictitious family standard is replaced by harsh conditions of survival of the mother's triple work day, to which is added the almost total abandonment by the journalist and Marxist political activist father, dissatisfied with the molds that Israel then provided for them in the category of mizrachim immigrants, that is, Jews coming from Arab countries. The father embarks on struggles to denounce the country's discriminating model. The non-linear narrative of the novel, conducted by the daughter - the author's alter ego, in the role of witness - from an early age to adulthood, focuses mainly on the mother, Lucette, and her performance as a fighter to overcome the small world to which she was restricted in the new country and her condition of semi-abandoned wife. Dissatisfied, “the mother” shakes the house – a precarious prefabricated shed - with her movements. “The house” – the family life – is practically synonymous with “the mother”. The purpose of this text, in addition to situating the position of the novel in contemporary Hebrew literature, is to outline the confrontation of the woman who leads her and her family’s life forward, from her silent steps, as we read in the first chapter, to the steps of the whole family, as exposed towards the end of this lively romance.