Songs for the Brokenhearted

Set against 1995 Israel, a period of hope and political violence surrounding the Oslo peace accords, the novel interweaves two timelines and three perspectives to tell the story of a Yemeni Israeli family shaped by displacement, silenced histories, and forbidden love.

The novel opens with a prologue set in 1950, in which a young Yemeni Jewish man named Yaqub spots a young woman named Saida at a water fountain in an overcrowded immigrant camp in Rosh HaAyin, Israel. Both are from the same village in North Yemen. They begin meeting secretly by the nearby Yarkon River, where she sings and he writes. Saida is married with an infant son, Rafael, and their growing attachment is forbidden.

The present-day narrative begins in August 1995, when Zohara Haddad, a thirty-one-year-old Israeli woman backpacking in Thailand, learns that her mother, Saida, has died of a sudden heart attack. Zohara flies home to Sha'ariya, a small Yemeni neighborhood near Petah Tikva. After years in New York pursuing a PhD in Hebrew literature at New York University (NYU) and a failed marriage to Zack Ross, an American Jewish law student, Zohara has been drifting.

Zohara's relationship with Saida was fraught. After her father's death when she was eleven, Saida sent her at fourteen to Schneider, a prestigious boarding school for gifted Mizrahi children, Jews from Middle Eastern and North African countries. There, Zohara absorbed the cultural norms of the Ashkenazi establishment, Jews of European descent who held dominant positions in Israeli society. She grew ashamed of her mother's Yemeni traditions and never forgave Saida for sending her away.

At the center of the family's pain is an older trauma: Zohara's brother Rafael disappeared as an infant from the immigrant camp nursery in 1950. The authorities told Saida he had died, but no body or grave was ever produced. Rafael's case was part of a larger scandal in which hundreds of Yemeni, Mizrahi, and Balkan babies went missing in Israel's early years, with many families believing their children were taken and given for adoption.

At the funeral, Zohara reunites with her older sister, Lizzie; Lizzie's seventeen-year-old son, Yoni; and Saida's younger sister, Shuli, a singer who lives in Eilat. Yoni was exceptionally close to Saida, whom he called "Tata." He found her body and is devastated. His father left before Yoni was born, and Tata raised him while Lizzie worked. Yoni struggles with the loss in silence.

Zohara begins cleaning Saida's house, where she discovers a yellowing newspaper photograph of men at the immigrant camp hidden in Saida's ID case, and a shoebox of cassette tapes. Many are recordings of Saida singing unaccompanied in Yemeni Arabic. Hearing her dead mother's voice shakes Zohara deeply.

She brings the tapes to Nir Ozeri, a young Yemeni man who runs the local grocery store and is fluent in Arabic. Nir introduces Zohara to the Yemeni women's song tradition: an oral poetic practice in which women composed lyrics about love and heartbreak, passing them from mother to daughter as a vital form of self-expression. He connects Zohara to a local singing group Saida belonged to, led by a younger woman named Yael, who suggests some recordings may be Saida's own compositions.

Interspersed with the 1995 chapters are sections from Yaqub's perspective, tracing his 1950 love story with Saida at the camp. He reads to her from borrowed novels; she sings for him. He learns she was given away as a young orphan bride and is deeply unhappy. One evening he reaches for her hand, and she flees. She returns days later, and they resume their meetings. Eventually he kisses her and she kisses him back, but they are discovered by men from the camp. Yaqub is beaten and expelled. Before leaving, he visits baby Rafael in the nursery, tucking a note and the newspaper photo into the crib.

In extended flashbacks, Zohara's years in New York unfold. Her friend Shoshi, a fellow Yemeni PhD student, introduced her to scholarship on the marginalization of Mizrahi Jews, forcing Zohara to confront how her education had distanced her from her heritage. Her marriage to Zack deteriorated as she felt alienated from his Ashkenazi American family. She began an affair with Abe Al-Masri, a Lebanese American professor, drawn to his cultural familiarity. When the affair was discovered, the marriage ended, and Zohara fled to Thailand.

Meanwhile, Yoni's grief takes a dangerous turn. He begins attending synagogue and is recruited by Baruch, Nir's brother-in-law and a right-wing activist, into a movement opposing the Oslo accords. Yoni channels his grief into political rage against Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He develops feelings for Hodaya, a religious girl his age, but she distances herself, disturbed by the movement's violent rhetoric.

Zohara's investigation into her mother's past deepens. She learns from Bruria, Saida's lifelong friend, that the songs are Saida's own compositions. At sixteen, Zohara discovered that Bruria was actually her father Hassan's first wife; Saida had been brought in as a second wife when Bruria could not conceive. While cleaning Saida's bedroom, Zohara finds a brown envelope containing handwritten pages: a love story about Saida and Yaqub set at the immigrant camp. These are the Yaqub chapters the reader has been following, written by the man Saida loved. Later Yaqub sections trace his life after the camp: teaching, marrying Ruth, an Iraqi Jewish woman, raising children, and writing their story for decades, always imagining Saida as his reader.

Zohara visits Shuli in Eilat, accompanied by Iggy, her longtime ex-boyfriend and closest friend. Shuli confirms Yaqub's existence and explains that after Yaqub's expulsion, Rafael disappeared weeks later. Saida believed she was being punished for daring to love and devoted the rest of her life to duty and silence.

In November 1995, while Zohara and Iggy are at a beach camp in Sinai, news reaches them that Rabin has been assassinated at a peace rally in Tel Aviv. That same night, Yoni is arrested at the rally for fighting with a protestor. Nir, a law student whom Baruch calls to intervene, secures Yoni's release. Zohara walks her shaken nephew home, reassuring him he is not alone.

The assassination shatters Yoni's certainty. He removes the kippah, a skullcap he adopted during his recent turn toward religious observance, and begins therapy. He channels his grief into writing an essay about Tata's life for school. Lizzie tells him the truth about his absent father, an abusive man she fled while pregnant. When the family discusses Mr. Hason, the quiet elderly tenant in Saida's backyard shed, Yoni reveals he already knew the old man was Yaqub: Tata told him years ago, and Yoni kept the secret out of love.

Zohara discovers Mr. Hason's identity when she hears Saida call out "Yaqub?" on a tape, then notices a bill addressed to "Yaakov Hason." Mr. Hason tells her everything: He and Saida reconnected in 1993 at the geriatric hospital where Saida worked and where his wife, Ruth, had Alzheimer's. After decades apart, they shared a life as neighbors.

Zohara reconciles with Bruria and with Lizzie, who reveals that Saida sent Zohara to Schneider not out of rejection but to honor their father's dying wish. Zohara emails her NYU advisor proposing a new dissertation on the Yemeni women's song tradition, accepts she may remain in Israel, and begins singing with the women's group.

In the final scene, Nir waits for Zohara outside the community center. They walk home together slowly, arms linked, their growing connection unspoken but clear. Behind them, the women continue singing, their voices carried on the evening breeze.