Bethlehem Road Murder: A Michael Ohayon Mystery [Paperback]

Police Chief Superintendent Michael Ohayon is called in to investigate a murdered young woman, her body found in his ex-girlfriend's under rennovation apartment. Because the victim's face was smashed, identification takes a while, but the Jerusalem neighborhood is tight and the missing woman's identity becomes known. But Zahara Bashari was a complex person. She was pregnant, had recently been given an apartment by her boss, was highly active in a movement to preserve the culture of Yemeni Jews, and had been stalked by a young neighbor girl who used magic in an attempt to take Zahara's place among the beautiful. Of course, the Intifada is an ever-present threat and both police and the neighbors are quick to point their fingers at Arabs in the neighborhood. Much better them than one of their own.

Author Batya Gur creates a compelling sense of place in the Jerusalem neighborhood where old hatreds and fears have festered since Israel's founding. The city itself, the creepy atmosphere of fear and hatred caused by the violence cycle between Jew and Arab, and the antagonism between European, Asian, and African Jews all come to stark life in Gur's prose.

The character of Nessia, the young girl filled with self-hatred and with a desperate attempt to conjur a new world for herself is strong and compelling. For me, few of the other characters really stood out, however. Even Michael Ohayon, with his bland and lazy unwillingness to allow his lieutenants to persecute suspicious Arabs too closely, his unexplored fascination with the rediscovery of his teenaged love, and his confused relationship with his fellow police officers didn't really stand out for me.

I love reading mysteries about worlds outside my own--and Batya Gur's Jerusalem setting is certainly that. Gur's descriptions, the explanation of never-forgotten feuds between European and non-European Jews, and the backdrop of Jewish/Arab hatred certainly makes for compelling reading.

Setting her novel in an ethnically mixed neighborhood of Jerusalem, Israeli novelist Batya Gur continues the career of Chief Superintendent Michael Ohayon, formerly a historian, now a police investigator. In this fifth book in the series, Michael Ohayon investigates a particularly gory murder. An apparently beautiful young woman has been murdered in the attic of a house undergoing renovations, her face beaten to a pulp. No one knows how she might have been lured to such a place or why she might have been murdered.

Zahara Bashari, the victim, has been developing a small museum "for the splendor of Yemenite culture" in the basement of a local synagogue. Complex political issues exist between the Yemenites, known as the Mizrahis, and the Ashkenazis (Russian Jews), and Zahara believes that the Ashkenazim want to wipe out everything that distinguishes the Yemenite Jews. Furthermore, in the 1950s, Yemenite babies were kidnapped from their parents and given to others to raise, and Zahara wants to find out more about this period and what might have happened to one of her own kin.

The investigation is centered on the neighborhood, where Zahara's parents and their next door neighbors have not spoken for years. Nessia, a lonely, young girl with no friends, idolizes Zahara and follows her movements in the neighborhood, collecting "souvenirs" of Zahara's life, and looking for some sort of recognition-until she, too, disappears. Zahara's personal life proves to be complex, and her previously unknown ownership of an apartment and substantial savings account prove particularly worrisome.

The rivalries and tensions within the neighborhood and the police reflect all aspects of society and all political and social movements. Though Ohayon is a moderate in his views toward Arabs, Danny Balilty, deputy commander of the intelligence division, is a hard-liner. Within the neighborhood, however, residents work with and hire Arab contractors, some have friends who are Arabs, and some express annoyance at the strict measures imposed by their government to prohibit the work of Arabs except under certain circumstances.

Though the novel is filled with information about a unique way of life, the mystery is not always easy to follow. Pronoun references are sometimes unclear, the translation is occasionally awkward, and digressions slow down the action. Ohayon's dissertation on love during his courtship, for example, wanders on too long and lessens the tension. Still, author Batya Gur has some good psychological insights into character, especially of the fat, young girl Nessia, and Gur's ability to juggle innumerable characters and plot ideas is admirable. (3.5 stars) Mary Whipple

One of the most difficult things to do is translate. This is especially true when you are dealing with languages that have no common ground like Hebrew and English. The translator of Gur's first three books did a fine job, but this one was seriously lacking in the ability to bring out the better qualities of Gur's writing. I'm sure that the book was faithfully translated, but that doesn't mean it's well done. Every author has their own rhythm and tempo, which this book fails to capture. So parts are like a camel (a horse designed by a committee) and have absolutely no flow to them.

The other part of translating is understanding the culture behind the language and being able to connote 'idiomatic expressions'. Even in dialects, 'things are lost in translation: to 'knock' some one up has totally different meanings in English (come to see me or call me) versus get me pregnant in American. An American will 'call' you but a Brit will 'ring' you. So you can imagine how much more difficult it is from one culture to another. This translator failed miserably.

The story itself is one of the darkest periods of the new State of Israel when it was thought that in order to integrate the North Africa and Arab Jews into the new state, they would have to be "Europeanized". Much like the attempts to do the same to Native Americans and Inuits, the results were a disaster for all concerned. But the Israelis went even further and actually took 'European' looking children away from their parents and gave them to 'civilized' Jews who would bring them up 'correctly'. There is still a stigma of racism among the Ashkenazi Jews but as the county becomes more and more majority Sephardim, it will hopefully die out.

Zeb Kantrowitz

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 7 reviews  3.6 out of 5 stars