I began "writing" stories even before I knew how to read and write. This, by simply telling them to whoever was willing to listen. My childhood, in a white city by the beach of the Mediterranean, called Tel Aviv, was filled with family stories. Not only my own strange family…

This is not the whole truth. Just bits and pieces of it, sloughed off over the passing years. As I gather them up, they sometimes seem like crumbs stuck in a beard that's already turned moldy. Whenever I've tried to see it all at once, it felt as if I…