Translated by Aviya Kushner
He was not relevant, in the Population Registry they lost
the documents, in the Interior Ministry they claimed it wasn’t
possible to verify
facts, I signed a declaration and swore in front of the respected
judge
I am Yudit Shahar declaring that I am the daughter of blessed be
his memory
who was born in 1911 in Turkey
named Elazar Sabach, who in Israel in 1929 took the name
Eliezer Saba
and chose to live and die as Eliezer Shahar, and that one zero
in the identity card was destroyed
by fault of the office, I declare that he is him
(I wanted to say to the judge:
his eyes were brown and reddened
when he got angry, he had a pale face,
both of us have the same freckles on the shoulders.
I wanted to say, I too did
not know the man—
and there is a doubt as to whether
he knew me.)