When Avi Goldberg, the son of a Jewish pioneer, sits at a desk in a dark cell in a military prison in the Negev desert, he fills the long nights writing about his friend Saleem, an Israeli Arab he befriended on a beach one scorching July day, and the story of Saleem’s family, whose loss of their ancestral home in 1948 cast a long shadow over their lives.
Avi and Saleem understand about the past: they believe it can be buried, reduced to nothing. But the September 2000 comes and war breaks out – endless, unforgiving and filled with loss. And in the midst of the Intifada, which rips apart their people, they both learn that war devours everything, that even seemingly insignificant, utterly mundane things get lost in war; and that, sometimes, if you do not speak of these things, they are lost forever.
Set amongst the white chalk Galilee Mountains and the hostile desert terrain of the Negev, The Inbetween People is a story of longing that deals with hatred, forgiveness, and the search for redemption.