Rock, paper

"Rock, Paper" offers readers a strikingly original meditation on history, memory, and the narration of both. This stand-alone excerpt from Gardi's book-length work of creative nonfiction of the same name depicts the author's troubled and troubling attempts to come to terms with a past that is equal parts heroic and tragic. Replete with sensitivity, humor, and critical acumen, Gardi's flowing prose draws connections between childhood, war, the passage of time, secrets, and the possibilities-or impossibilities-of historiography in contemporary Israel. Here, the author-narrator muses on the vexed history of a museum-Beit Ussishkin-fittingly named after one of Israel's most contentious founding fathers, Menachem Ussishkin.