A decade after the stabbing, Shorty returns to the limelight - via "Chef Games" • If you thought she would settle for prime time dishes, think again • Last week she opened a restaurant in Central Tel Aviv and this month will release a single after four years • “All my life Tried to castrate me, I rolled into cooking with pain "
"I never had the fear of playing with sexuality." (Shorty) // Photo: Kfir Ziv
Almost a decade has passed since that cursed night in May 2010, which Hila Nissimov (Shorty) completed in Ichilov. The media eagerly swallowed the yellow details, told of a romantic triangle that ended with the singer's stabbing outside the club, and Shorty herself was photographed a week later on the cover of an entertainment weekly, with all the seams and open wounds.
"The story of the assault I went through was very big in communication, and it hurt me," she says. "They didn't understand me, didn't interpret the story correctly. It made me a lot of anxious. That's why I was looking to stay away. I was looking for quiet. And my sister who lives there. I just wanted to walk around the streets of New York, which is a place I grew up in, without thinking anything. Not about what happened in the country, not about the doctor's trial, not her imprisonment, not the compensation I received. I didn't care. I wanted to walk down the street, get lost and do other things.
"One day, walking down Broadway, near my apartment, I saw that there was a great culinary school there. It fascinated me. In that second, I opened Google and checked on the curriculum. My dad sent me money to pay, and that's how it turned out. I thought it might be a good time to spend time in New York like this, and life rolls into unexpected places. "
Until then, did you have any connection to cooking?
"Growing up with a Syrian-Moroccan mom, food was always at home, but it wasn't my ambition. The thing I do all my life is music; my first hit came out when I was 19, and I didn't think there were any more things in life. I didn't know anything. Music, I knew how to guide on TV, and I knew how to make noise.
"I rolled into cooking from a painful place in life, out of trauma, and I wanted to learn something that would be the furthest from what I knew. From this hobby it rolled into a business and a second career. I love the cook's hat very much."
The "Chef's Games" team. "The offer to participate in the program was just the right thing at the right time"
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She is 36, born in Bat Yam. In her youth, the family traveled to the United States following her father's work, which was a contractor. "I lived in Israel and the U.S. on and off. For example, two high school here, two years there. Like that in Bat Yam, I swept away all the outsiders, and when I visited school, I got a lot of punishment.
"I saw the US as a refuge, when things didn't work out for me in Israel, or during times when I wanted peace or escape. Even as a child. I didn't always grow up in a house where everything was roses, and when I wanted to escape - it was my refuge, to my older sister in the US.
"The first time I realized I loved women was there, at 16, and the first time I had a partner in my youth was there too. I discovered a lot of things I didn't discover here.
"All my friends were African-American or Hispanic, and that's where I drew hip-hop culture. I would come back from high school, open BET TV, which is an American hip-hop channel, and addict. When I came back to Israel at age 19, I really wanted to implement it with a few more guys , Who wanted to bring hip-hop to Israel, and that's how my first song came out.
"At that time there wasn't really any hip-hop here. I'm the generation who grew up on Shab S. and Subliminal, I remember as kids we used to spray his graffiti on the streets.
"While visiting Israel, I recorded with my father dedicating the song 'Pinocchio', and he caught on and became a hit. I was a 20-year-old girl and I didn't build a career. Kill me, but I didn't think I would make music after 15 years."
What did you think you would do?
"Until my attack, I didn't even think about the day after. I was a complicated girl like that too, with OCD and things like that. I was a very deep and sensitive girl, a lot of things went through me. Sometimes my parents were many and I didn't want to hear. I started writing music, my music came from a very deep place, a place of wanting to stay away and not hear.
“When I was 18, I finished high school here and moved to the US. I decided I wanted to do music in English and I recorded a lot of stuff. In order for record companies to meet with me, I would call and say that I was a journalist for some magazine, and that I had heard about which singer and you must meet her. Just like that. I've reached out to all kinds of producers and all kinds of agencies and record companies and personal executives.
"I met with an African-American director, who at the time was running a well-known band doing R&B. I played the songs to him, and he didn't like them at all. Told me, 'I don't understand what you're doing.' I asked him why, I just wanted him to explain to me. Alicia Keys time was great, and I would go with braids, too, and he said to me, 'You seem to have no personality of your own. You're 18, there's nothing in your life that hurts you?' I answered, 'Yes, I have a lot "And he said, 'Then why don't I hear it in the texts?'
"That day, I cried, of course. I went home and wrote a song called 'My Truth', in which I poured everything. From that moment, I decided that all the lyrics I wrote in the songs would be true, whether it was a humbling truth or a sad truth. My first album said exactly who I was - you Who I love, who I spend with, who I sleep with, what I think about all kinds of artists. For me, there is no such thing as not disclosing to the people who listen to me who I am and what my essence as Short and my essence as a halo is. Rather not do anything in life than do things that are not me.
"Thanks to the program, I connected with my Arab culinary sources"
"My whole life has been trying to castrate me. They have not succeeded. Harrison came with age, not because they tried to castrate or restrain me. Even today, at my age, I have not yet restrained myself enough, to my taste. I still write retarded posts on Facebook and regret them Later".
like what?
"Two months ago, I wrote a cynical post following the story of a glowing springtime, in which she mourns her father's death. I wrote without thinking twice, because I was like that. But after a minute, I felt I might have crossed a border, and downloaded it. The minute the post was in the air, it reached all gossip sites. And made messes and lots of noise, people didn't understand him.
"Then I wrote another post. I apologized to Avivit and explained that my intention was to talk about the culture of taking photos and uploading everything to the network. I received a flood of curses that I did not receive in life. It did not move me."
And none of your relatives tell you in such situations "calm down"?
"My mother walked down the street in Bat Yam and told her, 'It's not nice what your daughter wrote.' Do you know what she answered? 'My daughter is a human being in her own right.' My mother, who is the closest person to me in the world, knows that I am a 36-year-old woman. , Quite smart, I have a very high IQ.
"When I came to her four years ago and I said to her, 'Mom, I'm doing a nude clip,' she made a face. I told her, 'That's who I am. I know what I'm doing and with that I'm going.' And she understood. I'm not looking to give me permission. "I do it anyway, you can have it and you can't."
Do you enjoy the provocations?
"I always made noise, but that wasn't my goal. I'm proud of the provocative image because no matter what I wrote and what I said - there was always truth behind things. When I came out of the closet and said I was dating women it was provocative, but that was my truth; Years ago, when I made a provocative clip and said I was dating men, it was insanely provocative, but there was truth behind it.I wanted to show through this clip that you can be who you are, and not have to listen to anyone.
"People don't understand how it doesn't move me that I'm not like everyone else, but I never wanted to be like everyone else. There was never any fear of me - not playing with sexuality and not playing with a career. Knowing in advance that I wasn't like everyone anyway made me go to the edge "And well, I wouldn't want to be like everyone else."
How did the LGBT community respond to this twist that suddenly the flag bearer of lesbians also loves men?
"I got countless reactions. Half bad and half good. There were some threats and lots of anger, how dare I hurt the community. Scaring people to know that I - defined all my life as something and would be the flag bearer of this thing - stands up and says with my mouth: I have other things I love And I am not ashamed and not afraid. On the subject of sexuality I love women and love men, and can fall in love with each other and I do not define myself as anything.
"From my perspective, not only do I not hurt the community, but I strengthen it. I give every person the power to stand up and say - that's who I am, and that's what I love. Many in the community wrinkle a face, and that's okay. That's part of the process, too. Power. Excellent. No problem. "
Wouldn't you like people to love you?
"No. It's enough for me that my best friends love and appreciate me. I stand strong against the bad reactions. I know who I am, and when a person knows who he is and goes with his truth, nothing outside will break him. It's not a cliché.
"When I was a girl, I thought there was no other way, that I had no right to choose. As I grew up, I realized there were other things that you shouldn't define yourself in any way. I'm not ready to be called in all kinds of settings. There are all kinds of cool definitions, , Because they're always looking to give a headline to anything you don't know. And I just go with what my heart says. "
Nevertheless, she reluctantly refuses to provide details of parity at this stage of her life. "All my life, because I had no barriers in my mouth, I gave it all very quickly. Then I would go home, open the newspaper and regret it. Today I do not want to regret anymore. It is better to remain silent."
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Shorty. "I just go with what my heart says" Photo: Eric Sultan
For the past decade she has been the owner of Tel Aviv nightlife. She operated a catering company, which fed people at popular entertainment venues, and worked at Guy Gamzo's Aria and Coco Bambino and Pat Cao, two restaurants by chef Tom Aviv. "He is a talented friend and cook, and I was part of his team as a chef and kitchen manager. The owner of the Coco, with me Biton, taught me a lot in terms of business conduct and how to manage a kitchen."
The offer to participate in "chef games" was just the right thing at the right time. "To this day, I've refused countless proposals from reality shows because I knew I was going to take advantage of my big mouth and my colorful personality. But 'Chef Games' is exactly the hat I wanted to look like."
This is how Nissimov rolled into the fourth season of the Network 13 cooking competition (Sunday and Monday at 21:15). "It's one of the most powerful experiences I've had in life," she admits, spreading compliments to her mentor, Assaf Granite. "Being around Granite Assaf is the best thing a culinary person can ask for. He taught me a lot in a short time, and I really appreciate him."
Do you enjoy photography?
"It was very difficult for me, I was under crazy pressure. Many times I took sedatives before filming to relax. I did not feel such pressure before big performances. I had one performance at Hayarkon Park in front of 200,000 people, when Maccabi won the European Championships (2004) , And that wasn't a quarter of the pressure I felt before every day taking photos at Chef's Games.
"On the leg show, I was shaking, and I learned that I couldn't handle stress. I love to sit, plan the dish, precise it, and suddenly throw myself into the task and schedule. When I watched the show in previous seasons, I didn't believe it was that way. I thought it was all regret for the cameras. "It's just like that. It's an hour, and when they say 'lay knives', it's put down knives. It's very stressful."
The program gave her the courage to open her own restaurant. She found three business partners ("who invested money in me and gave me a free hand to go crazy"), and last week opened "Mana", a restaurant bar on Ibn Gvirol Street in Tel Aviv.
"This is my first restaurant," she says proudly, "had it not been for the 'chef games' I probably would not have been strong enough to open a restaurant at this point. I built the menu, I designed the place, chose the plates and the vegetation and built the staff around me. A physical name, on the bar, is cooking for people. It's the first time I have so much weight on my shoulders. "
The dishes are based on the Arabic cuisine style. For example, falafel baladi and eggplant eggplant on tarragon and Iraqi candy (NIS 38), lamb sabhi with lemonade cream and egg (NIS 58), and a shamarma of fish mixed with salted cheese (NIS 66).
"Thanks to the program, I realized that this is the culinary direction I love. In 'Chef Games' I did not always have dishes of this type that succeeded me, because the pressure was on me, but it did give me the courage to go with my true culinary direction, to combine the Arab worlds I grew up with - Syria and Morocco and Lebanon, which are at my roots, with the techniques I learned in New York. "
It's a very masculine world.
"There is no place I have not eaten, and no chef I do not know. The men have made the culinary world very sexy. The woman has always been labeled as a home-cooked mother, and the man brought 'I am a tattooed celeb, the bad boy.' It made the industry much more interesting. All kinds of Omar Miller and others, who brought a lot of sexy profession. And as with everything that develops, here too the women joined late. In my eyes, cook brings much more talent and daring to the profession.
"I've always played on the seam. I'm a woman, but I'm very opinionated and don't let them play with me. For example, the renovators I work with look a little differently at instructions they get from a woman. They told me, 'Who are you to tell us what to do.' Once upon a time a woman would head down and bend, in today's world women no longer head down, and in this area there are also some strong women, such as Ruthi Brodeau and Diamond Levy, who are role models and role models.
"I have experienced situations where I do servicing when I have five cooks, I tell them what to do, and they all curl a face. And then it all depends on how strong I am, and I want to think of myself as a very strong woman. That's why face wrinkling doesn't work for me. , But I like that things get my way. "
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And yet, despite the cooking and serving, she doesn't leave the music. "Both cooking and music are art. Maybe that's why I fell in love with cooking - because from the beginning I felt a lot of parallel lines to what I did in life. I felt the same pressure as the 'chef games' only when they sent a song to a playlist in Galgeltz: we would sit crazy every Wednesday And wait until 4 in the afternoon, when the results of the playlists were published, and you would understand whether you went through Galgaltz or not. "
This month, she is releasing her first single from a new album, which will cut industrial quiet of about four years since she released the provocative "Colors" vocals.
"The goal last time was to make a point hit. Get out a song and a clip that the whole country will talk about. Understanding exactly the new way I chose to go. That's what I did then. Then I went back to silence, got into the culinary, and now everything is back."
Why is it back now?
"I can't be quiet for too long. I have to write and publish everything. I only write when I have a muse, and now a lot of good things happen to me, so it gives the inspiration and fun to create. You know how much muse you can get just from standing next to Assaf Granite?" √
nirw@israelhayom.co.il