When you look at Iris Kaufman, you don't notice any hint of the unimaginable flow of physical and mental upheaval she's experienced in recent years.
She is 52 years old, well dressed and lightly made up. Her lush, honey-dyed curly hair betrays nothing about the chemotherapy and radiation treatments she underwent after cancer came back and hit her repeatedly, no less than three times. And as if the malignant disease were not enough, during the struggle to eradicate it, she discovered that she also had multiple sclerosis.
We meet in a café on the occasion of the release of her debut book, A Taste of Salt, which includes two heartbreaking and realistic Israeli novellas that tell stories of life and death, friendship, toxic motherhood, autism and love.
"Writing about difficult things also invites the strength to deal with them, to live with them and to break the path that leads from our past to the present and the future, to interrupt the course," she explains. "We all take our past to the present, and so do my characters, but they don't have to take it to their future. Autism is autism, neglect is neglect – but we don't have to replicate it further."
She is married to Micha (52), CEO of Fiverr, and mother to Alon (26), a psychology student, and Idan (16 and a half), a high school student. She was born and raised in Haifa, but has been a resident of Binyamina for the past 16 years. From an early age, she aspired to have four children, she says, "I always dreamed of being a mother."
Taste of salt. Book cover,
She met her life partner at school. "Micah is a week older than me. We studied in the same class, and some of the time we sat at the same table. We were very good friends, and from the age of 14 we have been a couple. He is the true and eternal love of my youth, a very special man." She blushes a little when she talks about the man who accompanied her through the difficult years, in her tough and uncompromising race to be healthy. "Micah is my rock. I have no idea how I would have lived without him."
"I went into survival mode"
She passed the routine and safe Israeli life path summa laude: a matriculation certificate, military service ("in a recruitment office"), marriage, having a firstborn child. But then the sky fell on her for the first time.
"My eldest son, Elon, was 3 years old, and I wanted another child. In one of the tests I underwent, even before I became pregnant, I miraculously discovered cancer that had settled in my lung. I was 29 years old, completely healthy, and I felt great, without any symptoms. It turned out that the tumor secreted pregnancy hormone, even though I was not pregnant, and so it turned out that I actually had cancer that is very difficult to diagnose. With this news, our world collapsed - I got a big surprise and went through great destruction."
The experts gave her only a ten percent chance of survival, and shared this with Micah, but Iris, unaware of it, started a fight for her life. "I went through a very difficult year, of very complex chest surgery during which they removed a lung lobe, and then very difficult treatments. I went into survival mode, where there is no time for questions and reflections. It was clear to me that I would do whatever was necessary, because I wanted to live, and live well. I didn't want my son to grow up without a mother, for this to be the narrative of his life from such a young age. That thought was unbearable to me.
"Chemotherapy is disgusting. I was given a special cocktail to save my life, but I went through a terrible physical devastation that took me a long time to recover from. I felt like I was losing a human being and a woman's image. I bald, I wore a wig, I experienced total betrayal of my body."
Have you faced questions of life and death?
"Yes, and at 29 these are very difficult questions. I asked myself why this happened to me, and why at such a young age? The focus that kept me going was Elon, and I knew I would want to bring him siblings.
"When I recovered a bit from the trauma, I decided to try to conceive again, despite warnings from the doctors. They asked me why I should risk it, and said I would be better off having one child with two living parents than two children with
one parent."
But she was determined to expand the family and move forward with her life. Among other things, she enrolled in undergraduate studies in communication disorders at the University of Haifa.
"Everyone thought I wouldn't finish the first semester because I was going to die and I didn't stand a chance, but the first year passed, and so did the second and third. It was clear to me that I would finish my degree and take care of the children professionally – and that's what I did. I treated abused children in child development frameworks, I was a speech therapist for several years in a multipurpose home for children at developmental and social risk, and I loved it very much. I'm attracted to the difficult areas, and I've seen very difficult cases there. Part of my job was to diagnose autism and developmental delays."
Some of the incidents she encountered in her work would later become the basis for the characters in her book, but in the meantime, Kaufman fulfilled her other dream - and gave birth to her second child.
"I gave birth to Idan when I was 36, at Carmel Hospital – the same hospital where I was diagnosed with cancer. In my heart I knew I would be back there as a birther, as a healthy, living woman, and it was a gift child we weren't sure we would have. Idan is a gift to everyone, to us and also to Elon, who always wanted a little brother."
Kaufman in 2008 with her children, Elon (right) and Idan. "The thought of growing up without a mother was unbearable," photo: from the private album
After expanding the family, Iris entered a cancer-free period. "I had no tumors in my body, and I underwent follow-up tests all the time. The medical system was so mobilized to keep me alive."
But then fate struck again. One day, she felt like she was dragging her left leg walking through the halls of the university, where she returned to complete a master's degree in communication disorders.
"In addition to my leg, I started having a strange sensation in my left hand, and within two weeks I reached almost complete paralysis of the left side of my body. One morning I got up and asked Micah to take me to the ER. We went there thinking full well that I had a brain tumor, and with it the terrible question came up again: What do we do now? They examined me and decided I needed to have imaging and lumbar puncture – and then I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis."
The moment she was informed that she was suffering from the incurable autoimmune disease, when she was only in her early 40s, was particularly cruel for her. "In the hallway, without any preparation, a doctor looked at me and said: 'Everything is fine, it's not a brain tumor, you have multiple sclerosis.' I immediately went on a rollercoaster. I felt like I was actually told I wasn't going to die, but I was going to live badly."
She began to independently study the disease, which mainly affects young people aged 40-20, and decided that she could survive this struggle as well. "I knew I wouldn't die of MS. Because of the nature of the disease, it is possible to live with it for many years, as the patient accumulates another disability throughout life. The list of symptoms is catastrophic, and you don't know what will happen in the future, because no one knows how the disease will eventually manifest in you. Every sclerosis patient is a different case."
How do you deal with such a blow, and more for the second time?
"The despair was very great. I was robbed of things one by one. I stopped working as a speech therapist, both because of the physical aspect and because it was a children's environment, and my immune system was constantly challenged – which increased the risk of a sclerosis attack."
The biggest difficulty for her, she says, was with her role as a mother. "The need to explain to my young children why they should lend a hand to Mom when she walks on the sidewalk, and why Mom parks in a handicapped parking lot, is not a simple matter. The anxiety that a child has to live with knowing that his mother is sick is difficult – for both him and her."
"I have no self-pity"
In 2015, Iris's mother, Nira, died of stomach cancer, and Iris herself, who lost her father when she was in her 20s, became an orphan. "My mother got sick and died very quickly, within three months. She was 66. The thing was that while I was accompanying her in the oncology department at Beilinson Hospital, I felt a lump in my breast myself, so mixing her death with what happened to me, illness with illness, mother and daughter, was almost unbearable."
Only after her mother's death did Iris, then 44, have time to confirm what she already knew with the self-discovery of the lump - she suffers from breast cancer on the left side of the chest and is diagnosed with stage 2 - that is, a stage in which the cancer has not yet spread to other parts of the body.
"I realized I had to go back to coping again, and the question was, again, what am I doing? I underwent surgery to remove the tumor in my breast, and again radiation, chemotherapy and anti-hormonal treatment at Tel Hashomer, and returned to the same survival mode as in the first cancer and sclerosis. I had no doubt that I would suffer from the treatments, but that I wouldn't die either
."
Didn't you get angry at the continuity of Job's gospel?
"I felt it was unpleasant and unfair, but I didn't sink into self-pity. I didn't ask who was examining me in the sky. It's similar to the perception of the characters in my book: This is what there is now, and what will you do – make time for crying? Not! Deal.
"Those were years of searching. A lot of organs were taken from me and I weighed less – half a lung, a third of a breast and a quarter of the other breast, because two years later I was diagnosed with another breast cancer – this time in my right breast – and it brought me to my knees."
Iris received the news of another cancer in 2017, and once again had to deal with the suffering of chemotherapy and radiation – for the third and unimaginable time. "I needed more inner strength to deal with what life throws at me, but I don't know anyone who goes through their lives without coping. Real people get beaten all the time. It's not a telenovela, it's life."
In your book, too, the characters face never-ending challenges.
"In the book there is Avishag, who is constantly being beaten. She grew up with a toxic mother, her boyfriend leaves her, her son is autistic."
May I tap that Avishag is you?
"Absolutely not. The book is not autobiographical, but each character has characteristics from all kinds of characters I know from life. The strong similarity between Avishag and me exists in the many blows that land on her - that is, not in the biographical details, but in the way of living with difficulty, and with comfort and kindness.
"I am her in the sense of a woman who has to deal with blow after blow, and those who know me will recognize me in her. But there is also healing in the book. He has a power that helps carry everything, and that is the relationship with people. In this life are my two children, my husband Micha and my friends, and in this book Yoela, Avishag's friend, and her child, Oz, who is both the blow and the comfort.
"Healing and comfort come through connection between people, love, relationships, motherhood or friendship. Human connection is what makes life. Also in the second story, about Niv and Liat, the characters come from two difficult houses. They carry the past with them, but what saves them is both. They save each other."
It is possible to sink into despondency if we focus only on the past, failures and despair.
"There is no atmosphere of self-pity in the book. What is happening is the understanding of it is what it is, and this is true of both my life and Avishag's. I don't believe in 'what a bitter fate I had,' and neither does the character I created. In my view, there is reality – and there is no higher force directing. It's us who directs."
She came to writing at age 50, but she says she has always been a bookworm and a "public library girl." Writing seemed to be waiting for the right moment to break out of it.
"With every blow I received, there was a war, and there was a declaration, 'I will not die,' but there was also a very large gathering, the thought that maybe if I hid well enough, nothing would happen to me. But it doesn't work that way. In the end, you have to find meaning in all this existence, and writing is a very big meaning. Writing is very natural to me. I love the language, and it's something I could do when I felt good."
Two years ago, Iris signed up for a writing workshop (in the "Home Workshops"). "Something in me had to come out. It came out, and kept coming out, and within three months there was a first draft of the book. The characters came to me without thinking, like I threw it out of me."
How was the title of the book, "A Taste of Salt", chosen?
"When I wrote the words 'A Taste of Salt' in one of the novellas, it was clear to me that that would be the title of the book. The words speak of the very strong bond between mother and son, and the person who says them is a third character who sees everything. Avishag's motherhood is total motherhood, unlike other mothers in the book. Not all mothers there are beneficiaries. I have also seen such mothers in my life. It's unpleasant to deal with toxic parenting, autism and disease, and my characters don't have an easy life."
In your writing, you touch on the most difficult materials: prostitution, domestic violence, neglect, separations.
"As mentioned, writing about the difficult things also invites the strength to deal with them. In this sense, writing was also a healing process. It takes you out of life, hangs up. I sat alone in front of the computer, writing on the island about the kitchen and in a café, in my bubble, completely cut off from people. Ex-territory".
The book hit stores in early May, and has since been reviewed on social media, and Iris has received many inquiries from readers. "The reactions are very moving. The book touches people's hearts. He is very human, and he has poetry in his language, which resonates with many readers."
Are you already working on your next book?
"Nope. I made a decision to stop and give myself a moment to publish my debut book, rejoice in it and make the most of the feeling. I am excited, happy and also afraid: how will he be received, who will help him, who will not love him? Will I write more books in the future? I hope so."
You look great today. How is health?
"They don't see when I'm in pain, when I'm weak and when it's hard for me. I'm connected to my body and its abilities, and I take a moment when it's hard. I'm allowed to fly abroad, and I do it – with accommodations. I don't deny anything that happens to me, on the contrary. I look at life carefully, and I have a good life. I have a very strong family, wonderful, healthy and happy children and great friends.
And the fears?
"I have illnesses, but I'm a healthy person, and you can't see what I went through. I'm constantly trying to improve my life, and I want to live well."
shirz@israelhayom.co.il
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