“Mourners Are the Soundtrack of Life”

Abstract

AbstractThis article describes the mourning interwoven into the process of writing Ahuva ‘Ozeri's biography. The nonlinear temporality of the mourning produced by the child mourner from Tel Aviv's Yemenite Quarter is juxtaposed with national representations of Yemeni Jews, constructed as an origin of Jewish homogeneity rooted in the past. Hagay focuses on ‘Ozeri's cinematic performance against the background of south Tel Aviv, revealing a twofold memory of loss, both Mizrahi and Palestinian. ‘Ozeri emerges as a singer who drew on multiple resources of mourning positioned across putative national and regional borders of urban and global Southern geographies. ‘Ozeri is narrated not only as a child mourner but also as the last mourner, in the face of progressive national time. Hagay concludes by asking what is lost with the last mourner's departure from the world, when one loses the ability to recognize one's own loss through its reflection in the other's ruins.