Aziza

Write it down. Write on the form that I'm ‘insane.’ You just have to check the box. It's for my kids' National Insurance benefits. ‘Permanently’—of course permanently, everybody in the village knows I'm crazy … certified crazy. Yeah, it's a 100% disability. And my daughter Sarah, who works for the National Insurance, sends me the forms to renew every year.

“Me, I only have a nerves disease, not a stupidity disease. I was never in a loony bin. The fact is that I raised 8 kids who work and have families. Really, we're a very good family, even though my husband, poor man, even before he became paralyzed and had to be placed in a nursing home on account of his stroke, drank a lot of Arak and didn't always bring home money. Still there was food in the house from my disability pension and from the children's allowance. And my neighbor, Zohara, of blessed memory, always brought in a pot of soup or rice when I had ‘attacks’ and didn't feel well.

“After Sarah's birth, they took me from the hospital to Eitanim. I saw people there whose brains were dried up from the drugs they took. They were quiet like mice, and they didn't talk about their feelings, so I left right away. ‘I was released on my own initiative,’ they wrote. Me, if I have initiative, what do they have to treat me for?

“I trust that you won't harm me, because every year you write me those nice letters in all kinds of English words to the National Insurance saying that I have paranoid schizophrenia. I tell you about my thoughts and the things that I see and hear. Everyone tells me they're in my head, like the man's hand that …