"Much-heralded Star Deli slow-cooks its own tender temptations" Spine Trouble from page 57 — Danny Raskin the ethnic cleansing campaign he'd witnessed at 12. He took a picture of the concentration camp his brother and dad survived, stood on the grave of the karate coach who betrayed his family and then confronted the neighbor, Petra, who'd stolen from his mother. No wonder he was reticent. He'd survived a holocaust. In 1992. He was like the male, Muslim Anne Frank — who lived to tell the story. "Secret humiliation here." He pointed to his line about wanting to barge into Petra's home to reclaim his mom's belongings then drag Petra out by her hair to throw her on a meat truck as Christian Serbs had done to his people. I starred specific details, corrected spelling and tenses, scrawled "flesh out" in the margins. "Why you draw pictures on my page?" He squinted to decipher my edits. "You don't like?" "Blows my socks off," I said. "No good?" He frowned. "It's great." Indeed, after several more revisions together, it ran in the New York Times. I framed it for him. He started emailing me new pages hourly, obsessively. I'd turned my mellow Muslim physical thera- pist into a neurotic Jewish freelance writer. Finding Commonalities At home, I found a piece I'd pub- lished in Newsday in 1993 on a Bosnian benefit where Joseph Brodsky, Wendy Wasserstein and Susan Sontag raged against the Balkan genocide, comparing Serbian Milosevic to Hitler. It ran the month Kenan immigrated to Connecticut. When I showed him, he was awed by the coincidence. Kenan's mother hoped to chronicle their escape, he said, but couldn't learn English as she'd battled cancer. Her photo showed a pretty redhead who resembled my mom. She'd warned "never go to someone's home empty-handed," like my mother, who'd grown up a poor orphan sent home from school for speaking only Yiddish. Kenan's hard-working dad advised, "Whatever your job, do your best," like my father. I was from conservative American Jewish suburbia. He grew up Islamic in Eastern Europe. Yet in some ways, it seemed we were from the same close-knit, no-nonsense family. When I questioned why his par- ents didn't ask about his pent-up feelings during the occupation, he said, "They were too busy telling me to duck:' Israel sympathized with the Bosniaks, Kenan recalled. They'd air- lifted supplies and took in refugees. His favorite American politician was Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who'd fought to break the unfair U.N. arms embargo on Bosnia during the war. I felt outraged for Kenan's Muslim family, too. It turned out we were on the same side, against violence and terrorism — toward any innocent civilians. Twice weekly for a year, Kenan put heat or ice to my back while I edited his pages. After work, he'd sneak to my classes and seminars, where he met a literary agent who sparked to his story. Kenan proposed we co- author his memoir. I was reluctant. Though I noticed Kenan's grammar was improving as my pain subsided. My sessions stretched to two hours. He'd walk me home, continuing the harrowing war saga he'd witnessed at 12 that he now couldn't stop spilling. Had I become his Jewish mother or personal femme Freud? Healing Together "Some annular tears never heal:' said the orthopedic surgeon Kenan rec- ommended I see at the Spine Center down the hall from where we did physical therapy. "No surgery could help. You might hurt like this the rest of your life." I panicked, tears blurring the insurance forms I filled out in the waiting room. Kenan, suddenly beside me, handed me a Kleenex. "I come check on you," he said. "My back may never get better:' "You will heal," he said. "Some tears do not mend, but function improves. Strengthening core, stabi- lize vertebrae ..." I felt comforted by the anatomy jargon in his broken English. I thought of the line from a Bosnian poem: "Wounded I am more awake," which a Jewish author friend had used for the title of a book she'd co-authored with another Muslim Bosnian war survivor. Coincidence? Her book was third- person reporting from an older female journalist's point of view. I wanted to help Kenan tell his story in his young male voice. My next session, as I lay on ice, Kenan gave me a gift: a gold Mars astronaut pen. He put a piece of paper on a clipboard to show me I could write lying down without los- ing ink. "So I can edit your pages flat on my back?" I laughed. "In vacuum, upside down without gravity, under water, in boiling heat Spine Trouble on page 62 Order Trays for Your Summer Picnics! TAR Order your ELI Holiday Trays & Specialties today! COMPARE OUR LOW PRICES WITH ANY DELICATESSEN IN TOWN, MEAT TRAY DAIRY TRAY SALAD TRAY $10.49Pr— $21.49 P,—, $11.49 person Potato Latkes * Handcut Lox Our Regular Tuna & Fat-Free Tuna Can't Be Beat! 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