Building things together

I met Basil at work. We were both on the pre-production of Annemarie Jacir's film Palestine 36, where I was building props. Of all the things a film set can give you, I didn't expect it to give me a husband.

From the workshop to the wall

After work, we started climbing together. On a wall you hold someone else's rope and they hold yours, and you learn very quickly whether you trust each other. We did. Climbing turned into weekends away, hiking and camping, and it never really stopped.

Two kinds of builders

Basil is finishing his architecture degree at the Technion, and he has worked as a freelance 3D artist and graphic designer since 2014, for film, theatre, games and advertising. I think in sets, props and costumes; he thinks in models, space and movement. It didn't take long before we were working together: on film sets, on projects of our own, and on ads, where his 3D work and my sets meet. And on tour with Yes Daddy we run the stage together: Basil is a stagehand, and every set change during the show is one we do side by side.

Working with someone you love could go either way. For us it works because we argue about the right things, the design, never about who's right, and because we both like seeing an idea become something you can stand in front of.

Jayeen

When we planned our own wedding, we lived the chaos every couple here knows: hundreds of guests, replies by phone, a seating plan that changed every night. So we put our knowledge together, my design and production experience and his eye for 3D, graphics and teaching, built something to fix it, and launched Jayeen together. I wrote more about why in Why a set designer built two apps.

Everything else

Basil is also a born teacher. He has taught for more than fifteen years, helped found a psychometric-exam department in Arabic, and today he coaches climbing at Performance Rock in Haifa, from four-year-olds to adults. In 2025 he qualified as a ski instructor too. I teach climbing as well. His idea of a holiday is a trek: he has climbed Aconcagua, 6,963 metres, on an 18-day expedition. We both love camping and hiking, and we share so many hobbies and ways of thinking about life that it's hard to say where the work ends and the rest begins. Maybe it doesn't need to.