Exile: a novel (55 page)

Listening, David sorted through his reactions. “When Palestinians talk of suicide bombing,” he told her, “it often sounds like something thrust on them by the Israelis. But when I was in Israel I saw a tape of an imam speaking to a group of men that included Jefar and Hassan—the worst kind of anti-Semitic crap in which Jews have no more worth than cockroaches. Worse, the imam’s little sermon ran on Palestinian TV.”

Nisreen waved a dismissive hand. “This is deplorable, I grant you. But no one watches. It’s just government propaganda, a reflexive reaction to the fact that the Zionists’ lobbies and their sympathizers dominate the world media.”

“As a Jew,” David cut in, “I don’t take it quite so lightly. Neither did Hassan.” His voice softened. “In this better world of yours, could Munira marry a Jewish boy? Could you? Or does hatred of Jews go deeper than the occupation?”

For the first time, Nisreen did not look at him directly. She drew on the water pipe, receding into her own thoughts. “At work,” she said at last, “an Arab man is dating a Jewish woman in Jerusalem. It is difficult, and not just because of checkpoints. To some of us, it is offensive that he does not date a Palestinian. That is the honest truth.” She looked at David again. “My reasons are political. What the others feel, I cannot say.

“For me, it is all about the occupation. All of us, Jew and Arab, need an end to this. That is why I continue to work on negotiations, and why I did not despise Ben-Aron as Hana did.” Nisreen spoke in a voice tinged with regret. “With him alive, our people had at least some hope. Now there is only more hatred and reprisal, with the Palestinian Authority crumbling
before our eyes. The only winners are extremists on both sides. If this is Munira’s future, it seems very bleak.

“For Hana, the occupation is even worse than it is for me. At least I have my parents. Hers are trapped in Lebanon; the Israelis will not let them come to live here. And now her daughter may be trapped as well—not only by the Israelis but by her father’s insistence on what an Arab woman should be.”

David pondered this. “At Harvard,” he observed, “Saeb didn’t strike me as a Muslim fundamentalist.”

“According to Hana, he wasn’t. Otherwise she would never have married him.” Contemplative, Nisreen sipped her wine. “My sense is that his turn to Islam mixes politics and psychology. Politically, Hamas is more antagonistic toward Israel, and uses Islam as a kind of ideological glue. Psychologically—and this is where it gets tricky—my guess is that the more friction there is between Saeb and Hana, especially about Munira, the more he is impelled toward a religion whose extremists insist on male dominance.

“I came to view Saeb and Hana’s clash over their daughter as symbolic. On the one hand, you have Hana, a fair example of the progressive Arab women who could form a base of support for a girl like Munira.” Briefly, Nisreen smiled. “Not that I’m any role model, but, in many ways, Hana would like Munira to live as I do—free to say what I want, date whom I please, go where I like, spend time with whoever interests me, satisfy my ambitions, and stretch my curiosity any way I choose. That can be a hard life: I am gossiped about, and many traditional Palestinians find my attitudes unforgivable. But there are more and more women like me. In Hana’s mind, we are the future she desires for Munira.”

David flashed on Munira, covered, reciting in a monotone how her father compelled her to study the Koran. In that moment he felt, more keenly than before, the visceral struggle between husband and wife to define the destiny of their only child. “On the other hand,” Nisreen was saying, “there is the structured life of a woman embraced by fundamentalist Islam, where she has no relationship with men except for marriage, and that, at its worst, manifests itself in spousal abuse, polygamy, and honor killings. Do you know about those?”

“Generally,” David answered. “My understanding is that a woman can be murdered by her family for some real or imagined sexual transgression. In one case, I was told, a married woman who had become pregnant as the result of an affair was forced by her brother-in-law to become a suicide bomber.”

Nisreen nodded. “It’s not always about sex, or even the woman’s conduct. Last year, in Ramallah, a Muslim father killed his daughter for wanting to marry a Christian. In another case, a father raped his daughter, then tried to sell her into prostitution because her honor had been lost. When a group of women tried to intervene, the father simply killed her. Grotesque.” Her face softened. “Your story of the female suicide bomber was one Hana and I discussed. It seemed to upset her more than most.”

The last remark stirred David’s curiosity. “Was there a particular reason?”

With uncharacteristic reluctance, Nisreen contemplated her lap. Quietly, she said, “You are a friend from law school, right?”

“Yes.”

Nisreen exhaled. “Hana is a deeply unhappy woman. By this, I mean not only unhappy in her marriage but unhappy in her heart and soul. Beneath her intellect and self-possession hides a terrible solitude.”

David felt an answering sadness. “Because of her marriage?”

“Her marriage, and her regrets.” Nisreen looked up at him. “I tell you this in confidence, okay?”

“All right.”

“In law school, Hana had an affair. Saeb never knew, of course; if he had, he might have killed her—literally. But this lover left his mark.”

David felt his skin tingle. “What did she say about him?”

“Very little. Just that he was American—that the whole thing was impossible, but that she had never been able to forget him.” Nisreen looked reflective. “We only spoke of it twice, the last time just before Hana left for America.

“She was wondering whether she should try to see him. The pull was very strong, but Hana was frightened of her emotions. Then she said to me, ‘Do you know what I’ve been feeling? That he would have made a better father for my daughter.’ ” Nisreen smiled sadly. “It was so unlike Hana— magical thinking, impossible in life. If she’d chosen this man, she would have no Munira. And Munira is all to her.

“What it told me was that her sense of loss was so deep, and her worries for Munira so pronounced, that she wished to indulge herself in fantasy. It made me sadder than anything else she could have told me.”

David could find no words. He sat there as a series of realizations overcame him, transforming the way he understood every word Hana had said to him, and everything she had done, since the day that she had first called him. Looking at him askance, Nisreen inquired, “You knew this man, perhaps?”

David managed a smile. “You’re her best friend, Nisreen. You know how private she can be. Especially about something like this.”

Nisreen nodded, satisfied. In that moment, David understood how she had missed what, to a woman so perceptive, might otherwise have been obvious. Nisreen could not imagine David as Hana’s lover, because David was a Jew.

He lay on the bed for hours, barely moving but unable to sleep. Ever since Hana’s plea for help, he had distrusted her—not merely because of doubts about her innocence but because of misgivings about who she had become. It was absurd to care for her after thirteen years, he had argued to himself, and infantile to believe she might still care for him—if, indeed, she had ever cared as much as he. David had been wary, distant, resentful of her impact on his life, uncertain of his judgment as a lawyer and a man. And now Hana’s closest friend had transformed his understanding of her.

Vainly, he wished that he could reach Hana—just to hear her voice, and to ask about her confessions to Nisreen. Instead, he reran the tape in his head that had recorded their every meeting—her words, her expressions, her tone of voice. Now her questions about Carole, and even her hesitations, were illuminated. She had loved him at Harvard; she cared for him still; as a wife and mother facing imprisonment or execution, she was at least as conflicted about her feelings as David.

But this new understanding could not change his doubts about her innocence—although, intuitively, Hana’s feelings for him put her ability to pass the polygraph in a better light. Yet the evidence against her remained intact, and his chief rebuttal—that, as a mother, Hana would not risk involvement—assumed that her love for Munira necessarily equated with innocence. One fact could change this assumption overnight.

Again and again, David’s thoughts returned to the murders of Markis and Lev, and to his own role as catalyst. He was still uncertain of his competence, ignorant of the dimensions or design of the conspiracy he imagined,
and fearful that if he came closer to the truth someone else—perhaps he himself—might die. Turning out the light, he knew only that when he awoke he would feel more confused, caught between his doubts about Hana’s innocence and his knowledge that the one thing he was certain that she had concealed was her feelings for David himself.

Zahi Farhat, a principal adviser to Marwan Faras, sat with David in the lush garden of his villa in the hills above Ramallah, reflecting the affluence that had settled on the leaders of Fatah and aroused so much resentment among ordinary Palestinians—especially men like Saeb Khalid. “They are soft and corrupt,” Saeb had remarked with scorn. “They forget what we brought them back to do.” That Saeb had meant not merely the establishment of a functioning government but the extinction of Israel had not been lost on David.

A courtly man whose gray hair and glasses added to his somewhat professorial appearance, Farhat was certainly better company than Saeb. And his importance to David had been emphasized by Nabil Ashawi: if he chose, Farhat might arrange access to leaders of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. As he poured David tea from a china carafe, Farhat spoke of Ben-Aron’s assassins. “These refugee camps,” he said with a melancholy expression, “are such a problem. And now these two alumni may have pulled everything down around them—not just Ben-Aron but Fatah, Al Aqsa, and, of course, any hope of peace. While Hamas profits, Marwan Faras and the rest of us are hanging on by our fingernails.”

“Satisfy my curiosity,” David said. “You’ve got a million people in these camps, and still more overseas. Some date back to the birth of Israel itself. The Israelis would say that the Palestinian Authority preserves them for the purpose you claim to deplore—breeding violence and resentment of Israel, while diverting attention from your own failures. In short, that Hassan and Jefar are your creation, not theirs.”

Farhat gave a wispy smile. “I acknowledge that if we were to dismantle the camps, in the eyes of the world there would be no refugee problem, no reminder of the injustice so many have suffered. We are invisible enough already. But the essential truth is that camps preserve a sense of identity, where refugees divide themselves into communities that commemorate the villages they came from—”

“And where they live in an idealized past,” David interrupted, “clinging to the symbols of their expulsion from paradise, while their grandchildren play in open sewers. It’s a recipe for the trouble you’re in. If there’s anything I’m clear on, it’s this: neither the Jews nor the Palestinians are
going anywhere, and anyone on either side who thinks that could happen, at least without unspeakable displacement and brutality, is insane. So why can’t you folks say as much?”

Farhat studied his manicured fingernails. “A leader who told Palestinians they had no right of return would cease to be a leader. Fatah is ready to compromise. But how can we acknowledge Israel’s right to exclude all Palestinians from the land of their grandparents, solely on the basis of their religion?

“The very concept of Israel is racist. No other state on earth proposes to maintain a ‘democracy’ confined to those of a single ethnicity or religion, even while they keep us stateless. The Israelis live in a state of siege, believing anti-Semitism to be a permanent condition of mankind; erecting walls when walls are falling around the world; portraying us as terrorists rather than human beings; and importing Russian Jews by the millions in their desperation to win what they most fear losing—a demographic war.” Farhat jabbed the table. “An Israeli general once made the most racist, sexist remark I’ve ever heard: ‘the ultimate ticking bomb is the womb of a Palestinian woman.’ And yet they complain about this speech by the imam. Such hypocrisy.”

All at once, David had heard enough. “Truly,” he responded with sarcasm and anger. “I can’t imagine why a people who’ve suffered three thousand years of genocide and rejection, culminating in the Holocaust, could possibly want a refuge of their own. After all, it’s only Palestinians who’ve been expelled from country after country, only Jews who refuse to recognize someone else’s narrative of suffering.

“Aside from these assassins, do you know who
I
think murdered Ben-Aron? All of you. Because you’re living on different planets, and
yours
will soon be blissfully free of anti-Semites. Bullshit. Just like the Israeli notion that—whatever you call them—the Palestinians aren’t a people. History made them one.” David slowed his speech. “I’ve been here for just two weeks, and already all I can think is ‘God help this place.’ Assuming that anyone can even agree on who God is. All I can hope for is to get my client out of this fucking mess alive.”

Farhat stared at him, then emitted a short laugh. “There is truth in what you say, however rudely. And I acknowledge Israel’s legitimate fear of suicide bombers. But you can’t oppress and de-develop a whole society, and then build a wall between yourself and the problems that you’ve helped create. Only when the occupation ends can we build a civil society. And only then will those suicide bombings we all deplore come to an end.”

David shook his head. “How can you expect the occupation to end
before the violence stops? How can Israel protect itself without checkpoints and a wall?”

“By leaving us, and quickly, before Hamas takes over completely. You want to know how terrorists are made? Think of Jefar’s pregnant sister. Or just be Palestinian for a day. Drive to a checkpoint until traffic stops, get out of the car, and walk a half mile to the barrier. You’ll find an Israeli soldier with a cigarette in his mouth and, quite possibly, his gun leveled at one of the two hundred or so people stuck in front of you.