He considers me for a few moments to see whether I’ve taken all this in; then, returning to the contemplation of his immaculate fingernails, he goes on: “I never met your wife, and I’m sorry for that. She deserved that we should kiss her feet. What she offered us, with her sacrifice, gives us comfort and instruction. I understand why you feel dazed and bewildered. It’s because you haven’t yet realized the scope of what your wife accomplished. At the moment, your pride as a husband has been wounded, but one day, the wound will heal and you’ll be able to see further and more clearly. The fact that your wife told you nothing of the combat she was engaged in does not signify that she betrayed you. She simply had nothing to tell you, she had no account to give to anyone, because she had put herself in God’s hands. I’m not asking you to forgive her—what’s a husband’s forgiveness to one who has received the Lord’s grace? I’m asking you to turn the page. The tale goes on.”
“I want to know why,” I say stupidly.
“Why what? That was her affair; it’s a matter that doesn’t concern you.”
“I was her husband.”
“She was aware of that. If she didn’t want to confide in you, she must have had her reasons. And by keeping quiet, she disqualified you.”
“Bullshit! She had obligations toward me. A wife can’t deceive her husband like that. Not this husband, in any case. I never wronged her in any way. And it was my life she blew into smithereens, too, not just hers. My life and the lives of seventeen people she’d never met. And you ask me why I want to know? Well, I want to know everything. I want to know the whole truth.”
“Which truth? Hers or yours? The truth of a woman who realized where her duty lay, or the truth of a man who believes you need only turn your back on a tragedy to wash your hands of it? Whose truth do you want to know, Dr. Amin Jaafari? The truth of a Bedouin who thinks he’s free and clear because he’s got an Israeli passport? The truth of the serviceable Arab par excellence who’s honored wherever he goes, who gets invited to fancy parties by people who want to show how tolerant and considerate they are? The truth of someone who thinks he can change sides like changing a shirt, with no trace left behind? Is that the truth you’re looking for, or is it the one you’re running away from? What planet do you live on, sir? We’re in a world where people tear one another to pieces every day that God sends. We spend our evenings gathering our dead and our mornings burying them. Our homeland is violated right and left, our children can’t remember what the word school means, and our daughters have no more dreams, because their Prince Charmings choose to court the Intifada instead. Our cities are being buried by machines on caterpillar tracks, our patron saints don’t know which way to turn, and you, simply because you’re nice and warm in your golden cage, refuse to see the inferno consuming us. It’s your right, after all. Everyone steers his ship as he thinks fit. But please don’t come here asking questions about those who are sickened by your apathy and your selfishness and do not hesitate to give their lives to wake you up. Your wife died for your redemption, Mr. Jaafari.”
“You talk about redemption?” I say. “You’re the one who needs it. You dare to talk to me about selfishness when you’ve taken away the creature I cherished most in the world? You dare to feed me these tales of courage and dignity when you remain at your ease in your little corner and send women and kids to do your dirty work? Get it straight: We do indeed live on the same planet, my brother, but we’re not staying at the same address. You have chosen to kill; I have chosen to save. Where you see an enemy, I see a patient. I’m neither selfish nor indifferent, and I’ve got as much self-esteem as anyone. I just want to be able to live my share of existence without being obliged to detract from the existence of others. I don’t believe in prophecies that favor suffering over common sense. I came naked into the world, I’ll leave it naked, what I possess doesn’t belong to me, and neither do other people’s lives. All human unhappiness comes from this misunderstanding. You have to be prepared to give back what God has loaned you. No earthly thing belongs to you, not really. Neither the homeland you talk about nor the grave where you’ll be dust among the dust.”
My finger won’t stop jabbing at him. The commander doesn’t flinch. He hears me out to the end, his eyes on his fingernails, without deigning to wipe the drops of my saliva off his face.
After a long silence that seems interminable, he raises an eyebrow slightly and takes a deep breath before finally turning his eyes back to me.
“I’m stunned by what I’ve just heard, Amin. It breaks my heart and pierces my soul. However great your grief, it doesn’t give you the right to blaspheme in this way. You talk to me about your wife, and you don’t hear me talk to you about your country. You may refuse to have one, but you can’t force others to renounce theirs. And those who clamor for a nation of their own are offering up their lives in its Cause, every day and every night. Not for them this dying by degrees, disdained by others and contemptuous of themselves. In their view, there’s either decency or death, either freedom or the grave, either dignity or a tomb. And no loss, no bereavement will stop them from fighting for their honor, which they rightly see as essential to existence. ‘Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but is virtue itself.’”
He claps his hands. The door opens, revealing the colossus. The conversation is over.
Before dismissing me, the commander speaks again: “I’m very sorry for you, Dr. Amin Jaafari. Obviously, we haven’t chosen the same road. We could spend months and years striving for mutual understanding, and neither of us would ever be willing to listen to the other. So there’s no point in continuing. Go back home. We have no more to say to each other, you and I.”
12.
* * *
Kim was right: I should have turned the letter over to Navid. He would have made better use of it than I have. Nor was she wrong when she warned me against myself—of all the improbabilities, it turns out that I myself was the hardest to account for. It took me some time to face the facts. I’ve been incredibly lucky to get this far in one piece—empty-handed, of course, and not completely unscathed, but still on my feet. The failure of this adventure will pursue me for a long time, as persistent as a moral dilemma, as vile as a practical joke. What did I get out of it, when all is said and done? All I did was circle around an illusion like a moth around a flame, more obsessed by my own curiosity than fascinated by the candle’s deadly light. The trapdoor I wore myself out trying to wrest open didn’t yield any of its secrets; in the end, all I got was a faceful of stale air and spiderwebs.
I no longer feel the need to go any further.
Now that I’ve seen with my own eyes what a war leader and creator of suicide bombers looks like, my demons have loosened their grip on me. I’ve decided to shut down this traveling circus of mine and return to Tel Aviv.
Kim’s relieved. She’s driving in silence, grasping the steering wheel with both hands as though trying to assure herself that this is no hallucination, that she’s actually bringing me back home. Ever since this morning, she hasn’t uttered a word—she’s afraid she’ll make some blunder and I’ll change my mind all of a sudden. She got up before dawn, packed the bags and the car without a sound, and didn’t wake me up until most of our stuff was in the trunk and ready to go.
We leave the Jewish areas with our eyes straight ahead, as though we were wearing blinders. Don’t think about looking left or right or stopping for any reason at all; the smallest inadvertence could make everything go wrong. Kim stares at the street in front of us and makes a beeline for the nearest exit from the city. The torments of the night are over; the dawn promises a radiant day. The immaculate sky, still heavy from its guiltless sleep, awakens with a lazy stretch. The city seems to be having trouble getting out of bed. A few furtive early risers emerge from the darkness, hugging the walls like shadow puppets, their eyes swollen with aborted dreams. There are a few sudden noises: someone raising a metal shutter, someone else starting a vehicle. A bus belches crudely as it returns to it
s terminal. In Jerusalem, people are very cautious in the morning, out of superstition: The first words and deeds at dawn, it’s said, usually shape the rest of the day.
Kim takes advantage of the smoothly flowing traffic to drive fast—very fast. She doesn’t realize how nervous she is. I’d say she’s trying to outrun my mood swings; she doesn’t want me to have a change of heart and decide to go back to Bethlehem.
She doesn’t straighten her back until the last suburbs of the city are disappearing in the rearview mirror.
“Where’s the fire?” I say.
She takes her foot off the accelerator as though she’s suddenly realized she’s treading on a snake. In reality, it’s my broken voice that particularly bothers her. I feel so tired, so wretched. What did I go looking for in Bethlehem? A few lies to spruce up what’s left of my image? A modicum of dignity at a time when nothing’s going right? Did I want to display my rage in a public place so the sons of bitches who’ve lanced my dream like an abscess can know how much I despise them? Suppose everyone felt compassion for my grief and my revulsion; suppose people stepped out of my way and bowed to me when I looked at them—what then? What would that change? What wound would be cauterized; what fracture would be set? Deep inside, I’m not completely sure I want to dig all the way down to the roots of my misfortune. I’m certainly not afraid of conflict, but how do you cross swords with ghosts? It’s just too bloody obvious that I’m not up to the job. I don’t know a thing about gurus and their henchmen. All my life, I’ve stubbornly turned my back on leaders’ diatribes and the activities of their zealous followers, and I’ve clung to my ambitions like a jockey to his horse. I renounced my tribe, agreed to leave my mother’s side, made concession after concession in order to dedicate myself to my career alone; I didn’t have time to take an interest in the traumatic events that undermined hopes for reconciliation between two chosen peoples who have elected to turn a land blessed by God into a field of horror and rage. I don’t remember ever applauding the combatants on one side or condemning the combatants on the other; they all share an attitude I find senseless and depressing. I have never felt implicated in any way at all in this bloody conflict, which is in reality just a slugfest at close quarters between the punching bags and the scapegoats of history, villainous as it is, and always ready to repeat itself. I’ve encountered a great deal of contemptuous hostility, and I’ve learned that the only way to keep from resembling those who demonstrate it is not to act as they do. Instead of turning the other cheek or fighting back, I chose to care for patients. I practice the noblest of all human professions, and nothing can make me compromise the pride I take in it. My visit to Bethlehem was nothing but a reflexive plunge; my pseudo courage was only a diversion. Who am I to think I can triumph where trained professionals run into brick walls every day? I’m up against a perfectly well-oiled organization, seasoned by years of cabals and armed exploits, that manages to elude the secret police’s most accomplished sleuths. All I have on my side are my frustrations—the frustrations of a husband who’s been cheated on—and a hyperventilating fury without any real clout. There’s a duel going on, with no place for qualms and even less for emotion; only guns, exploding belts, and counterthrusts carry any weight, and woe to the ventriloquists whose puppets seize up. It’s a duel without pity and without rules, where hesitations are fatal and mistakes irreparable, where the end generates its own means, and where salvation is not much thought of, having been largely supplanted by the exaltations of revenge and spectacular death. Now, I’ve always felt a holy terror for tanks and bombs, and I’ve never seen anything in them but the most complete expression of the worst traits of humankind. I have nothing to do with the world I desecrated in Bethlehem; I don’t know its rituals, I’m ignorant of its requirements, and I don’t think I’m fit for learning much about them. I hate wars and revolutions and these dramas of redemptive violence that turn upon themselves like endlessly long screws and haul entire generations through the same murderous absurdities, apparently without ERROR signals going off in anybody’s head. I’m a surgeon: In my view, there’s enough suffering inherent in human flesh, and no need for healthy people to inflict more on one another every chance they get.
When the buildings of Tel Aviv start shimmering in the distance, I say to Kim, “Drop me off at my house.”
“You’ve got some stuff to pick up?”
“No, I just want to go home.”
She furrows her brow. “It’s too soon.”
“It’s my house, Kim. I have to go back there sooner or later.”
Kim realizes she’s made a mistake. With a gesture of irritation, she flips some strands of hair out of her eyes. “That wasn’t what I meant, Amin.”
“No harm done.”
Kim bites her lips as we roll through the next quarter of a mile. Then she says, “It’s still that damned ‘sign’ you weren’t able to decipher, isn’t it?”
I don’t answer her question.
A tractor bounds down the side of a hill. The boy at the wheel has to hold on tightly to keep his seat. Two red dogs escort him, one on each side of his machine; one keeps its nose to the ground, while the other looks distracted. A small worm-eaten wooden house comes into view from behind a hedge before a cluster of trees makes it disappear as if by magic. Once again, the fields take up their headlong march across the plain; the coming season looks very promising.
Kim waits until she passes a military convoy before she returns to the charge: “Didn’t you feel comfortable in my house?”
I turn toward her; she keeps her eyes straight ahead. I say, “If I hadn’t been comfortable, I wouldn’t have stayed, Kim, as you know very well. I appreciate the fact that you’re by my side. But I need to step back a little and think about the last few days at my leisure.”
Kim’s chiefly worried that I might do myself harm, that I won’t be able to bear an interview with myself, that I’ll give in to my torment in the end. She thinks I’m on the verge of total depression and capable of taking an irreversible step. She doesn’t have to declare any of this—everything about her betrays her deep anxiety: her fingers, drumming on whatever surface they encounter; her lips, which can form only grimaces; her eyes, which dart away whenever mine become insistent; her throat, which she has to clear every time she’s got something to say to me. I wonder how she manages to maintain her focus and keep me under such steady vigilance.
“All right,” she says. “I’ll drop you off at your house and come by to pick you up this evening. We’ll have dinner at my place.”
Her voice sounds uncomfortable.
I wait patiently until she turns toward me and then I say, “I need to be alone for a little while.”
She pretends to consider that. Then her mouth twists and she asks, “Until when?”
“Until everything settles down.”
“That could take a while.”
“I’m not so far gone,” I say to reassure her. “I just need to clear my mind.”
“Very well,” she says with a hint of badly disguised anger.
After a long silence, she says, “Can I at least come by and see you?”
“I’ll call you up as soon as that’s possible.”
Since she’s oversensitive, this statement comes as a blow to her.
“Don’t take it so hard, Kim,” I say. “This isn’t about you. I know, it’s hard for me to justify, but you know perfectly well what I’m trying to say.”
“I don’t want you to isolate yourself, that’s all. I don’t believe you’re ready yet to recover on your own. And I don’t feel like chewing off what’s left of my fingers.”
“I hope you don’t.”
“Why not let Professor Menach examine you? He’s an eminent shrink and a friend of yours to boot.”
“I’ll go and see him, I promise, but not in my present state. I need to reconstruct myself by myself first. Then I’ll be in the proper condition for hearing what he’s got to say.”
She drops me off at my house, not
daring to accompany me inside. Before I close the gate, I smile at her. She gives me a sad wink.
“Try not to let your ‘sign’ ruin your life, Amin. In the long run, looking for it is going to wear you out, and afterward you won’t be able to get ahold of yourself again. You’ll disintegrate like a rotten mummy.”
Without waiting for me to react, she drives off.
When the sound of Kim’s Nissan dies away and I find myself facing my house and its silence, I realize the extent of my solitude; I miss Kim already. I’m alone again. “I don’t like leaving you alone,” Sihem told me the evening before she left for Kafr Kanna. And all at once, everything comes back to me—at the moment when I least expect it. Sihem prepared a meal fit for a king that evening, didn’t she? All my favorite dishes. We had a candlelight dinner in the living room, just the two of us. She didn’t eat much. She contented herself with picking delicately at her plate. She was so beautiful, and at the same time so distant. “Why are you sad, my love?” I asked her. “I don’t like leaving you alone, darling,” she replied. “Three days, that’s not so long,” I said. And she declared, “To me, it’s an eternity.” That was it; that was her message, the sign I wasn’t able to decipher. But how could I have imagined the abyss behind her bright eyes? That night she gave herself to me as she had never done before. How could I have perceived the farewell behind so much generosity?
The Attack Page 13
