Exile: a novel

by Richard North Patterson

  “ ‘He who is not interred in his own land,’ my grandfather always told me, ‘has had no life.’ But we buried him at the camp, with his chickens and goats and pitiful olive tree the only remnant of the life he knew—a farmer with nowhere to farm, part of a faceless mass that, to Americans, is at most an object of scorn or pity. This is the place where our parents decided we should marry.”

  The last was said with a casual bitterness that, David knew, bespoke a far deeper anger. “Perhaps,” she finished in a softer tone, “you begin to understand. But you cannot truly understand unless you know what the Jews and Christians did to us at Sabra and Shatila. By marrying me, Saeb is honoring the wishes of a dead man.”

  David poured more coffee for both of them. “Tell me about what happened at Sabra and Shatila, Hana.”

  For a time she gazed at him over the rim of her cup. Then, quite softly, she began speaking.

  8

  In the summer of 1982, when Saeb was fourteen years old, Israel invaded Lebanon, asserting the need to protect its borders from the freedom fighters of Arafat’s PLO.

  Saeb’s family had little to eat. His mother helped support them by sewing and baking; after school, Saeb would sell the sweets she made. Their home had four small rooms—a bath and kitchen combined; a living room, where his parents slept; a bedroom for Saeb and his brothers; another for his sisters. No one thought of privacy—that was a Western concept. Saeb’s world, and Hana’s, was as constricted as their hopes.

  But the outside world was close at hand. At five o’clock one morning, Hana awakened to the terrible scream of Israeli F-16s over the rooftops of Beirut. The fearsome planes, a gift from the United States, flew well above the fire from the PLO’s hand-cranked antiaircraft guns and shoulder-fired missiles. Hana could still feel the concussive shock waves of bombs exploding; see the skies afire with orange-red flares; hear the cries of her mother, brother, and sister as her father rushed them into the living room, lying with their faces pressed against their tattered carpet. Watching Hana tell this story now, David saw her eyes filling with reflexive terror.

  “That was the beginning,” she told him.

  For two months, the Israelis bombed Beirut and the camps. By day there were burials at Sabra and Shatila, while children played in the craters made by Zionist bombs. The only way Arafat and the PLO could end this devastation was by agreeing to leave Lebanon for Tunis.

  And so the Americans brokered a peace, promising the civilians of Sabra and Shatila—who feared both the Zionists and their brutal allies, the Lebanese Christian Phalange—that they could live in peace by disdaining violence. Numb, the twelve-year-old Hana could not grasp what the Israelis wanted—a last chance to kill more freedom fighters before they reached their exile. That was why, Hana insisted to David, the great general Ariel Sharon required that those PLO fighters still at Sabra and Shatila remain there. Saeb, her intended husband and older friend, divined the trap before she did.

  “Saeb no longer believed in peace,” she explained to David. “He had seen the Phalange at Tel Zaatar.”

  And then the leader of the Phalange, Bashir Gemayel, was killed at his headquarters in Beirut.

  The Israeli army surrounded the camps. “Under the rules of war,” Hana said, “the Zionists were responsible for our safety. Only later did we learn that Sharon wanted the Phalange to do his work for him.”

  On the night of September 16, she explained, the Phalange streamed into the camp with machetes, rifles, and submachine guns, going from house to house. Watching from the surrounding rooftops, Zionist soldiers fired bright orange flares to light the camp. Then Hana heard the gunfire starting.

  As she said this, David took her hand.

  “They shot us in our streets and homes,” Hana told him in a monotone. “My favorite aunt, Suha, my mother’s sister, saw Phalange militia herding women and children into a truck, and risked her life to report this to an Israeli guard post at the edge of our camp. For days we did not know what had become of her.”

  Only later, after Saeb told her of finding Suha, did Hana learn what had become of him.

  That first night, three Phalange gunmen battered down the door of Saeb’s parents’ home.

  His family huddled in the darkness of their living room—Saeb’s father, mother, two brothers, and two sisters. Through the open door, Saeb heard a neighbor woman scream. His twelve-year-old sister, Aisha, clutched his hand. His mother began to pray.

  When his father stood in front of her, the leader of the Phalange shot him in the chest.

  “No!” his mother cried out. “Please, not my children—”

  A second man shot her. As she crumpled beside her husband, her killer ordered coldly, “The rest of you—on the floor.”

  Frozen by horror, Saeb lay against the concrete, still grasping his sister’s hand. One by one three gunshots shattered the skulls of his two brothers and youngest sister. Teeth clenched against his own death, he felt Aisha’s terror as his.

  From above them, Saeb heard a soft voice say, “You two must be lovers.”

  They lay there, waiting for death. “Get up,” the man said.

  Trembling, Saeb stood, pulling Aisha with him.

  The man shined a flashlight in his eyes. Saeb could not see faces. From the darkness, a hand reached out to touch his sister’s earring.

  “Gold or zinc?” the same voice asked.

  Leaning against Saeb, Aisha could barely speak. “Zinc.”

  “Leave her,” Saeb pled, the words raw in his throat. “Shoot me—I don’t care. But let my sister live . . .”

  “Live?” the man said roughly. “You give me an idea.”

  Brutally, he jerked Aisha from Saeb’s grasp, directing her to a corner with his flashlight. “Over there. And watch that you don’t step on your mother.”

  As Aisha stumbled to where she was told, the outer circle of light caught their father’s outstretched hand. Instinctively, Saeb stepped forward, then felt a gun against his temple.

  The man pressed the flashlight into his palm. “Hold this on her,” he ordered.

  Swallowing, Saeb did so. In the light his sister’s eyes were like those of a hunted animal, fearful and uncomprehending.

  “Strip,” the man told her.

  “No,” Saeb protested. “No . . .”

  “Bitch,” the man snapped at Aisha. “Show us everything or I’ll shoot him in the balls.”

  Watching her brother’s face, Aisha did as she was told.

  Saeb turned away. “Look at her,” another man ordered. “Keep the flashlight on her or she’ll die.”

  Watching his naked sister, so fragile and so pretty, Saeb felt the sweat run down his face. “Lie down,” the first man told her. “Spread your legs for us to see.”

  As she did this, Saeb closed his eyes with her, a reflex. The gun nudged his head, a warning to watch her shame. Aisha cried out; Saeb saw the naked man enter her roughly, the gold cross around his neck falling across her stricken face.

  Let her die, Saeb prayed. The man on top of her grunted his satisfaction.

  As though transfixed, the second man who held the gun to Saeb stepped forward, leaving Saeb to watch what the man would do to Aisha.

  Squat and mustached, he mounted her. In the glow of the flashlight, Aisha stared at her brother, tears running down her face. As the gunman pushed inside her, she mouthed a last silent word:

  Run.

  Dropping the flashlight, Saeb bolted for the door.

  Behind him a Phalangist shouted. A bullet grazed Saeb’s shoulder as he ran into the murderous night, his body shaking and his heart beating wildly. Running through unlit alleys he knew by instinct, he stopped only to vomit.

  He made it to the headquarters of the Red Cross. For three days he hid with other refugees, eating nothing, speaking to no one. When the Phalange banged at the door, a doctor, risking his life, ordered them to go away. Saeb hoped only to die.

  To his mild surprise, the Phalange went away.

  “This w
as toward the end,” Hana explained to David. “The Americans began to protest. The Zionists decided the Phalange had gone too far, and ordered them to leave. The situation was under control, a Zionist general told your special envoy. His reply was useless outrage. That’s the best we got from America, protector of human rights.”

  When the last of the Phalange was gone, Saeb wandered the camp alone.

  He found one small miracle: though Saeb’s neighbor, nine months pregnant, was killed by a bomb, a doctor had delivered her baby alive. But the camp was filled with bodies and rubble, from beneath which rescuers extracted more ruined corpses. Saeb saw a line of dead men at the foot of a concrete barrier—fourteen, he counted—blood and bullet holes spattering the wall beneath the bloody letters “PLO.” Perhaps it was a mercy that Aisha had been buried with his family beneath the ruins of their home.

  “I imagine you were playing football,” Hana said to David. “Your football starts in September, yes? If so, this is not your fault. But maybe you can understand why Saeb has so little interest in having lunch with you.

  “Saeb is scarred forever. It was not just what he saw, or how he feels about Zionists, or the Phalange, or America. It’s how he feels about himself for running. And for living.”

  Saeb found her aunt Suha, a few strands of hair beneath a pile of debris. Her hair was red, Hana said, distinctive; Saeb knew her from that.

  David struggled to imagine this. “And the rest of your family?”

  “Survived. It was Saeb who lost all his family.” Hana stared into her coffee cup. “Two thousand people were killed. Some by rockets, some with bullets, some beheaded with machetes. In Israel, there was a great demonstration in the streets, protesting this atrocity. A commission of inquiry followed, and Sharon was reprimanded. Yet he remained in the cabinet, accepting no blame. It seems that only the conquered are prosecuted as war criminals. The victors get promoted.

  “What remains to us is a camp now built on corpses, filled with refugees the world has forgotten.” Her voice was soft with irony. “But Saeb and I are lucky—America gave us scholarships, to study the rule of law. And now I find myself with you.” Pausing, she gazed past David, as though speaking to herself. “What is becoming of me, I wonder, to tempt myself with no good end.”

  David was silent. After a time, he reached again for her hand, more tentative than before. “Nothing’s becoming of you, Hana. It’s just that you don’t love him. What you feel is compassion and obligation.”

  Even to David, the words sounded trite, inadequate. Hana looked away. “I’m his family,” she said flatly. “The woman his father wished for him. And, yes, I wish it too.”

  A sadness stole through David, both from Saeb’s story and Hana’s words. Hana’s shoulders slumped with weariness. “Can I sleep here?” she asked. “On your couch, just for an hour or so. I’m too tired to leave right now.”

  Unable to decipher her emotions, he could only nod. “I’ll get a blanket for you.”

  David turned off the living room lamp.

  He sat in the kitchen, drinking coffee, watching her sleep in the darkened room. A half hour passed. Then he saw her blanket stirring, heard her muffled cry as she awakened.

  He went to her. “What is it, Hana?”

  She hunched forward, her elbows resting on her knees, the fingertips of one hand touching her forehead. “A dream,” she said in a monotone. “Only a dream, one I’ve had many times before.”

  David sat beside her. “Tell me.”

  She stood in Saeb’s home, alone. Though in the dream the Phalange had not destroyed the house, its rooms were empty. On the wall were photographs of Saeb’s murdered family—his parents, brothers, sisters.

  Hana’s eyes were drawn to Aisha’s face.

  As Hana watched, Aisha stepped from the picture, her body materializing from nothing. She was as Hana had known her, pretty and chastely dressed.

  “Could you bring me a glass of water,” the young girl asked politely. “Then please take me to my brother.”

  Hana went to the kitchen. But when she returned, Aisha had vanished. The place for her photograph was bare.

  Awake now, sitting with David, Hana shook her head. “The same dream, always. I never know what becomes of her.”

  It’s all right, David might have said to another woman. You’re safe here, with me. That he could not say this to Hana did not yet tell him that he, David Wolfe, was no longer safe with her.

  9

  The spectacle of Stonestown shopping center stunned Ibrahim with its opulence.

  He stood with Iyad in the vast parking lot, beside the rental car they would abandon there. A two-story monolith a quarter mile long, Stones-town contained a supermarket, a department store, several restaurants, and every imaginable purveyor of shoes, books, clothes, candies, cosmetics, sports equipment, compact discs, and artwork. Streams of cars and SUVs eased in and out of the lot. Ibrahim tried to grasp the vast entitlement of people for whom such opulence was second nature. He felt negligible; his birthplace—the refugee camp at Jenin—seemed as distant as another planet. He could not believe that those who drove the cars, women mostly, had ever conceived of such a place, or cared what their Zionist allies had inflicted on his sister.

  “It’s so big,” he murmured to Iyad.

  The derisive half-smile on Iyad’s face confirmed the banality of what he had just said. “Yes,” Iyad answered. “And Americans are so smug and pompous and stupid. They have no purpose, no soul, no values except to consume and pay someone to keep them amused. To them, the world is a video game. That is why we will win.”

  That was right, Ibrahim believed—the West was corrupt, and believed in nothing but preserving its privilege and power, and that of the Jews controlling the instruments of entertainment that consumed their money and drugged their minds. But Ibrahim envied Iyad’s grim serenity. There lurked within Ibrahim a tinge of envy: to shop and spend and go to movies sometimes seemed more blessed than the privilege of killing and dying with which Iyad had favored him.

  Iyad pointed toward a towering light, intended, Ibrahim supposed, to illuminate a section of the parking lot at night. “It should be there,” he said.

  It was—a nondescript white van, parked at the base of the pole. As before, Ibrahim wondered at the invisible network that caused cell phones to appear, lockers to hold cash and credit cards and false identification, and, now, had materialized a van big enough to house two motorcycles. Opening the door, Iyad found the ignition key beneath the floor mat on the driver’s side.

  A second key, small and shiny, was taped beneath the seat.

  As Iyad held it up the key glinted in the sunlight. “Our key to paradise,” he said.

  The North Beach was a bright, well-appointed restaurant amid the bustle of the city’s historically Italian section. It was Harold Shorr’s favorite meeting place; the energetic maître d’ shepherded them to Harold’s corner table with a sense of occasion suitable to the children of a potentate. Beaming, Harold kissed Carole on the cheek, then took her face in his hands. “Our family goes on,” he said in a voice accented by his native Polish, “far away from that miserable village.”

  David could only guess how much their marriage meant to Harold. Of six children and their parents, all but he had perished in the Holocaust— Carole was their future, the only one of her kind. Turning to David, Harold clasped his shoulders and pressed his forehead to David’s. Deep feeling was hard for Harold to articulate—he was better at showing than expressing. But there was no missing the amplitude of Harold’s joy; in this man’s bear hug, David felt a warmth he had seldom shared with his own father.

  “Seven months,” Harold told them in mock chagrin. “Why so long?”

  David grinned, setting aside the events that had shadowed his morning. “It’ll take that long for Carole to make out the guest list.”

  “So you’re complaining? That means more gifts for you.” As they sat, Harold clasped his only child’s hands in his. “At last a weddi
ng,” he added with a smile, “for your mother, at the Temple Emanu-El.”

  This was said lightly, but there was an undertone of rue and remembrance—Carole’s mother had died the previous year, still pursued by the indelible fears of sixty years before. “We had to negotiate the wedding contract,” Carole answered with a self-mocking smile that took in David. “All the ways in which David promises to be satisfactory. You know me, Dad—leave nothing to chance.”

  Harold spread his arms in an elaborate shrug that said that men and women must be patient with each other. “I hope,” he told Carole, “that you made a few promises of your own. Maybe one unplanned day each month.”

  Harold surely knew his daughter, David thought. Fondly, he regarded the man, two years ago a stranger, who had become so central to his life.

  At seventy-six, Harold Shorr had a high forehead, receding iron-gray hair, a full mouth and strong chin, and deep-set brown eyes beneath eye-brows that arched to punctuate his remarks. He was stocky but not fat, with shoulders that seemed hunched to bear weight, or resist pressure. On his face, watchful and expressive, often played a faint smile that, to David, betrayed a hint of melancholy.

  There was also a shyness that, David thought, bespoke a deeper reticence. Part was a lack of education mixed with an immigrant’s sense that his speech was halting and inelegant—even though Harold’s vocabulary was apt and his command of American vernacular keen and flavored with humor. Far deeper was his fear of calling too much attention to himself, imprinted a time long ago, when to be invisible might be to live another day. That Harold had raised so accomplished and confident a daughter was, to him, a constant source of pride and wonder.

  So the Shorrs’ smiles conveyed that they were part of each other’s journey in a way few families could grasp. Watching, David was aware of a bond that belonged to them alone. Its depth came from something within Harold that he had never expressed to David—in this particular, as in others, Carole had spoken for her father, fulfilling her imperative that David comprehend them both.