Exile: a novel

by Richard North Patterson

  “So,” Saeb said, “you’re about to graduate, Hana says. That leaves so little time to know you.”

  Intended or not, this double-edged remark put David more on edge. Hana would not look at him. Lightly, David answered, “It’s the only thing I mind about graduating.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Go back to San Francisco, work as a prosecutor. And you?”

  Saeb’s smile was brief. “That’s a little more problematic. A master’s degree in international relations might entitle me to teach. But where? The Zionists do not seem very anxious to let me return to my actual home.”

  “Israel, you mean?”

  Saeb’s eyes flashed briefly, and then he covered this with a briefer smile. “So they call it. How have your people, David, come to live in our land, and we live in camps or exile?”

  When David glanced at Hana, she looked away. “For Jews,” he answered, “our history is the history of exile, a history two thousand years long. But land is only land. My homeland is some city in Germany, I suppose, though my ancestors would have been murdered had they stayed there. So I guess my parents’ homeland is San Francisco. They seem to like it quite a lot.”

  At this, Hana’s eyes widened in unspoken warning. “Not Israel?” Saeb interjected with mock surprise. “Then why were we so badly inconvenienced?”

  “I don’t dismiss what happened to you,” David answered calmly. “A people was dispersed. But land doesn’t make a people; people make a land. That land could be the West Bank—”

  “Which is occupied by the Zionist army. If Jews can remember two thousand years, forty-five years is not too long for Palestinians to remember. Do you expect me to forget all that’s happened to us?” Saeb paused, and his tone became quietly insinuating. “Or do you require Hana to remind you?”

  All at once, David sensed the second agenda beneath Saeb’s question, even more visceral than the first. Hana folded her hands, staring at the table. “After I came here,” Saeb continued as though nothing were amiss, “I researched how your media reported the massacre at Sabra and Shatila. The Washington Post was typical. Mainly they interviewed American Jews, allowing them to agonize about how Jews could have countenanced such acts.” His tone became quieter. “Even our deaths were about Jews and their feelings. No one thought to ask us how we felt about women and children being raped and slaughtered. We were, as always, faceless. Because Jews write the story.”

  Facing Saeb across the table, David fought to curb his temper. Fueling Saeb’s dislike, he told himself, was the shame of watching his family massacred and his sister raped, a humiliation that would follow him to the grave. Now, in front of Hana, he was facing an unscarred man she liked, and might even desire. Suddenly, David felt a disturbing mix of envy and superiority. Do you wonder if I’m sleeping with her? he wanted to ask Saeb. Or is despising someone like me simply as hardwired in your psyche as distrusting Jews?

  It was good, David supposed, that lunch arrived.

  Hana served the dish of spiced lamb and onion and rice to Saeb, then David, then herself. “So here we are,” she ventured in a mollifying tone. “And you are right, David—all of us have our histories. But now it is we Palestinians who suffer. The deaths we remember are of family we knew. Our memory of dispossession is fresh, and new memories grow day by day.” Her voice lowered; for the first time, David saw something in her eyes like an apology, a plea for understanding that was more personal than political. “You must realize how raw this is for us.”

  David gazed at her openly. With a doubleness he intended, he asked her, “Then what is the way out for us?”

  Saeb covered Hana’s hand, a proprietary gesture that—David felt certain—was intended more as a message to David than to signal Saeb’s desire to speak. “There is no ‘way out’ for ‘us,’ David. In the end, only one of ‘us’ survives.”

  And for us? David wanted to ask Hana. Instead, he paid for lunch.

  It was the last time he had seen Saeb Khalid.

  11

  Ibrahim sat with Iyad in the van. “What now?” he asked.

  “We wait.”

  Ibrahim had been waiting all his life. Waiting for Arafat; waiting for the Zionist occupation to end; waiting for his oldest sister’s first child to be born, for the joy of being called uncle. Waiting for the soldier to acknowledge their desperate pleas to let them take his sister to the hospital. Now in fear and frustration, he was awaiting a woman’s permission to become a man.

  Perhaps, somewhere in this city, she waited also, for her own permission to deliver their final instructions. From whom these would come, Ibrahim did not know.

  Restless, he watched the shoppers driving in and out of the parking lot. There was much left to do; less than twenty-four hours remained, and yet Ibrahim and Iyad were without the means of destruction, still ignorant of where or how to kill him. Ibrahim tried to restrain himself from checking his watch, and could not; by this time tomorrow he should be well beyond doing such a thing.

  One thirty-seven.

  Iyad’s cell phone rang.

  Basking in the warmth of the occasion, Harold and Carole lingered over coffee as David swiftly checked his watch.

  He could relax, he told himself. There was still a comfortable hour before he met with the expert witness in his somewhat grim malpractice case, time to enjoy the company of his future wife and father-in-law. And now even his new timepiece reminded David of how much he valued this man, and had come to understand him.

  The watch was a Piaget. A few moments before, David had remarked on it. “Then have it,” Harold said, and took it off his wrist.

  “Good Lord, no, Harold. It’s yours, and it’s way too expensive.”

  Harold smiled. “And, for me, a waste. I was going to put it in a safe. Such a fancy watch feels wrong to wear in public, just as I can never imagine a Holocaust survivor flaunting a hundred-foot yacht. As for watches, I can remember all too well when I measured time in days, not hours.” Firmly, Harold took David’s wrist and slipped on the thin gold piece of art. “It is my nature,” he said softly, “the one the Germans gave me. You have no such inhibitions, nor will your children. Pass it on to your first son with his grandfather’s love.”

  He stopped, embarrassed by his own sentiment, even as he sometimes seemed embarrassed by his hard-earned success as a real estate developer. But his hand remained on David’s wrist—as so often, David thought, Harold’s hands spoke for him. As though to cover this moment of emotion, Harold turned to Carole, saying in a fondly chiding tone, “And so I will see you both again tonight, when you force me to listen to this man Ben-Aron. Perhaps you wish me to sing ‘Beautiful Dreamer’ as he speaks.”

  David shot Carole a swift grin. Though a liberal in American terms, in Israeli politics Harold favored the most adamant skeptics about the Palestinians as partners in peace. Amos Ben-Aron had long been just as obdurate. But his selection as prime minister had changed him—despite the increasing sway of Hamas, pledged to the destruction of Israel, Ben-Aron now argued that as many Palestinians as Jews desired peace, and that Israel must work with the opponents of Hamas to establish a viable Palestinian state in the territories controlled by Israeli soldiers.

  “Wishful thinking is not a plan,” Harold continued. “Ben-Aron has begun thinking about the Palestinians like a man kidnapped by terrorists: it is intolerable to believe that they mean to kill him, so he imagines that they’re holding him captive because they like his company.” Turning to David, he asked, “And do you agree with me?”

  “Nope,” David said flatly. “Even granting the rise of Hamas. Because you’ve omitted Palestinians from your list of human beings.”

  Harold accorded David a wry smile. “And what do you know of Palestinians?”

  “Something. I knew a couple in law school.” David paused, toying with his coffee cup. “Let’s start with where we agree—that Israel’s survival is a moral imperative. But it was always way too facile to call Israel ‘a land without a people fo
r a people without a land.’ Granted, the Palestinians were living in the place to which Jews have the deepest connection, and where British domination had left the Arab populace without a government of their own. But, geopolitically, it was an arbitrary act, with all the injustice an arbitrary act creates. So now Jews and Palestinians are stuck with each other—”

  “David,” Harold protested, “these ‘human beings’ strap belts of explosives on their young people and send them to blow up Jews. They hate us— especially Hamas.”

  Briefly, David thought of Saeb Khalid. “Some do. Others don’t. But their grandchildren, we can hope, will have more to live for than killing us. It’s in our interest to help them.”

  Harold clasped his hands. “I’m a realist, David. Life has taught me that this Palestinian state you hope for is less likely to be a palliative than a haven for Hamas terrorists. They do not want us there, and never will.

  “Perhaps you know that, after college, Carole wished to live in Israel. She’d fallen in love with an Israeli. But I put her off, pleading her mother’s health, playing on the guilt of a loving only child until her relationship died out.” With palpable reluctance, he faced his daughter. “For this manipulation, I’m sorry. But I was afraid. For all my talk of sacrifice, you were dearer to me than Israel.”

  Carole took his hand. “You were pretty transparent, Dad,” she said in a husky voice. “It wasn’t because of Mom I didn’t go. It was because of you.” Inclining her head toward David, she added with a smile, “And it’s all turned out okay.”

  “Yes. It has.” Turning to David, Harold said, “You are all I could have wished for, Carole. And neither of you should be dragging an old man’s fears behind you like an anvil.” Summoning a smile, he said, “I love you dearly, David, almost as much as my own daughter. Enough, even, to break bread with Amos Ben-Aron. Our last, best hope of peace.”

  12

  It was past five o’clock when David arrived at Carole’s tenth-floor pent-house in Pacific Heights, and white-jacketed waiters were already setting six round tables for eight in the spacious room she reserved for events of particular importance.

  Entertaining with a purpose was central to Carole’s life, and the apartment she had chosen served it well. Eighty years old, the brick building carried an elegant flavor of the 1930s, with a doorman, a generous foyer, and an old-fashioned elevator, which, although it wheezed a little, had carried David smoothly to Carole’s door. Her apartment had the hardwood floors, crown moldings, and high ceilings more common to a time of luxuriant construction. The rooms were spacious, and the furniture carefully chosen and arranged, creating space for guests to mingle and more intimate places for them to sit in small groups. The living and dining areas shared the same floor-to-ceiling view across San Francisco Bay to the gold-brown hills of Marin County; as David watched, the last glow of sunlight faded on the deepening blue water, and sailboats had begun tacking toward their moorings.

  He heard the click of Carole’s heels behind him, and then she put her hands on his waist. “Meeting okay?” she asked.

  “Good enough. My defendant the doctor has some problems. But that’s what expert witnesses are for.”

  “Some days,” she admonished him with a smile, “you sound a little cynical about your clients.”

  David turned to her. “Just not sentimental. That’s a lawyer’s big mistake.”

  “I’d just hate you to be sentimental,” Carole rejoined. Giving him a quick kiss, Carole went to the dining room and began arranging the place cards.

  David glanced at the television, tuned to CNN. “At this hour,” Wolf Blitzer was saying, “Israeli prime minister Amos Ben-Aron is arriving in San Francisco, the last stop on a trip aimed at rallying American support for his highly controversial peace initiative . . .”

  On the screen, Ben-Aron was disembarking from a jumbo jet, surrounded by men in suits who appeared to be security guards. Though the camera was far away, Ben-Aron was easy to spot. Silver-haired and erect, he was slighter than the others, and his brisk, purposeful stride bespoke the general he had once been. David felt a keen anticipation: he looked forward to meeting this man and hoped they could talk in private.

  The picture changed to an angry, chanting crowd of demonstrators, one of whom, David saw, carried a placard showing Ben-Aron with Adolf Hitler’s mustache. “Earlier today in Jerusalem,” the anchorman continued, “an alliance of Orthodox Jews staged a massive protest against Ben-Aron’s new proposal. At stake, they believe, is the future of Jewish settlements on the West Bank, the putative site of a Palestinian state advocated by Ben-Aron. For many Israelis, a Palestinian state is necessary to a lasting peace; for some, like these demonstrators, it is a betrayal of God’s grant of the West Bank—the biblical Judea and Samaria—to the Jewish people...”

  Since when, David remembered Hana inquiring, did God become a real estate agent? He could not help but smile at the memory.

  On the screen, a bearded man appeared against a backdrop of rocky, barren hills, accompanied by Wolf Blitzer’s voice-over. “A few extremist settlers, like Barak Lev, the American-born leader of the controversial Masada movement, centered in the Israeli settlement of Bar Kochba, are making some very troubling pronouncements...”

  David stopped smiling. Lev was young and lean, with the black gaze and slow, insistent intonations of a prophet pronouncing judgment on the unrighteous. “Like Adolf Hitler,” Lev said to the camera, “Ben-Aron wants our biblical land to be Judenrein—free of Jews. His Palestinian partners, Hitler’s heirs, have no identity beyond the hatred of Jews, no culture beyond the murder of Jews. This ‘homeland’ he proposes for them is the base they will use to exterminate the Jews of Israel . . .”

  In close-up, David saw, Lev’s eyes seemed dissociated, his gaze intent on his own inner vision. “This will not be allowed,” he intoned. “As God struck Hitler dead, so, too, will He strike down Ben-Aron.”

  Carole came in to watch with him. “As I recall,” David remarked to her, “Hitler put a bullet in his own brain. But I suppose God works in mysterious ways.”

  “This man’s bughouse,” she said flatly. “He doesn’t speak for Israelis— he’s the minority of a crazy minority of dead-enders.”

  Still watching, David put his arm around her shoulder. “Near Bar Kochba,” the newscaster was saying, “several dozen settlers threw rocks at soldiers seeking to remove two mobile homes inhabited by squatters. A right-wing member of parliament protested the prime minister’s plan to dismantle allegedly illegal settlements—like Bar Kochba—by reading the names of settlers ‘marked for expulsion by the traitor Ben-Aron.’ Outside, demonstrators with sleeping bags prepared to fast until, they say, Ben-Aron reverses course.

  “Ben-Aron’s challenge is to demonstrate, despite the rise of Hamas and the turmoil roiling Israel, that he can somehow deliver what most Israelis want: security, then a lasting peace with a people that many distrust, and even fear.”

  David kissed Carole on the forehead. “Congratulations,” he said. “This should be a truly exciting dinner.”

  “But the controversy,” the newsman’s voice-over continued, “has followed the Israeli prime minister to America. Today, in San Francisco, a spokesman for Palestinian opposition groups characterized Ben-Aron’s peace plan as a ‘sham.’ ”

  Though David should have expected it, his first glimpse of Saeb Khalid startled him.

  Saeb stood in front of the Commonwealth Club, where Ben-Aron would speak at noon tomorrow. Crow’s-feet creased the corners of his eyes, and the fine angles of his face were concealed by a well-trimmed beard, which made him appear harsher than the tormented man with whom David had shared the subtle poison of their lunch. Unlike Barak Lev, he spoke with the confidence of an intellectual who—whatever his Muslim beliefs—was firmly grounded in his version of fact.

  “First they took our land,” Saeb was saying. “Now Ben-Aron offers us a ‘homeland’ on the West Bank that is one-fifth of what we had. He offers nothing to the refugees
in Lebanon whose families were slaughtered at the direction of Israel—certainly not a return to the land from which the Zionists expelled us...”

  “They can’t return,” Carole said flatly.

  Unsettled, David watched, disturbed by the complex of emotions— jealousy, compassion, sheer male competitiveness—that Saeb could still arouse in him. “Where was Ben-Aron the peacemaker,” Saeb inquired acidly, “when they slaughtered us at Sabra and Shatila? And now he proposes to remove a pitiful few settlers among the many who will remain to burn our crops, destroy our greenhouses, and use our water for their swimming pools.” Saeb’s voice hardened. “The settlers will remain, and so will their injustice. And Ben-Aron’s ‘peace plan’ will keep Israel’s fingers around our throats, strangling the life out of our people...”

  “Who is this guy?” Carole interjected. “He’s scary.”

  “He’s damaged.”

  Carole turned to him in inquiry. “I knew him a little,” David added, “at Harvard.”

  “You were friends?”

  A lie is more persuasive, Hana had told him, if it contains a little truth. “Saeb and I could never be friends. Then, or now.”

  “Because you’re Jewish?”

  “And because I’m me.” Abruptly, David switched off the remote, banishing Saeb Khalid from Carole’s living room as he had once wished to banish him from Hana’s life.

  A week after the lunch with Saeb, David came home to his apartment in Cambridge, tossed his spiral notebook on the couch, then stopped abruptly.

  Beside the notebook was Hana’s bright cloth purse.

  He had not seen her since the lunch, nor had she returned his calls. With a glow of excitement, he walked quickly to his bedroom.