Exile: a novel

by Richard North Patterson

  A look of understanding passed between father and daughter, touched with melancholy and, in Harold’s case, a trace of bitterness. “You are young,” he said wearily. “I am not. And I am tired from watching our history repeat itself. My parents would not believe the Germans would kill them until they did. Now it’s the Palestinians—a few steps forward, a few steps back. Another handshake, another truce, then another Palestinian blowing up Israelis to prove that none of it matters.

  “Forever, there is hope given, hope taken away. Now we have Hamas.” Harold mustered a smile. “I am sorry, David. But I have little hope for Amos Ben-Aron.”

  After Harold had left, David stood gazing out Carole’s window at the lights of the Marina District, the dark pool of the bay.

  Behind him he heard the sound of Carole’s bare feet. “Can you stay the night?”

  “Of course.”

  In the bedroom, they undressed, wordless, and slipped into bed. Carole pressed her body against his.

  Gently, David kissed her forehead, a signal that he wished to sleep.

  But he found that he could not. Harold’s last remark, underscoring his loss of hope, resonated with a memory David could not quite place.

  At last it came to him. It was a weekend with Hana, near the end. You are free to hope for us, she had told him. But I am not free to hope with you.

  When Saeb flew to Chicago for a three-day conference of Palestinian students, enabling Hana to steal away, David was elated.

  They drove to New Hampshire in David’s secondhand convertible, Hana’s dark hair flowing in the wind, Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty providing the soundtrack. “Normal,” David said with a grin, “this is what it could be like—normal.” Not even Hana’s delphic smile could dampen his exhilaration.

  They stayed in a bed-and-breakfast at the foot of Green Mountain. Saturday morning, David brought her breakfast in bed, croissants and coffee and orange juice. Still naked, Hana hungrily consumed her first croissant. David thought he had never seen anything more charming.

  “Normal,” he repeated.

  Her mouth full, Hana could only raise her eyebrows.

  “I could do this every Saturday,” David said.

  Hana finished swallowing her last bite. “Do what?” she inquired with a smile. And so they had made love again.

  Later, they left to take a hike; Hana had never stayed with a man, and David, who had learned to read her restlessness as apprehension, chose to distract her rather than argue that they were safe. After all, hiking was normal, too.

  The trail up Green Mountain rose at a steep angle through dense pines, causing Hana to pause for breath, or to drink from David’s bottle of water. Finally, they reached a promontory of rock weathered by wind and rain. The afternoon was temperate—light breezes, the mild sun of a New England spring—and the view went on for miles.

  “Beautiful,” Hana whispered.

  It was. The wooded sweep of hills and valleys was so vast that it seemed less to end than to vanish on some far horizon. Amid the woodlands they could see only a few clearings for farms or hamlets marked by steepled churches; after the Civil War, nature had begun reclaiming the land, overtaking civilization as the energy of man moved west. David related all of this to Hana.

  “So much land,” she observed. “So easy to leave it, if you think there will always be more. Sometimes, I think, land explains so much about a people.”

  “It does for Americans,” David answered. “There was always someplace else to go, a sense of things never running out. In the end it’s an illusion. But if a people’s illusion lasts long enough, it can shape who they become.”

  Hana gave him a look, the hint of a challenging smile in her eyes, as though she knew he was also referring to the illusions of Palestinians. But she chose not to engage in a debate. After a time, she said simply, “Thank you for bringing me here. This hill, this place, the inn with breakfast for me, in bed. I will never forget it.”

  David felt the impulse to speak overcome his instinct to be silent. “This is what life could be like for us. Free to go where we want, do what we like. Free to grow together without always watching the clock.”

  Pensive, Hana gazed at the woodland before them. “Free,” she said, as though listening to its sound on her lips. “Such a simple word to you. You’re an individual—obligated to no one, little more concerned about being Jewish than being right-handed. Satisfying your own desires is the simplest thing; you want something, so why not have it.” She held his hand tighter, as though to remove any sting from her words. “You’re so American, complete within yourself. Sometimes, with you, I feel like this girl— happy, almost carefree. Then I look at you again, and you seem so innocent. And I feel as though I’m a thousand years old.”

  In profile, she seemed wistful, or perhaps resigned. “You’re twenty-three, Hana. And our time is running out. I graduate in a month—”

  “Don’t, David. Please.”

  The last vestige of restraint deserted him. “If there were time, I’d be endlessly patient, just letting it all spin out. I’ve got that in me. But we don’t have time. We have to deal with this now—it’s way too important to treat this like a college student’s summer romance, doomed to end when the girl goes back to school—”

  “But that’s all it can be.” She turned to him, speaking in an urgent voice. “Don’t you see? With you I’d be constantly pulled from one side to the other, looking for a balance I could never find. What keeps us apart is so much bigger than we are. To my family, I am Sabra and Shatila, and you would be the murderer—”

  “I’m not a symbol, for Christ’s sake. I’m a person. Am I a murderer to you?”

  “No.” Hana paused, then added quietly. “But you are the man who’s killing me inside. I want to be with you, David—to talk with you, listen to you, argue with you. And, yes, sometimes I desire you so much it feels like what I’m made for. Which is crazy. Because I’m more than a woman who wants a man.

  “In my culture, family defines us. You never understand that. For you, it’s easy—you’re just you. You have no deep ties to your parents, and your parents seem to have no ties to their history or religion. But when your children ask about your family, and where you come from, what will you tell them?”

  “Nothing,” David replied. “They’ll never ask, because the question would have no meaning for them. I can’t imagine a child of mine falling in love and asking me, ‘What would the Wolfe family do?’ ”

  Hana shook her head, as though losing all hope that he would ever comprehend her. “To you these are stupid questions, really not questions at all. You’re not really a ‘Wolfe,’ you’re only ‘David.’ But not me. Before I came here, my mother said, ‘Please do not love anyone in America. It would only cause you heartache.’ Too late for that. But what she was also saying is that I’d also cause them heartache. And that I can never do.”

  With these last words, Hana’s pain became his. “Then how can you do this?”

  “I lie.” Her tone became detached, almost matter-of-fact. “We’re a shame culture, not a guilt culture. We worry about our name, our image, our honor in the eyes of others. But not what we do in private. I know Palestinian women from good families who go abroad and have affairs. But they never talk of it at home, and their family never knows. I don’t need to tell my family about anything but Saeb.”

  When they returned to Cambridge, she got out three blocks from her apartment. David watched her walk away.

  This is insane, he thought.

  He headed toward graduation like an automaton, measuring his days as they passed too quickly, one after the other, toward the moment he had come to dread. On some nights—hastily stolen from Saeb or her studies—they would lie in bed, looking into each other’s faces, bodies damp with lovemaking. They spent minutes without speaking, David running his fingers along her spine. He could no longer imagine his life without her.

  One evening they watched Casablanca together, and David found himself hoping
that Ingrid Bergman’s choice of her husband, freedom’s dutiful savior, over the man she loved would feel as miserable to Hana as it did to him. But when he said as much, Hana answered simply, “Ingrid Bergman was not her husband’s partner. I will be.”

  “Are you so sure?” David challenged her. “I’ve only met Saeb once, and already I know how damaged he is. I’m not sure he even sees you.”

  “We’re all damaged,” Hana answered evenly. “Tell me, David, do you wish to live on the West Bank?”

  The suggestion of a life together, however rhetorical, gave David hope. “I don’t think I’d be welcome there. But you could practice law in America. Or teach.”

  “I don’t feel welcome here. And it’s not my country. It’s the country of the powerful, Israel’s chief ally, without which my grandfather would still be living in the land his parents left to him.” Slowly, she moved her hand from his. “You know that I have feelings for you. But you forget how I feel about your country. And mine.”

  She left without making love with him, her face and body expressing too much misery to stay.

  The next night she came back. They made love swiftly, intensely, as if to dispel what both had said.

  “Stay the night with me,” David implored her.

  “I can’t. You know that.”

  “Because of Saeb,” he said flatly.

  “And because of me.” She sat up in bed, tears filling her eyes. “You still think you understand me. But you can’t understand that I’ve made a deal— let me give myself to this man for a few precious weeks, and I’ll follow the rules for the rest of my life.

  “At least let me take this moment, I tell God, and maybe the next, and I’ll promise to pay You back. Knowing that every moment brings me that much closer to never seeing you again.”

  Her voice was suffused with anger. “You wonder if I love you? All right, David, I love you. And if you loved me more you’d wish I didn’t.

  “I think of the life I might have with you, but that we can never have. The happiness I have with you carries inside it such sadness. Maybe that makes our lovemaking more intense, more precious. But there is such pain—”

  “There’s pain either way, Hana,” David interrupted gently. “Don’t you think you’ll feel pain two weeks from now, if you decide to never see me again? You can’t get out of this without hurting someone. Especially yourself.”

  She turned from him. In a muffled voice, she said, “I’ve promised Saeb.”

  “Promised him what? A wife who doesn’t love him?” He grasped her by the shoulders. “Look at me, Hana.”

  For an instant, he felt her tremble. When she turned to him, she looked wounded, as though it hurt to see his face.

  David’s voice was thick. “I want a life with you. I want you to come with me to San Francisco.”

  Her expression was stunned, almost uncomprehending.

  More quietly, he said, “Marry me, Hana.”

  She bowed her head. She seemed unable to speak, or even move. The tears running down her face were her only answer.

  16

  A little before noon the next day, Carole and David walked from David’s office to the Commonwealth Club, on Market Street; at least ten blocks of Market were barred to automobiles, and the street was lined with barricades, police officers, and members of the Secret Service, distinguished by the sunglasses that concealed who the agents might be watching.

  Angry demonstrators, Jewish and Arab, united only in their loathing of Amos Ben-Aron, pressed up against the barricades.

  “A lot of security,” Carole noted in a worried tone. “They need it.”

  David nodded. “Make it daunting enough and the Lee Harvey Oswalds of the world may decide that it’s the wrong day to enter history.” He pointed to the rooftops of the three- and four-story buildings. “There’ll be sharpshooters on the rooftops, and security all over the auditorium. No way the U.S. government is losing Ben-Aron on its watch.”

  “It’s sad to be afraid like this,” Carole observed. “But still not as bad as Israel. Since the bombings started, you get frisked at shopping malls.”

  Her remark, and the demonstrators, were a reminder of the virulent hatred that made peace so difficult to imagine. But David felt lighter of spirit than he had since Hana’s call. The spring day was crystalline; David, responsive to weather, hoped it might auger a fresh season between Israelis and Palestinians. As they entered the Commonwealth Club, he remarked to Carole, “I hope whatever Ben-Aron has to say matches people’s expectations.”

  With that, they took their place in line, waiting to pass through the metal detectors.

  Feigning the authority of the police officers who manned the barricades, Ibrahim and Iyad cruised down Market, stopping at the corner of Tenth Street. This was his route to the airport, Iyad had explained, the one shown on the map. Once more, Ibrahim wondered at the knowledge of those who had planned for them to join the forces deployed to protect their enemy. They had entered the zone of protection unimpeded; to Ibrahim’s relief, the real policemen remained focused on their duties.

  Last night he had not slept, roiled by anxiety and painful images of his sister. Today he felt resolute, yet strangely disoriented. With his face covered by the helmet and plastic mask, Iyad resembled a Zionist soldier in riot gear; among the onlookers lining Market Street, Ibrahim saw demonstrators denouncing Israel as the oppressor of his people. The path to martyrdom seemed so open that it stunned him. When four motorcycle police officers sped by, taking up positions on the first block of Tenth Street, Iyad murmured, “It is just as she promised.”

  Ibrahim said a silent prayer. In little more than an hour, should they succeed, they would no longer walk on earth.

  Within minutes, David knew they were hearing a remarkable speech.

  The crowd of five hundred listeners, San Francisco’s civic elite, seemed to sense this, too; even considering the anticipation that greeted the prime minister’s words, underscored by the presence of cameras from the major news networks, they were uncommonly still.

  “The epic story of Jews,” Ben-Aron said, his voice measured and strong, “repeated by our prophets and poets over hundreds of years, called for us to reclaim the land of Israel. Today, Palestinians speak of their historic destiny to reclaim this land as their own. And both stand on the shoulders of those who came before. Consider Jerusalem. Jews were living there before the Bible was written, Muslims since the dawn of Islam. But too often each of us is blind to the story of the other . . .”

  When does history begin for you? David remembered asking Hana. It seemed clear that Amos Ben-Aron intended to transcend the question.

  “There are Jews,” Ben-Aron continued, “so consumed by the tragedies of three thousand years that they cannot see the suffering of Palestinians. There are Palestinians so blinded by the suffering of sixty years ago that they cannot acknowledge the suffering of Jews. Today Palestinians call the date of Israel’s founding the ‘day of catastrophe,’ marking it with the moment of silence with which we, on our Day of Remembrance, recall the victims of the Holocaust. Today Palestinians chafe under the occupation by Israeli soldiers, while Israelis fear death at the hands of Palestinian suicide bombers.

  “Enough.” Standing straighter, Ben-Aron surveyed the audience. “To the Palestinian people, I say, ‘I know your history. You, like we, have suffered and died. You, like we, have been displaced and dispossessed. Your history is our history. Yet you the victims, and we the victims, have been pitted against each other in one of history’s cruelest ironies...’ ”

  As David turned to Carole, her eyes shone with expectation. “Enough,” Ben-Aron repeated. “It is time to build a future for our children. Our history must not be their destiny; their destiny cannot be still more death...”

  Pulling the cell phone from his jacket, Iyad listened intently.

  Ibrahim tried not to react. But when Iyad shoved the phone back into his jacket, his mouth was a grim line, his air of self-possession gone. “That was h
er,” he said. “They’ve changed the Zionist’s route.”

  Listening, David lost track of time. “After forty years of war,” Ben-Aron continued, “this is the truth I wish to tell to Palestinians. As a Jew, it hurts me to live in a world where my people’s safety is not assured. It hurts me to live in a world where nations question our value as human beings. I would like not to worry about children who seek honor by killing Jews. I would like not to wonder if there will be a safe place for my grandchildren . . .”

  And so, David thought, would Harold Shorr. When he glanced again at Carole, David knew that she was thinking the same thing.

  “That is what I would like,” Ben-Aron said more quietly. “And this is what I ask of you. I ask you to recognize our right to exist. I ask you to reject violence. I ask you to help us leave your land by spurning those—such as Hamas—who would kill us in our land. I ask that you offer those willing to abandon terror—such as the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade—the chance to enter your security forces as a bulwark against terror.”

  This, David thought, was risky and extremely clever: by suggesting that the Al Aqsa Martyrs might become the linchpin of the Palestinian security forces, Ben-Aron was hoping to pit them against Hamas, dividing two major groups of Palestinian militants while risking still more anger from the Israeli right. “I ask you to work,” Ben-Aron continued, “toward a society that meets the needs of its own people rather than feeds their anger at my people. A society, in short, that will be our partner in peace.

  “In return, this is what I offer you.”

  As Ben-Aron paused, David felt a quickening of hope.

  “An end to suffocating checkpoints,” Ben-Aron continued, “arbitrary arrests, and petty humiliations. A negotiation of fair borders that provide for our security and your prosperity. A program of compensation to the descendants of Palestinian refugees. A dismantling of illegal settlements. An agreement that Jerusalem will be an open city, the capital of both of our nations. An effort to help build an economy that promises your young people something better than a martyr’s grave. And, at last, a country of your own.”