Exile: a novel

by Richard North Patterson

  Distracted, Madji seemed to be counting his own footsteps. “It’s simple enough to trace Jefar to Al Aqsa,” he said. “He was among a group of their people I spoke to about nonviolence—without success, it’s clear. Later, after what befell his sister, he left school. I never saw him again.”

  His tone held a weary fatalism. “And Hassan?” David asked. “Do you know anything more that could tie him to Hamas?”

  “No. What bewilders me is that, to my mind, Hassan truly despised women—in class, he would barely look at any of his female classmates, especially those who did not cover. He acted as if they were unclean.” Madji stopped where he was, inhaling a last puff of his cigarette. “As I understand Jefar’s confession, Hassan said that Hana Arif not only gave him his instructions but had recruited him in the first place. It’s a little hard to imagine the relationship between Arif and Hassan that would make such a conversation possible.” He paused, considering his own statement. “And yet, as I say, I would tend to believe Ibrahim’s confession. And why would Hassan lie to him?”

  “All good questions. Did you know Hana or her husband?”

  “Only by reputation, as two professors who quite openly despised the occupation. Beyond that, nothing.”

  David glanced at his watch. It was almost three o’clock, and though the president of Birzeit was expecting him any minute, he supposed she knew to wait. The afternoon sun, while not oppressive, had left a sheen of perspiration on Madji’s forehead. “So,” David said, “you think that if Al Aqsa is destroyed and Faras loses all credibility, then Hamas will seize total power?”

  “Yes. Hamas was always the chief critic of Fatah and Faras—that they’re corrupt, that they’ve compromised with Israel, that they’ve betrayed a newer, brighter, more honest generation. It’s Hamas that set up a network of charities, schools, medical facilities, summer camps, and sports clubs for Palestinians old and young, establishing a shadow government that also promotes and finances suicide bombings and other acts of violence against Jews. Once, in Ramallah, the Israelis found a cache of arms and explosives hidden beneath a Hamas preschool.” Madji dropped his cigarette butt, grinding it out with the toe of his black leather shoe. “Within Fatah, Al Aqsa was a recourse for young people who thought Arafat and his people were crooks and frauds. From Israel’s perspective, Al Aqsa’s surely to be feared— witness Jefar. But by destroying Al Aqsa, Israel is effectively assisting a group of Muslim fundamentalists—Hamas—expressly pledged to its destruction, whose burning contempt for Arafat and his heirs is matched by an open admiration for jihadists like Bin Laden. God help us if Hamas is all that’s left.”

  “Wasn’t it part of Faras’s strategy on becoming leader of the Palestinian Authority to seduce Hamas into joining the political process?”

  Madji lit another cigarette, eyeing the checkpoint as he did. They were now roughly thirty yards from the barrier, and the cars they were walking beside kept creeping slowly forward. “Joining the process is one thing,” Madji answered. “For Hamas to win elections was quite another. It now may put Israel to a terrible choice: leave the Palestinian Authority in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists or abolish the electoral process and, effectively, any pretense of Palestinian self-government, extending the occupation for years. Only a man like Iyad Hassan would cherish such a moment.” Madji paused, slowly turning his head toward David. “That’s another thing that perplexes me. It’s certainly possible to imagine a joint operation between Al Aqsa and Hamas. It’s happened before: if Hamas has a bomb and Al Aqsa a bomber, it becomes what you might call kismet. But a plot to kill Ben-Aron? The potential consequences to Al Aqsa, and to Faras, seem way too obvious. Deconstructing all this requires a sharper mind than I have.”

  “Or maybe just more information,” David proposed. “Is it possible that someone from Hamas could infiltrate Al Aqsa?”

  “Someone like Jefar, you mean? Sure. But to what end, and on whose orders? Hana Arif ’s?” Madji shook his head. “There’s too much here I don’t understand. Or maybe, as you say, we both know far too little.”

  Squinting, David put on his sunglasses. “Tell me,” he asked, “what happens when you say to Palestinians that they’re not returning to the places where their parents lived?”

  Madji’s face set. “I don’t,” he answered. “Personally, I’ve no interest in returning to Jaffa, the old port of Tel Aviv, where my grandfather lived before he was murdered by the Irgun. But I could never face someone living in a refugee camp and tell him he has no right of return.”

  Then you will have no peace, David thought but did not say. Even between Amos Ben-Aron and Marwan Faras, the gulf was measured by what Amjad Madji chose not to say.

  Fifteen minutes later, still walking beside Ashawi’s van, David and Madji reached the checkpoint.

  Madji was perspiring more freely now. When the strapping young Israeli soldier took his ID papers, retreating a few paces to call someone on his cell phone as he scanned them yet again, Madji began pacing in small circles, an unlit cigarette twitching between his fingers. “They always do this,” he said. “It’s pro forma—because we oppose the occupation, the Israelis think my peace movement is their enemy.”

  He was trying to convince himself, David sensed, that nothing was amiss. But Madji would never pass a checkpoint without remembering the burning of his muscles and the stench of his own vomit. He seemed somehow smaller than he had been.

  When the soldier returned Madji’s papers and took David’s passport, Madji hastily lit his cigarette. Brusquely, the soldier asked David, “What are you doing here?”

  “Visiting,” David snapped without thinking. “What are you doing here?”

  The soldier kept them for another fifteen minutes.

  18

  With the president of Birzeit at his side, David stood in Hana’s office. As he had expected, the office was neat: its one photograph, of Munira at an earlier age, showed a smiling child too young to cover her dark, glossy hair. From Hana’s second-story window at the law school he could see much of the campus. Situated on a hill surrounded by pines, the buildings were white and modern, and the students looked much like students anywhere, a mix of young men and women smoking and chatting or hurrying from place to place, save that some of the women were covered. On the surface, there was little to suggest the seedbed of radicalism that had produced Jefar and Hassan. But throughout its recent history, Birzeit had been repeatedly closed or encircled by the IDF.

  Its president, Fatima Khalil, a stout, handsome woman in her fifties, elaborated for David’s benefit. “Between ’87 and ’91,” she began, “when Hana and Saeb hoped to study here, the IDF closed us altogether. When our professors tried to hold classes in their apartments or homes, the IDF raided them. By 2000, they had closed Birzeit fourteen times.

  “What has happened since 2000 is no better—merely different. For a short time in 2002, the IDF imposed a curfew in most of our cities, under which you could not leave your home for more than three to four hours a week. Kids couldn’t go to school, or adults to work.” Though her demeanor remained calm, Khalil’s voice became harsher. “During this time, the IDF killed seventeen people in Ramallah. The hospital staff was forced to keep them in refrigerators and, finally, to dig up a parking lot and bury them beneath it. Even the dead, it seemed, had a curfew.”

  “And here?”

  “The IDF ringed our campus with checkpoints and obstructed access roads with concrete blocks and mounds of earth. At one point they blocked food supplies and cut off our water and telephone communications. We were a hornet’s nest of radicals, they claimed, and then proceeded to radicalize still more of us.” Khalil’s eyes were both angry and sad. “My daughter is such a person. She was a student here, a soft, gentle girl who studied literature and wrote stories. One day, she participated in a peaceful protest against the IDF. Israeli soldiers threw her in a jeep and stomped on her arms and legs until she fainted from the pain. Then they dumped her by the road like garbage.”

 
“Is she all right?”

  “She had no permanent damage,” Khalil answered simply. “Except in her heart: after this incident, she could not encounter a checkpoint without screaming at the soldiers with a hatred I never knew her to possess. Her father and I sent her to school in Turkey just to keep her out of prison.” Khalil walked to the window and gazed out at the students scurrying across the campus between classes. “Among our students, to be sure, are Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Al Aqsa. Now we are famous for Hassan and Jefar. But when I look at these young people, what I see is waste and loss.

  “While they’re here, we assist them financially in every way we can— education is the lifeblood of the nation we hope to build. But after graduation day, where will these young people go? Our economy is a shambles. For the educated intelligentsia—would-be engineers or lawyers forced to become laborers or waiters—the index of despair is still higher. I sometimes think of all these young people—our students and the Israelis sent to be their jailers, both frightened of each other—and imagine them on a tragic collision course from which neither can find an exit. But, except for the soldiers who die here, the young Israelis can leave their nightmare behind. Our nightmare never ends.”

  Listening, David could sense what the IDF found so combustible in Birzeit: charismatic teachers inflamed by impotence and confinement; thwarted students, their resentment kindled by the sharpening of their minds. “But you didn’t come here,” Khalil told him with a self-deprecating smile, “to consider problems quite so cosmic. From your e-mail, I know you wish to learn more about Hana and Saeb Khalid. As did the Shin Bet and the IDF, who spent an entire day in this very room.”

  David turned to face her. “What did they want to know?”

  “Much the same as you. For example, that the computers and printers used by all our professors are standard, like the one you see on Hana’s desk.”

  “And the paper?”

  “Also standard—any professor or student could, in theory, have typed and printed the telephone number on the paper given to Iyad Hassan.” Khalil smiled wryly. “By training, I’m a lawyer, and so I’ve tried to think along with you. What I’ve just said, regrettably, does not explain why Hana’s fingerprints are on the paper.”

  “No. It doesn’t.” David leaned against the desk. “Who had access to this office?”

  “Before Hana was arrested? In theory, anyone.” Khalil sat in Hana’s chair, looking up at him with curiosity. “Do you know if she locked her office?”

  David felt them circling the subject of Saeb Khalid. “Only at night,” he answered. “No one else had a key, she tells me.”

  Khalil nodded. “I know from our records that we gave Saeb and Hana a computer and printer to use at home, the same as these. What paper they used there I’m not sure.”

  For a moment, David studied the photograph of Munira, wondering what, if anything, was indicated by the absence of a photograph of Saeb, or of husband, wife, and child together. “The fingerprints are problematic,” he said at length. “For someone to frame Hana, she would have had to give them the paper herself. Otherwise, they would have had to use a piece of paper they knew already had her fingerprints.” He placed a hand on Hana’s printer. “This holds about fifty sheets. When Hana refilled it, she might leave prints on the first sheet or the last, but not on those in between. So someone walking into her office to steal a piece of paper couldn’t assume that her prints would appear on the top paper. Only the bottom.”

  “So they would have to be clever.”

  “Or lucky.” Unless they lived with her, David thought but did not say.

  Khalil folded her hands, pensive. “The Israelis also wanted both of their personal files. And as you did in your e-mail, they asked about Saeb’s absences from teaching.”

  David kept his tone neutral. “He has a heart condition, I was told. I gather he sees a Jordanian specialist in Amman.”

  Khalil smiled thinly. “The condition must be serious—one leaves the West Bank at one’s peril, never knowing if the IDF will allow you to return. That’s why I no longer take vacations.” Her smile vanished. “During the 1967 war, my brother fled to Amman. They never let him back; thirty-five years later, he was not allowed to attend our father’s funeral. Too radical, they said.”

  “How did Saeb and Hana get back here after Harvard?”

  “Good question. Perhaps the forces of international beneficence played a hand, as they did in educating them in America.” Khalil smoothed the pleats of her dress. “A better question is why they let Saeb return from Jordan, given how outspoken he’s been since coming here. I suppose they reviewed his medical records and did not wish to be accused of murdering a sick man by denying him the care he needs.”

  “Have you seen his medical records?”

  Khalil shook her head. “We took him at his word. Does he look well to you?”

  “Neither well,” David said sardonically, “nor happy.”

  Khalil laughed softly. “Happiness, I believe, is not in his nature. Nor is he a fount of self-revelation.

  “You asked for specific information about his absences, so I went back and checked our records. He made six trips to Amman, each lasting up to a week, with the most recent being just over three months ago. Two weeks, in other words, before Saeb, Hana, and Munira all traveled to America.” Her expression became pensive. “Again, that the Israelis let either of them go is a bit of a surprise. I guess they have more violent people to worry about— or thought they did. Even paranoids have real enemies, and every day they spend here earns them more.”

  David studied her, then decided to be blunt. “Was Saeb with Hamas?”

  Khalil’s eyes narrowed. “I make it my business not to know these things, and so I don’t. As to Saeb or Hana, I know nothing.”

  “What about Jefar and Hassan?”

  “I know only their backgrounds. Both are from refugee camps: for Jefar, Jenin; for Hassan, Aida—another version of hell. As for whether they’re Al Aqsa, you’d have to ask whoever in Al Aqsa is still alive. Not that you’ll be able to find them: the Israelis are looking to kill the rest, and meeting with you is too big a risk for Al Aqsa to take.”

  “What about classes? Did either Jefar or Hassan know Saeb or Hana?”

  “I know Iyad Hassan had one class with Saeb. But that means little or nothing. Saeb is very popular; the classes are too large for him to meet or remember every student.”

  And yet, David reflected, Amjad Madji had remembered Hassan, who was made singular by his anger and his disdain for women. Khalil picked up the photo of Munira. “Such a bright smile,” she remarked. “She seems to smile less now, like many of our children.

  “One of our teachers tracked five children from elementary school to age eighteen. The young ones wanted to be artists, or writers, or musicians. By high school, one boy had seen his girlfriend die when the IDF blew up her house, allegedly a terrorist haven; a girl’s brother was beaten at a checkpoint; another girl’s father was in jail. And their vision of the future had narrowed to hatred of Israelis.” Khalil replaced the photograph, still examining Munira’s face. “Hana and I spoke of this. Munira was her anchor, I often thought—Hana wanted a better life for her in Palestine, not perpetual war with Israel in the name of some Islamic dream.”

  “So you don’t see her as a murderer?”

  Khalil gave him a level gaze. “Hana, like me, is a mother. We would do anything to protect our children. That is why my daughter is in Turkey.

  “We don’t abandon our daughters, or want them to be martyrs. If someone could prove that Hana involved herself in this assassination to protect Munira from harm—then, yes, I would believe it. Until then, I would tell you it’s impossible.”

  19

  That evening David met Hana’s closest friend, Nisreen Awad, at Stones, a restaurant in Ramallah.

  Stones was not what David expected. A two-level café, all glass and steel beams, it was jammed with young people eating and smoking and drinking at the bar a
s multinational music pulsed from the sound system. Nor was Nisreen quite what he had imagined: tall, full-figured, and striking, she sat with David, smoking from a hookah and speaking with an insouciance more suggestive of a bohemian than the serious lawyer David knew her to be—Hana’s colleague in negotiations with Israel before Hana had quit in anger. “So I’m to be a character witness?” Nisreen said. “I’ll try to improve on my character between then and now. A bit like clearing out the Augean stables, some would say.” Puffing from the hookah, she looked at David with evident amusement. “You were expecting someone else?”

  “Maybe someone a little more repressed.”

  “I work very hard to avoid that. It probably helps that I’m a Christian, and not married to Saeb Khalid.” She waved a hand at the crowd; many people were wearing blue jeans, as was she. “Ramallah is shot full of contradictions. Many of these people are Christians, traditionally more affluent and better educated. But just outside the city is a refugee camp filled with people who don’t know that a place like this exists. They are Muslim, and grindingly poor. Needless to say, their women do not come here.”

  “How do Palestinians handle the contradictions?”

  “Not easily. We are a much more open society than many Arab countries—there’s more education, and women have a stronger voice. But many Christians have left for the U.S. or Europe, and many Muslims do not believe in a secular democratic government.” Nisreen took a deep hit on the water pipe, exhaling smoke in a sinuous stream, which evanesced in the darkness. “Whether these problems heal or fester depends in great measure on whether the Israelis believe their own rhetoric about peace. Hana thinks they don’t, which is why she still despises them.”

  This last remark troubled David—he could imagine Marnie Sharpe teasing out of Nisreen a portrait of Hana that made hatred of Israel central to her recent past. “Because of Munira,” Nisreen went on, “it’s hard to believe that Hana was involved in killing Ben-Aron. But too many people have heard her call the Israelis imperialists, and Ben-Aron a pious phony.” Her voice became emphatic. “A warning, then: if you try to pass her off as Mother Teresa, this prosecutor may jam it down your throat.”