Exile: a novel

by Richard North Patterson

  Three hours later they reached the outskirts of Jenin.

  The city itself was graffiti-scarred and denuded of trees, its dingy streets and shuttered buildings bespeaking a dire poverty. At the entrance to the refugee camp was an enormous multicolored metal horse, salvaged from the scraps of cars and trucks and ambulances blown up by Israeli rockets. The street beyond was cramped, shabby, and choked with run-down cars, through which a dark-haired child on a battered bike forged a twisted path past two-story concrete buildings caked with dirt and covered with painted slogans. This was not a “camp,” David thought—it was a third-world slum in a war zone, haven to Al Aqsa and Hamas, a cousin to the place where Hana was born and Saeb’s parents murdered.

  They met Ala Jibril outside the community center, a two-story stucco building tucked in a narrow alley. He was a large, almost shambling man with hooded eyes, a somber mien that rarely changed, and a voice that was soft but deep. He helped run the center, Jibril explained vaguely, and it was his task to show David the life his people were forced to live. He said this as though David were a tourist or a social worker, not a Jewish-American lawyer seeking out Al Aqsa.

  While Jamal waited outside, David and Jibril entered a rehabilitation clinic for children. Following Jibril down a hallway, David saw posters of Donald Duck and Winnie the Pooh juxtaposed with photos of fighters brandishing weapons. At its end was an open room where three children were stretched out on tables, their atrophied legs exposed, being treated by therapists for the effects of cerebral palsy.

  “We have seven such therapists,” Jibril told David. “But it is not enough.”

  “Why so much cerebral palsy?”

  Jibril gazed at the children. “The occupation. Children born at checkpoints, or to mothers discouraged from giving birth at hospitals, may not receive sufficient oxygen; mothers take medications without proper medical advice; childhood fevers go untreated. This is the result.”

  From one of the tables, a bright-eyed child smiled up at David. But her flaccid legs showed little sign of life.

  At the school, a brisk, dark-haired teacher named Reem led David to a playroom with carpets depicting hippos, rhinos, and elephants; desks where children drew; and shelves filled with games and toys. It would have seemed quite normal, save that the small boy drawing at a desk wore a prosthesis where his left leg had once been.

  Reem followed David’s gaze. “The IDF,” she said simply. “The boy’s father was Hamas. But war is not so easily confined.

  “For us, it is devastating to see children maimed by the land mines and grenades the Israelis left behind. And troubling to watch them using the ruins of a tank to play at combat, or repeatedly drawing rockets, bombs, and soldiers, or fighting among themselves.” She pointed to the toy shelves. “You will see we have no guns or swords. Our purpose here is play therapy, our goal to relieve the psychological pressures on children traumatized by violence. Our hope, in the end, is to teach them that violence only breeds more violence.”

  David thought of Sausan Arif, wrestling with the impulses of children who had come to her school from Jenin. It was strange to think of her now, separated from Jenin by fifteen miles and a wire fence. Nodding toward the boy at the desk, David said, “Would he mind if I looked at his drawing?”

  Reem walked over to the child, speaking quietly. When the boy shrugged, she beckoned David to come. His picture was a happy one—the figures of a mother, father, and child, standing at the edge of an ocean he no doubt had never seen. But then, David remembered, the boy’s own father was dead. The boy himself did not look up.

  Reem walked with the two men as they left the school. The hallway leading to the street was lined with photographs of children. But these children were dead: a girl of six or seven, lying in a pool of her own blood; another dead girl fallen next to her two dead brothers, her features unrecognizable; a dark-haired boy in a coffin. The photographs were meant to evoke both horror and sympathy. But, in David, they also provoked disquiet: what did a child emerging from a playroom stripped of violent toys learn from this tableau of violence and revenge? The last poster suggested an answer: a young Palestinian man with an assault weapon, a portrait of resistance and resolve. Turning to Reem, David said, “Do your children ask about these posters?”

  She could not seem to look at him. “When the Israelis leave us in peace,” she murmured, “there will be no posters.”

  On the way to what Jibril called the Martyrs Cemetery, he pointed out damage from the IDF incursion. Next to a row of houses being rebuilt from rubble was the shell of a bombed-out home. “This is where Zacharias Ibaide lived,” Jibril told David and Jamal. “Once he attended a camp with our children and Jewish children, the work of a peace activist from Israel. But when he grew older and still there was no peace, he joined Al Aqsa. In its effort to kill him, the IDF instead killed his mother and father.

  “Now our children play in the ruins of his home and find the remnants of missiles fired by F-16s, sent to Israel by your country. Those who are older recall the IDF coming in a hail of missiles, tank fire, and bullets.” Staring at the rubble, he said more quietly, “The Israelis claim to have killed only ‘terrorists.’ In the cemetery lie two retarded men, murdered running through the streets because they did not know any better. For them, the ‘terrorists’ were the Jews who took their lives.”

  “Welcome to hell,” Jamal told David. “A collaboration of the Jewish and the Americans. Who often are the same.”

  Near the cemetery, they passed another bombed-out three-story house, hollow from its roof to its foundation. In the empty lot beside it was a bullet-riddled car, its windows shattered, its hood bedecked in flowers. “My cousin’s,” Jibril explained phlegmatically. “He was Al Aqsa, assassinated by a special unit of the IDF.”

  Set in the bare red earth beside these ruins, the Martyrs Cemetery had begun with fifty-eight graves, dug after the IDF incursion; now it included many more dead. Entering, the three men stood among concrete rectangles inscribed in Arabic, most surrounded by beds of flowers. “To our left are two brothers,” Jibril told David, “assassinated by the IDF. To our right is the man who owned the house you just saw, buried without his head. Beside his grave lies my cousin.

  “The smaller monuments are for children or infants—you can guess their age from the size of their tombstones.” Jibril pointed to a monument at the center of the cemetery. “That is for my uncle, seventy years old when we pulled him from beneath the rubble of his house. Long before that he had ceased to be a threat to anyone. As for the children, death deprived them of the opportunity.”

  “There are others who should be here,” Jamal added bitterly. “Our martyrs who died in Israel. But the Jewish refuse to send them back.”

  The man’s obtuseness frayed David’s self-control. “Perhaps,” he suggested, “they were hard to distinguish from their victims. Body parts tend to look alike.” Turning to Jibril, David said, “In Israel, I met three survivors of the restaurant bombing in Haifa. The IDF claims that this was its reprisal.”

  “Not at all,” Jibril answered without irony. “This is what the world fails to understand. The bombing in Haifa was our reprisal against the IDF— which four times previously tried to enter our camp—and for the martyrs who died resisting. Don’t believe that we are by nature killers and fighters. If we have become that, the Israelis have made us so.”

  David thought of Shoshanna Ravit, and Eli and Myra Landau, their unfathomable loss and grief. But for so many who had suffered in this land there was no suffering but theirs. Here people died not just from bombs and bullets but from the death of empathy.

  “What do you think of this?” Jibril asked David.

  David gazed at the cemetery. “I think there are no words that matter.”

  Shoulders slumped, Jibril seemed to weigh this ambiguous response. Then he nodded. “Tonight you will be my guest for dinner. Later, if you are fortunate, you will meet someone. He may have the knowledge you are seeking.”

  Th
at night, after dinner at a modest restaurant on the outskirts of Jenin, Jibril led David and Jamal to the back room of another restaurant and then, after receiving a call on his cell phone, into the darkness of the camp.

  Jibril took them once again to the Martyrs Cemetery. Silent, they waited in the cool night air. A quarter moon barely illuminated the tomb-stones, creating dim outlines of varied shapes and sizes. David felt a chill on the back of his neck; warily, Jibril glanced upward, as though expecting gunships from the IDF. No one spoke.

  As David glanced around him, the shadow of a tombstone seemed to change shape, growing taller in an eerie apparition. Then a second shadow arose, and David heard soft footfalls as moonlight transformed the shadows into two men in dark clothes and stocking masks, each with an assault weapon cradled in one arm.

  The first gunman spoke softly to Jibril in Arabic. Following the two gunmen, Jibril waved David and Jamal forward, passing the bullet-riddled car and walking single file down an alley so dark and narrow that David could barely see. Abruptly, a door opened, expelling a pale light; with hurried gestures, a third gunman in a stocking mask waved them inside. “All of us must stay,” Jibril whispered to David. “They wish to have no mistakes.”

  The third gunman led them through a hallway to a bare center room without windows, illuminated by a single lamp—someone’s dwelling, David thought, with a carpet, couch, and chairs. The third man sat in the chair, flanked by the two armed men from the cemetery. With a curt gesture, he indicated that David, Jibril, and Jamal should sit facing him on the couch. Resting the M-16 on his lap, he slowly peeled off the stocking mask, revealing himself as a man of roughly thirty with a two-day stubble, and bright black eyes beneath which David saw the bruises of sleep deprivation.

  “I am Muhammad Nasir,” the man said, “commander of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in Jenin.” As though feeling David’s tension, Nasir gave him an ironic smile. “Forgive this drama. But the IDF means to kill me—I stay nowhere for more than an hour, perhaps less. And your record in Israel is not encouraging.”

  He spoke with a weary resignation, too tired for bravado or even animation, except that his eyes kept darting to the doorway. For the second time in his life, David felt that he was watching a man condemned to die; like David’s father, there was death in this man’s face, the difference being that Nasir was awake to see it coming. “Jenin was once my home,” he told David, “such as it was. After the bombing in Haifa, the Israelis came with their gunships, tanks, and soldiers, destroying houses, even pissing in our women’s cooking pans. Now they blame us for Ben-Aron.”

  A slender man brought tea in cups—the owner of the house, David guessed, nervously fulfilling his role of host before he disappeared again. After accepting the tea with a courteous nod, Nasir turned to David and said bluntly, “You wish to know the truth about Hana Arif. For better or worse.”

  David nodded, teacup cradled in both palms. With the trace of a smile, Nasir said, “To her lasting shame, she is not ours.”

  David felt the release of pressure, the beating of his own pulse. “You’re certain.”

  “Of course. I have asked our people in Birzeit. As far as they can tell, her entire contribution to the liberation of Palestine is angry words. A cheap commodity.” His voice took on an edge. “It is hard to know which is more insulting—that we would be fool enough to assassinate Ben-Aron, or to use this woman to do it. But Ibrahim Jefar was ours, and this is enough for the IDF. And so we are dying for a lie.”

  “Tell me about Jefar.”

  Nasir lit a cigarette, puffing with a distracted, fretful quality. “A boy,” he said, with a combination of compassion and disdain, “who thought to avenge his sister by becoming a martyr.

  “Some in Al Aqsa see a value in this. I do not. When Jefar came to me with the hope of revenge, I tried to convince him that it was better to preserve his life, to see whether Marwan Faras, our leader, could bring us peace and our own state.” Nasir took another hasty puff, his next words emerging on a cloud of smoke. “If Faras failed, I told him, better to kill the soldiers of the IDF than to butcher children at a shopping mall.”

  “How did he react?”

  “We have seen how he reacted—by killing the wrong Jew at the wrong time. Perhaps blowing up Ben-Aron was too historic to be missed, even though the cost is the destruction of Al Aqsa.” Nasir’s voice was quiet but steely. “Whoever used Jefar meant for that to happen. This makes sense no other way.”

  “Jefar seems to believe he was acting for Al Aqsa.”

  “Jefar should be dead,” Nasir countered with sudden vehemence. “Why did he live? Here is my answer: to tell his make-believe story.”

  “What if he’s telling the truth as he knows it?”

  “Then Hassan was lying to him. And Hassan is not Al Aqsa.”

  One of the masked bodyguards, David saw, glanced nervously at his watch, then spoke to Nasir in Arabic. In a clipped voice, Nasir told David, “My friend thinks we should not pass much more time here—”

  “Who did Hassan belong to?” David inquired urgently.

  “Ask yourself, Who wins by this? Hamas. Al Aqsa supports Fatah and Marwan Faras; our ranks include Christians and the secular; many of us prefer killing Zionists here instead of in Israel. We will even live with a Jewish state if they end the occupation, dismantle their settlements, release our prisoners, and compensate us for expelling our fathers from their land. For us, that is enough.” Nasir’s eyes burned brighter. “Not for Hamas. They want nothing less than to destroy Israel and establish an Islamic Palestine from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. Between Hamas and Al Aqsa is a blood feud. First, Hamas wants us eradicated; then they wish to take over the Palestinian Authority; then they will go after the Jews.”

  David saw a young boy standing on the threshold, gazing at Nasir with shy but obvious admiration. His father came, nervously shooing him away. “If all that’s true,” David said, “then Hassan must be Hamas—”

  A loud pop interrupted him—a gunshot, or the backfire of a car. Without speaking, one of Nasir’s bodyguards headed for the door as Nasir touched the trigger of his weapon. “Hassan is from the Aida camp,” Nasir said hurriedly. “His brother was Hamas; his dead sister-in-law—the martyr from Jenin who died in Haifa—was Hamas. Our people in Aida think that Hassan himself was Hamas. His mother lives there still; if she wishes, perhaps she can tell you.” Nasir jabbed his half-smoked cigarette into a ceramic plate, grinding it to a nub. “This much I know. Whoever selected Jefar, whether Hassan or someone else, picked a dupe they could deceive, and who might well crack under pressure. That is part of their design.”

  Beside David, Jibril stirred, betraying his own apprehension. “One more question,” David said. “Is Saeb Khalid with Hamas?”

  Nasir looked up from the burning stub. “Some at Birzeit believe so,” he answered. “But they say he is a deep one, difficult to read. He knows many people. Is a meal with someone a conspiracy, or a discussion among friends? It is hard to know. Perhaps, like his wife, he is nothing but words. Perhaps not.”

  Returning, the bodyguard spoke to Nasir in a rush of Arabic. “It is time for me to go,” Nasir told David. “But there is something I must say to you.

  “I have been resisting the occupation since I was fifteen and served four years in prison for throwing a Molotov cocktail at an Israeli tank. Now I know no other life. But I am tired, and we are no closer to a homeland. Many more of us will die; many more Israelis will die like the ones at Haifa, killed to punish Jews for ignoring the misery their soldiers have unleashed.” His eyes held David’s. “If you find the truth, you must tell it to the world. That’s why I risked meeting with you. In a world that hears neither our suffering nor Al Aqsa’s denials about Ben-Aron, you may be our only hope. After us there will only be Hamas.”

  “If peace comes instead, what will you do?”

  The question seemed to take Nasir by surprise, causing him to hesitate. “I would have a family,” he answered, “and
watch my children grow up in the normal way.” But this assertion lacked conviction; he could not seem to envision a life, David sensed, beyond the one he led. Or, perhaps, beyond the next few hours or days.

  He stood abruptly. “An unusual evening for you,” he said to David. “A story to tell your children as you tuck them into bed.”

  Nasir turned to Jibril, embracing him, then placed a hand on Jamal’s shoulder, speaking with apparent warmth in Arabic. Jamal stood straighter, his slight body almost vibrating with pleasure at a hero’s blessing. A thousand Gandhis, David thought, could not have made this man so proud.

  In seconds, Muhammad Nasir had vanished into the night. Feeling the sweat on his forehead, David listened for gunshots. For the moment there was only silence.

  24

  After Jenin, the Aida camp held few surprises for David. Arriving with Nabil Ashawi, he surveyed the dispiriting environment: a building with a crudely painted mural that depicted the Palestinian flight from Israel; the IDF watchtower at the entrance to the camp; two young boys playing soldier in a dusty street. Thirty yards away, the security wall itself, looming above the camp, was being extended to seal off its inhabitants from the hilltop settlement of Gilo.

  “During the intifada,” Ashawi said, “Aida was under curfew for thirty-seven days. Twelve died here—some were members of the resistance, some merely bystanders.” He pointed to the second story of a school. “Two of them, a student and a teacher, died from Israeli shelling. After that, they filled in the windows with cement.

  “Seven thousand people live here, with no health services at all. Unemployment among the men is eighty-five percent. No wonder Hamas is thriving. Iyad Hassan was inevitable—only the name of his victim distinguishes him from others.”

  David gazed at the security wall. “Did the Israelis question his mother?”

  “They tried. But she is in mourning, and despises them. Her daughter says she told them nothing. At least you represent a Palestinian, and are coming with me as your translator. We can do no worse; maybe we’ll do better.” He gave David a sideways glance. “How did you get on with Jamal, by the way?”