Exile: a novel

by Richard North Patterson

  “We bonded.”

  To David’s surprise, Ashawi grinned. “He has a certain point of view. But I suspect he may be helping you, even as we speak.”

  Three Palestinian boys, perhaps ten or eleven, careened around the wall and into an alley. In a cloud of dust, a jeep filled with armed men in uniforms and sunglasses pulled up in hot pursuit. They jumped out, weapons drawn; their leader, a burly man with a brutish face, barked at David and Ashawi in Hebrew. Curtly, Ashawi answered, shaking his head. The men rushed down the alley, looking from side to side.

  “Russians.” Ashawi spat the word. “Private security guards for the settlement. No doubt those young criminals threw rocks at them.

  “Israel proclaims that no one in this camp can return to where their grandparents lived. But they welcomed one million of the stupidest louts Russia ever puked up, simply because they claim to be Jews. So here they are at Aida. Let’s hope to God they don’t kill anyone but themselves. At least until we get out of here.”

  They went looking for Hassan’s mother.

  She welcomed them in the common room of her shabby dwelling, a small woman shrouded in black that concealed all but her face and hands. Her wrinkled eyelids partially covered eyes that gazed past David toward some indeterminate place that might not exist on earth. Also dressed in black, a thin young woman with a sentinel’s protective bearing, Iyad Hassan’s sister, sat beside their mother. To David, the windowless room suggested the vistas life afforded them.

  David and Ashawi sat on the carpet, facing the two women. Softly, Ashawi offered what sounded like their condolences, as David tried to imagine Iyad Hassan, the obdurate killer of Ben-Aron, growing up in such a place. Though his mother’s face was without expression, tears surfaced in her eyes.

  At the end of Ashawi’s speech, the woman murmured a few words. “She thanks us,” Ashawi said without turning from her. “She mourns for her son.”

  “Does she know why he did this? The example of his sister-in-law?”

  Ashawi paused, formulating the question, then spoke a few quiet words. Briefly answering, the woman shook her head. “No,” Ashawi translated, “Iyad chose his destiny long before.”

  “What does she mean?”

  Ashawi spoke again. The woman looked down, then began to answer, at first slowly, and then with greater heat. David saw the daughter’s hand clasp her mother’s wrist. “His sister doesn’t like what she’s saying,” Ashawi explained. “But the mother claims Iyad’s journey started at eleven, when he went to an Islamic school. One day she came there to pick him up. A sign on the wall read, ‘Israel has nuclear bombs, we have human bombs.’ Then she heard Iyad reciting, ‘I will make my body a bomb that will blast the flesh of Zionists, the sons of pigs and monkeys.’ His zeal scared her.”

  Abruptly, the woman spoke again, her voice tinged with sorrow. “Iyad began praying constantly,” Ashawi interpreted. “He was always at the mosque, late at night and early in the morning. She tried believing that this was normal. But then he became quieter, barely speaking to her. Only later did she learn that he had been watching films of martyrs who had died killing Jews.”

  “Who were his friends?” David asked.

  As Ashawi posed the question, Iyad’s sister’s eyes narrowed. The mother hesitated, then answered. “They were from the mosque,” Ashawi related. “Also Iyad’s soccer club. In 1998, the soccer club even went to Jordan, then Iran.”

  David was instantly alert. “A fundamentalist school, a mosque for martyrs, a ‘soccer club’ that visits Iran. What does that sound like to you?”

  “I know.” Ashawi tried to keep his tone matter-of-fact, to avoid unsettling the women. “But if I ask the question, the daughter may cut us off.”

  “Let’s try a diversion, then. Ask the daughter how she feels about Iyad’s death.”

  Turning to the younger woman, Ashawi spoke. She tensed, then emitted a few sharp words. “She is proud of Iyad,” Ashawi said. “He was a man of faith, not like the sons of whores who are Al Aqsa, propping up the corruption of Fatah.”

  David watched the daughter’s face. “Can’t quite stifle her biases, can she.”

  “It seems not,” Ashawi said. “But I’m surprised that there aren’t minders here, to keep either of them from talking to us. God knows what kind of men may be showing up.”

  “Then we’d better get to the point. Ask who led Iyad to become a martyr.”

  Ashawi spoke briefly. The daughter shook her head, refusing to answer. With sudden bitterness, the mother said, “Hamas.”

  Her daughter turned to her, gripping her wrist more tightly. Defiantly, the woman repeated, “Hamas,” then continued in an accusatory tone. “It was Hamas,” Ashawi translated swiftly. “Hamas ran the school, the mosque, and the club—”

  Hassan’s sister interrupted, speaking hurriedly. “They know nothing about Iyad’s time at Birzeit,” Ashawi paraphrased, “or who was involved with him in killing Ben-Aron.”

  “Ask the mother if there’s anything else she can tell us about her son.”

  Listening, the mother gazed at the floor. Then, breaking from her daughter’s grasp, she went to another room and returned with a spiral notebook, which she placed in Ashawi’s hands. “Iyad’s diary,” Ashawi told David. “She hid it from the Jews.”

  As Ashawi read, Iyad’s sister addressed him in a vehement tone. “We can’t keep it,” Ashawi told David. “Anyhow, this reads like eyewash—a lot of religious fervor without any names or details. Except, at the end, there’s a telephone number.”

  “Memorize it, if you can.”

  Ashawi stared at the page. Then, speaking softly, he gave the notebook back to Hassan’s mother. She answered in a few tired words.

  “We are welcome, she says. But it is time for us to go.”

  Nodding to both women, David followed Ashawi out the door, leaving behind a mother’s grief, a sister’s anger, and their rupture over a martyr’s death.

  In the jeep, Ashawi wrote down the telephone number for David, then tapped it out on his cell phone, listening intently when someone answered. Tersely, he said, “That was Birzeit. The School of International Relations.”

  “Saeb Khalid’s school,” David answered.

  At the hotel, David scribbled notes, sorting through what he had learned: the relationship between Hillel Markis and Barak Lev; the unhappiness of Hana’s marriage; Saeb’s access to her computer at home and in her office; Muhammad Nasir’s denial that Al Aqsa was connected to Hana or the plot against Ben-Aron; Saeb’s extended trips to Jordan; Iyad Hassan’s connection to Hamas and, perhaps, to Iran; Hassan’s class with Saeb. In themselves, the facts were tantalizing. But the information to weave these disparate threads into a design, if there was one, remained beyond his grasp.

  Mentally exhausted, David began packing. He was traveling to Lebanon, as he had promised Hana, to see her mother and father. Though curious, he did not expect the trip to be rewarding. But he would not be sorry to leave the West Bank, and not only because of the sense, alien before now, that as a Jew he might be the subject of undifferentiated loathing. He also felt the soul-wearing pressure of occupation, of becoming an accidental member of a population whose sole interest to the occupier was that one might be a suicide bomber. The Promised Land, which many on each side believed was promised them alone, might be consumed not merely by hatred and violence but also by the most banal of human faults—a failure to imagine the life of another. The only common denominator of occupation was that it degraded everyone.

  What he needed most, David told himself, was sleep.

  Stripping off his shirt, he noticed an envelope that had been slipped beneath his door. Hopeful, he ripped it open. Inside, awkwardly translated into English, were the files of Saeb’s doctor in Ramallah.

  As he read, David exhaled. If the files were legitimate, Saeb suffered from a serious cardiac arrhythmia, which might, under certain circumstances, become a fatal heart attack. There was a referral to a specialist in Amman; records of
examinations to confirm Saeb’s visits. By all appearances, Saeb Khalid was a very sick man.

  But not so sick, David noted, that his medical examinations in Jordan took more than a day. Then he found a second curiosity: Saeb had asked his doctor in Ramallah to send certain specimens, not otherwise described, to the only lab the doctor knew sophisticated enough to perform the tests required. A lab in Tel Aviv.

  Calling Zev Ernheit, David arranged to meet him in Jerusalem. But first David had a promise to keep, in Lebanon.

  25

  On a hot Tuesday morning in Beirut, David honored his promise to Hana.

  By now the refugee camp of Shatila seemed familiar. Even the rubble, preserved for a quarter century, evoked the ruins in Jenin, except that it was more extensive, haunted by more ghosts and the horror of systematic slaughter. He could not help but think of Saeb Khalid, a boy of fourteen, forced to watch the rape of his sister and the murder of his family.

  At the community center, David got directions to the home of Hana’s parents, located in the section named for the village they had fled as children. It was a concrete rectangle among several others like it that lined both sides of a narrow alley that smelled of sewage. With considerable trepidation, David knocked on the wooden door.

  When a white-haired woman answered, David knew at once who she was. Slight and wiry, she had clear brown eyes that contrasted with a face lined with age and care and the harsh simplicity of her life. Maha Arif was like a glimpse of Hana’s future had she not left this place and culture— although, David knew, Hana had never wholly parted from it. Maha looked up at him suspiciously while David absorbed the fact that this small Arab woman was Hana’s mother.

  “I’m David Wolfe,” he told her. “Hana’s lawyer. She asked me to come see you.”

  The name Hana drew a sharp, querying look, expressive of fear and hope. David realized that he had overlooked the gulf between Hana and her parents. “I’m American,” David said. “Do you know someone who speaks English?”

  The woman held up her hand, then disappeared inside the house, leaving the door ajar. David heard voices speaking Arabic, and then a stocky middle-aged man with a dark mustache came to greet him. “I’m Basim,” he said, “Hana’s uncle.”

  Once again, David identified himself. “Please,” Basim said, opening the door wide.

  David followed him into a small sitting room, not unlike that of Iyad Hassan’s mother, but with a window to the alley, affording a swath of natural light, which fell on a stunted olive tree in a pot. An older, gray-haired man with a gaunt face gazed at him warily through thick glasses that suggested extreme myopia. “This is Yousif,” Basim explained, “Hana’s father.”

  Basim spoke a few phrases to Yousif and Maha while Yousif blinked at David as though he had just dropped in from the moon. David had a painful, incongruous vision of Hana’s parents and his own—the Jewish psychiatrist and the professor of English—trying to converse as Hana translated. Eyes fixed on David, Maha Arif spoke in a burst of Arabic.

  “She needs to know,” Basim translated, “if her daughter will be safe.”

  Facing Hana’s mother, David answered, “For now, she is safe. I promise I’ll do my best to free her.”

  Basim translated this, and then Maha’s next interrogation: “Did you go with Hana to the school for lawyers?”

  In the life Hana shared with them, David realized, he had never existed. “Yes,” he said simply. “I knew her at Harvard.”

  A film of tears came to the woman’s eyes. “Since Hana went to America,” Basim explained, “her mother has rarely seen her. Of Hana’s child, she has only pictures.”

  Belatedly, Maha requested that he sit with them on the worn pillows scattered across the carpet, then offered him tea. Abruptly, Yousif Arif spoke in a tone both mournful and harsh. “He prays that his daughter can find justice in America,” Basim translated. “There is no justice here.”

  Since Hana’s father was a child, David reflected, this place was all he knew. David thought of Maha’s sister—Hana’s aunt—buried beneath the ruins of her home. “In America,” David said, “there is justice.”

  “Even for Palestinians?” Basim asked sharply.

  “Yes.”

  When Basim translated, Yousif spoke more vehemently. “Here,” Basim said for him, “we are prisoners. There is no work for us, and we are not allowed to be citizens. This poor olive tree you see is all that remains of our real home. And now they may take our daughter’s life.”

  Maha spoke again, her voice urgent. “Are you a good lawyer?” Basim translated.

  “Yes,” David answered simply, “I’m a very good lawyer.”

  As Basim translated, the first trace of relief appeared in Maha’s eyes. Now she spoke in a quieter voice. “That is what her daughter deserves,” Basim explained. “Hana has a fine husband, from a good family. But Saeb is not a lawyer. Now only a lawyer can save her.”

  Hearing these words, David recalled Hana quoting her mother’s warning: Please do not love anyone in America. And wished that he could say to her: If Hana had been free to love me, now she would be safe. Instead, he merely nodded.

  “And how is my granddaughter?” Maha asked through Basim. “Is she afraid?”

  David hesitated. “She has her father,” he answered. “And like her mother, she is strong, and very smart.”

  When this was translated, Yousif gave his wife a look, then responded through Basim. “Does she also talk back like her mother?”

  “Yes. Hana told me that Munira is your revenge on her.”

  Yousif made a clicking sound with his tongue, and then his brief smile vanished. This time his voice was guttural. “She did not kill the Jew,” Basim said for him.

  David was not sure whether this was a statement or a question. “No,” he answered. “She did not kill Amos Ben-Aron.”

  “Then it is all Zionist lies,” Basim persisted.

  “It is someone’s lies,” David answered. “I mean to find out whose.”

  When Basim translated this, Hana’s mother looked at him dubiously. What went unspoken, he supposed, was her belief in the depth of the Zionists’ perfidy, their bottomless disdain for the rights of Palestinians. Choosing to divert the conversation, David passed on Sausan’s greetings. “Her grandfather,” Yousif answered through Basim, “was my father’s brother. But he remained. He was married to a Jew.”

  This was his only response. Belatedly, Maha said, “We do not know Sausan. He remembers her father only as a child.”

  Yousif spoke again. “It is unnatural,” Basim translated, his expression conveying the sadness of Yousif ’s words. “Families are cut off from their land, and divided from one another. Yousif sells Maha’s sweets from a handcart in the street, a man without his daughter or granddaughter. It is not a life; it is the shadow of a life.”

  Sitting beside him, Maha touched her husband’s sleeve, speaking to him quietly. Basim hesitated, then told David, “They get by, she says.”

  Yousif did not seem to hear this. “When we fled,” he said through Basim, “my parents left our teacups on the table, to show that we would come back to refill them. They did not imagine dying in this place.”

  As though to affirm her husband’s memory, Maha spoke to Basim. “There were olive trees,” Basim told David. “Lemon trees, as well. She says she can still smell them.”

  “Can you?” David asked.

  Basim’s smile was almost bitter. “Some days I believe I can. But I was born here. My memories are of the Phalange.”

  At the word “Phalange” Maha’s expression darkened. Standing stiffly, Yousif reached into the drawer of a battered table. With swollen fingers, he removed a wrinkled paper, turned sepia by the passage of time, and held it out to David.

  To David’s surprise, it was written in English. “It is a registered land document,” Basim explained, “issued by the British government of Palestine. It proves Yousif ’s title to his father’s home.”

  David thought of its ru
ined walls, its shattered ceramic plates. Yet, to Hana’s parents, the house remained as it was when they were children, a place to which they might return, in a time that still existed. This was as impossible for David to imagine as Hana and Munira existing in such a place. Yet Hana wore her grandfather’s key, and Munira recited his memories.

  Carefully watching David’s face, Maha spoke to him. “When you saw Sausan,” Basim asked for her, “did she take you to our village?”

  David looked into the eyes of Hana’s mother. “No,” he answered softly. “But it sounds beautiful. I hope you will see it again someday.”

  As Basim repeated his words in Arabic, Maha’s eyes filmed: she seemed to know that she would never return, and that David knew this, too. Reaching out, she touched his wrist, the lightness of her hand a ghost of Hana’s. “I just want to hold my daughter,” she said. “Please save her from our enemies.”

  26

  On his last night before flying home, David met with Zev Ernheit at Katie’s Restaurant in Jerusalem.

  Katie’s was small and intimate, with candlelit tables and a voluble proprietress, a Moroccan Jew who bantered with Ernheit before bringing their wine. “And so,” Ernheit asked of David’s time in the West Bank, “what were your impressions?”

  “That the occupation’s a disaster,” David answered bluntly. “For everyone.”

  Ernheit spread his hands. “What choice do we have? Hours ago, at a checkpoint in Ramallah, we caught a twenty-year-old from Hamas carrying a bomb and an IDF uniform. That’s the balance sheet for today— thousands of Arabs inconvenienced, unknown Jewish lives saved from another terrorist. Would you prefer that they died?”

  “What I’d prefer is that sane people on both sides find a way out.” David put down his wineglass. “What in hell are settlers doing in Hebron?”