Exile: a novel

by Richard North Patterson

  Gently, David said, “That was almost sixty years ago.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the girl insisted. “I want my grandfather to have his house back, as beautiful as it was.”

  How long would it be, David wondered, before the dream of return did not consume the members of Hana’s family? Munira was his daughter and yet not his daughter, estranged from him by history and deception. “The most important thing,” David told her, “is that you have your own life, and your own dreams. You can’t make up to your grandparents, or even your parents, all the things that happened to them.”

  But this was too abstract, David saw at once. Her face closing, Munira said, “They are part of me. Their struggle is our struggle, the struggle of all Palestinians.”

  This rote echo of Saeb Khalid jarred David, reminding him of the delicacy of the psychic space he suddenly occupied. He was no different from a surrogate father, except in his intentions—Munira had lived her life with others, oblivious to her power to change his life. Awkwardly, he ventured, “I know how hard things have been. I’m wondering if there’s some way I can help you.”

  Munira’s brows knit as she considered his offer. Shyly, she asked, “Would it be okay for you to buy me a cell phone?”

  Her request was so unexpected that David smiled; then he realized that, for Munira, a cell phone might be the only way of breaking her isolation. “What would your father say?” he asked.

  Munira looked down, a young girl caught between her desires and the truth. “He would be angry at you,” she conceded. “But my mother wouldn’t. She’d just tell me not to lose it.”

  David cocked his head. “So what should I do?”

  Munira looked into his face. “I have to talk with my friends,” she said with sudden fierceness. “I haven’t talked to Yasmin since the Zionist was killed.”

  “Who’s Yasmin?”

  “My best friend from Ramallah. But she’s in America now— Washington, D.C. Her parents work for the Palestinian Authority.” Her words came out in an angry rush. “When we came on this trip, my mother said I could call Yasmin every day. But then I lost my cell phone. My mother was sleeping, and I couldn’t find her phone. When I borrowed my father’s he got so mad I thought he’d kill me.”

  Sipping his coffee, David gazed across its rim at the outraged girl who was his daughter. “When was that?”

  “A long time ago.” Pausing, Munira looked at the ceiling, calculating the time of the injustice. “It was the day before, I think.”

  “Before the assassination of Amos Ben-Aron?”

  “Yes.”

  Carefully, David put down his cup. “Were you able to call Yasmin?”

  Munira nodded. “I had to leave a message.But then she called me back, and we talked until the battery died. We’d just got through talking when my father started banging on my door.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was looking for his cell phone. He opened the door and saw it in my hand. He started yelling that I’d stolen it from his coat.” Munira looked as bewildered as she sounded. “Sometimes I borrow my mom’s. But he said the phone was not to be used by children, and asked me if I’d been calling people.”

  David kept his tone neutral. “What did you say?”

  Munira looked down. “I was afraid of what would happen if I admitted that I’d used it. So I said I never did.”

  “Did he believe you?”

  “He kept asking me if I was lying, or if I was sure. I was too frightened to tell the truth. Instead I told him the battery was dead.” Munira shook her head. “But he still won’t give me another cell phone. That’s his punishment for stealing.”

  David felt a swift sequence of realizations come to him—that Saeb had kept the FBI from meeting with Munira; that he restricted her contacts with David; that she almost always saw her mother in Saeb’s company; that he’d kept her from attending a trial that featured repeated references to cell phone calls and raised the pervasive, lingering question of who else had access to her mother’s phone. Which was, perhaps, not quite the right question.

  “Just out of curiosity,” David asked mildly, “did you even see your dad actually use that phone?”

  “I can’t remember.” Munira looked vaguely troubled, as though disturbed by the aftermath of a nightmare she could no longer quite recall. “He has another one now, I think. I haven’t seen the one I took since he got it back from me.”

  David was momentarily quiet. “I’ll talk to your mom about a cell phone,” he promised. “Then maybe I’ll have a word with your dad.”

  The next morning, shortly after six a.m.—nine a.m. in Washington—David called the office of the Palestinian mission. When the receptionist answered, he identified himself as the lawyer for Hana Arif. The purpose of his call, he said, was difficult to explain. But he needed to speak to a friend of the Khalid family who worked for the Palestinian Authority—a man or woman he could identify only as the parents of a girl named Yasmin.

  At length a woman came to the telephone, her English sibilant but clear. “This is Furah Al-Shanty, mother of Munira’s friend Yasmin. And you are David Wolfe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, Mr. Wolfe, you seem to be a very able lawyer. Why is it that you’re calling?”

  “It’s complicated and highly confidential. But you may have a piece of paper critical to Hana’s defense.”

  “What it is, I can’t imagine. But go on.”

  “Your daughter Yasmin has her own cell phone, I believe. Do you keep copies of your billing records?”

  “For our phones? Definitely, for business reasons. But for Yasmin’s I would have to see.”

  Standing in his kitchen, David began pacing. “Could you look for me—specifically, the bill covering the period before and after the assassination. I need to see if Yasmin received or placed a call to a particular cell phone number.”

  “All right, then. I can’t look until tonight. If I find something, what should I do?”

  “Fax it to my office. And if I’m not in, tell my secretary to come get me, even if I’m in court.”

  When the call was over, David sat back down. He closed his eyes and came as close to praying as he had since he’d stood at the Western Wall.

  14

  By the time Hana took the witness stand, she and David had rehearsed the degree to which she could intimate—without assigning a motive—that her own husband might have framed her. Though his own conversation with Munira shadowed David’s thoughts, he told Hana nothing about it. This testimony would require all the equilibrium she possessed; perceiving her daughter as a potential witness against her husband would only torment Hana further, making Munira’s presence in the courtroom close to unendurable. She had enough to absorb already: if Hana had told him the truth, she had only just learned that the daughter who fiercely identified herself as Palestinian was both an Arab and a Jew.

  The moment Munira entered the courtroom with Saeb, Hana looked anxious: she had not seen the girl since David had told her that Munira was his daughter, and that her husband knew it. But Saeb did not know that David and Hana had discovered this, and Munira knew nothing at all. In the last moments before the judge’s deputy called the courtroom to order, Hana did not look at Saeb. Instead, she smiled at her daughter, her gaze unwavering, as though she were seeing Munira anew.

  For David, this moment had an unsettling doubleness—Hana’s obvious pain at being unable to touch her daughter was both genuine and, he hoped, affecting to the jury. Glancing at the jurors, David saw that Ardelle Washington watched intently, her look seeming to combine the compassion of a mother with her curiosity at seeing Hana, the image of modernity, and her child, who, except for her face and hands, was completely shrouded in black. Beside them, Saeb stared at David with such intensity that David wondered if Saeb was sensing the dangers gathering beneath the surface of the trial. Then the deputy called out, “All rise,” and David turned again to the task that would determine whether Hana lived or died.


  After the many days in court that had preceded it, David sensed that, for Hana, the act of testifying came as a relief. Positioning himself so that Hana faced the jurors as she responded to his questions, David asked simply, “Were you involved—in any way—in the plot to assassinate Amos Ben-Aron?”

  For the first time, the jurors heard Hana’s voice, soft but firm. “In no way. I know nothing more about the crime than anyone who reads the newspapers. When I heard that the prime minister of Israel had been killed by a suicide bomber, I was horrified.”

  “Would you have ever considered participating in a plan to kill him?”

  “No.” Hana shook her head with vehemence. “That is something I could never do.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Where to start?” Gazing at the jurors, Hana paused, as if unsure of how to address the enormity of such a question. “This murder accomplishes nothing but evil. It has caused more violence and suffering for my people. In the world’s eyes, it labels us as terrorists. It postpones the day when we will have our own country. And it may condemn our children, and Jewish children, to hate and kill each other as we did, and our parents and grandparents did before us.”

  For an instant, Hana stopped herself: David could read on her face the truth that must have struck her—that the children on both sides were personified by her own daughter. “I did not love Ben-Aron,” Hana conceded. “I did not trust him. But the men who plotted this murder have no vision but the spilling of more blood. Far better for Jews and Palestinians that they were dead rather than Amos Ben-Aron.”

  Her last sentence gave David a chill: perhaps she was speaking of her own husband. “Yet all of that,” Hana finished softly, “is nothing compared to the fact that I am Munira’s mother. I would never risk our separation, or leave her to be raised by anyone else.”

  At the prosecution table, Marnie Sharpe watched Hana with a keen but neutral expression. “Is there something in Munira’s life,” David asked, “that intensifies your worry for her?”

  Hana looked down as though trying to frame her answer with the greatest care. “Munira,” she said at last, “is a girl facing womanhood, yet a child so traumatized by violence that it still causes her nightmares. I want her to feel joy in life, not terror. I want her to discover how intelligent and strong she is, how capable of acting for herself. I want her to be whole.”

  Her voice was thick with emotion—even Judge Taylor, who had watched sociopaths weep in the witness box over victims they had murdered without remorse, regarded Hana with an expression softer than before. “Munira,” Hana continued, “is where my husband and I encounter the greatest difficulties. It is difficult to say such private things in public, and in front of her. But they are the deepest reason I could never take part in murdering Amos Ben-Aron.

  “Saeb would require Munira to cover herself; to be subservient; and, when she is older, to marry a husband of his choosing. I want Munira to become whoever she chooses to be and, if she chooses, to find a husband who will respect her as his equal.” Her voice filled with quiet determination. “I don’t want my daughter buried—not in rubble, and not in a shroud that covers her body and deadens her soul. She is who I fight for now. I cannot entrust her future to Saeb.”

  They had come to the heart of it, David realized. The trial reflected Hana’s life—a visceral struggle between wife and husband, now being waged with such ruthlessness that David had insisted on Munira’s presence. Beside her, Saeb sat stiffly, his face a rictus of anger and humiliation; Munira’s eyes were downcast, her body hunched, as though she wished to disappear. “Without me,” Hana said quietly, “there will be no one who can speak for Munira until she can speak for herself.” Looking at her daughter, Hana’s eyes filled with pain; when she turned back to David and the jury, finishing her answer, her words were wholly unrehearsed. “I look at Munira and see my life reflected. When I was young, I tried to be free. But I was so bound up with family, and the struggle of my people, that it defined my life and who I chose to marry. For that mistake, I am sorry—for Saeb, for Munira, and for anyone affected by my choice.

  “I want Munira to feel connected to her people and her family, always. But I want her to define for herself the way in which she honors them.” Pausing, Hana finished quietly. “Munira is not yet thirteen. As women, she and I have so much to do together. That work does not include killing Jews.”

  At the corner of his vision, David saw Bob Clair, himself Jewish, studying Hana with an expression that seemed to contain a measure of sympathy. After a pause, David asked, “Why did the three of you come to San Francisco?”

  “Saeb was traveling to America—to shadow Ben-Aron and to criticize his peace plan. But that was Saeb’s concern. I wanted Munira to see a country very different from her own, in case she someday wished to study here.”

  “Who suggested that you come?”

  “Saeb did.” Hana hesitated. “I was surprised. In the past year there has been much tension between us. Most of it over Munira.”

  The passion in her voice had diminished—the painful necessity of deploying her daughter in her own defense seemed to drain her. His tone even, David inquired, “How did you respond to Saeb’s invitation?”

  “That I would come only if we could bring Munira. He answered that he did not wish for Munira to experience this ‘degrading culture.’ ”

  “How did you resolve this disagreement?” David asked.

  “I said that if Munira stayed home, so would I. In the end, Saeb relented.”

  A sudden thought hit David hard: if Hana had not insisted that Munira come, she would not now be in this courtroom, and her daughter would not have borrowed Saeb’s cell phone. Abruptly, David asked, “Have you ever met Iyad Hassan?”

  Hana shook her head. “No,” she answered firmly. “I don’t even recognize his picture.”

  “Did you type your cell phone number and give it to Hassan?”

  “I did not.”

  “Who else knows that cell phone number?”

  Hana glanced at her husband and daughter. “As far as I know, only Saeb and Munira. Life where we are is too violent and unpredictable— shootings, bombings, delays at checkpoints. I never wanted to be out of touch with Munira, or for her to be unable to reach me.”

  “Do you know how your fingerprints got on the piece of paper?”

  “I don’t. But there are only two places the paper could have come from—my office or our home.”

  “Who,” David asked, “has access to your home?”

  “Other than guests? Just Saeb, Munira, and our cleaning lady.”

  “What about access to your office?”

  “I’m the only one who has a key. But I lock it only when I leave for the night.”

  They were settling into a rhythm now, constructing an exercise in logic for the jury. “So during the day,” David followed up, “who has access to your office?”

  “Colleagues, students—anyone can walk in, really.”

  “So, in theory, anyone could have walked into your office and taken a piece of paper that you’d touched.”

  “True.”

  David waited a beat. “But they also would have had to know your cell phone number, wouldn’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “Aside from Saeb and Munira, do you know how anyone else could have gotten that number?”

  “I’m sorry,” Hana answered softly. “I don’t.”

  The answer, as they had planned, was less an apology than the statement of a disturbing truth. “Tell me,” David asked, “did Saeb and Munira know that you reserved this cell phone for them alone?”

  Hana hesitated. “I don’t think I ever told them that.”

  Among the jurors, David saw Rosella Suarez cast a sideways glance in Saeb’s direction. “Where do you keep your cell phone?” David asked.

  “In my purse. Always.”

  “And who had access to your purse?”

  Hana smiled faintly. “No one, if I have anything to
do with it. Although Munira sometimes searched it for something she needed.”

  David paused again. “While you were in San Francisco, did you lend your cell phone to Saeb or Munira?”

  “No. Neither of them asked for it.”

  “At 12:04 a.m. on June 15, the day Amos Ben-Aron was murdered, what were you doing?”

  A shadow crossed Hana’s face. “By then, I had been asleep for hours.”

  “At that time, did you receive a call from anyone?”

  “Not that I know of,” Hana answered. “No one left a message. Let alone this suicide bomber, a man I’d never met.”

  “Do you know how it happened that Iyad Hassan’s cell phone reflected a call to your cell phone?”

  Briefly, Hana closed her eyes. “If I knew who to blame, I wouldn’t be here, charged with murder. Someone else would be.”

  “During Ben-Aron’s speech,” David said, “you told the FBI you were wandering in Union Square. Why weren’t you watching with your husband and daughter?”

  “Because I did not wish to hear yet another speech by Ben-Aron, or see my daughter listening to her father’s denunciation. Suddenly the hotel room felt too small, and I wanted to be alone.”

  “Why did you tell your husband you were going shopping?”

  “Because it was easier than telling the truth. I did not wish to quarrel in front of Munira.”

  “During the time you were gone, did you speak with anyone by cell phone or in person?”

  “No.” Emotion crept into her voice. “I wandered aimlessly, thinking about my life. I could have just as well been sleepwalking.”

  Deliberately, David paused. “Is it your conclusion that someone arranged the evidence to implicate you in the murder of Amos Ben-Aron?”

  Hana seemed to gather herself. “Yes.”

  “Do you know who?”

  Hana could have given many answers. But she gave the one that was literally true, chosen by David to preserve her options and maintain the element of surprise. “No,” she said softly. “All I know for certain is that whoever did this must hate me very much.”