by Colum McCann
He lay there. The ceiling tiles were perforated. He made mental patterns from the tiny holes. Playing cards, diamonds, spades. A form of solitaire. The nurses were unsettled by his quiet manner. They expected shouts, complaints, curses, allegations. The longer his silence, the worse the extra beatings. He could see the weaker nurses begin to twitch with worry. In the end, he thought, he would occupy their brains.
When Bassam finally spoke, his voice rattled the medics: there was something calm about it. He learned the art of the mysterious smile, but he could drop it in an instant, turn it into a stare.
He listened to the doctors talking in the corridor: more and more he understood what they were saying in Hebrew. He decided, even then, that he would one day become fluent.
Word went around that he had become commander of the prison Fatah unit. He grew his beard out. The beatings became more regular.
He turned nineteen years old with two missing teeth, several fractured bones and an empty drip bag in each arm. There were cameras above his prison hospital bed: he angled himself towards the wall so that he could not be seen while he wept himself to sleep.
The days hardened like loaves: he ate them without appetite.
50
After a year in lockup Bassam established a schedule for classes. English. Hebrew. Arab History. Israeli Law. The Fall of the Ottoman Empire. The History of the Zionist Movement. Pre-Islamic Poetry. The Geography of the Middle East. Life in Palestine under the British Mandate.
Know your enemy, know yourself.
51
In Beersheba prison the married prisoners used cardboard blowguns to send love notes to their wives and children waiting outside the prison gates.
As many as twenty toilet-roll cylinders were taped and glued together to make blowguns that could measure up to five feet. Prisoners wrote messages on small scraps of paper, folded them, then extended the cardboard guns as far as possible out the cell windows.
The men filled their lungs and blew the notes out the window.
The prisoners learned to make curves in the cardboard, soft angles for reaching around corners to catch favorable winds. Sometimes it took two or three men to handle a blowgun so the paper pipe would not sag or bend.
Most of the time the messages ended up scattered in the prison yard or caught underneath the barbed wire, but every now and then one would catch a strong current and make it all the way to the parking lot where the wives waited. Tell Raja to be strong. That day we met was the best of my life. Give the Mecca jigsaw to Ahmed. I cannot wait to leave this place, it rots my heart.
Bassam watched the women from his cell window. When the notes cleared the prison wall, they hurried over, unfolded the paper and shared them with one another. Once in a while he would see the women dance.
52
In the library—under the Open University system—Bassam found a Hebrew version of the Mu’allaqat, the series of sixth-century Arabian poems, translated in a kibbutz by an Israeli literary group just after the Yom Kippur War. It came as a surprise to him. He knew the words by heart in Arabic and so he could compare the languages, learn the Hebrew. He lay on his bare bed and read the poems aloud, then copied them. He brought the poems to one of the prison guards, Hertzl Shaul, a part-time guard and a student of mathematics.
They were still slightly reluctant with one another, the prisoner and the guard, but in recent months had come to think of themselves as acquaintances: Hertzl had saved Bassam from a canteen beating one afternoon.
Bassam had written the words of the poems on the labels from water bottles. Hertzl stuffed the labels inside his shirt, took the poems home. He touched the mezuzah on his door: hidden prayers.
Later in the evening, when his wife Sarah had gone to bed, Hertzl took out the label and began reading.
53
In the hospital where Abir lay dying, Hertzl—who had quickly removed his kippah as he walked down the corridor—remembered a line from those prison days: Is there any hope that this desolation can bring us solace? He stood by Abir’s bed, his head bowed, noticing the pattern of her labored breathing. A mist lay on the inside of her oxygen mask. Her head was swathed in bandages.
Bassam came and stood beside him, their shoulders not quite touching. Neither man said anything. Many years had gone between them since Bassam’s release from prison.
Bassam had co-founded Combatants for Peace two years previously. Hertzl had come to one of the meetings. He was amazed when Bassam began speaking of the peace he had learned in prison, the heft of it, salaam, shalom, its confounding nature, its presence even in its apparent absence.
Now Bassam’s daughter was dying in front of their eyes. The red lights shone and the hospital equipment beeped.
Hertzl reached across and held his friend’s shoulder, nodded to the dozens of others who had gathered around the bedside, including Rami, his wife Nurit, and their oldest son, Elik.
Hertzl slipped the kippah back on his head as he left the hospital. He made his way to the Hebrew University to teach his class in freshman mathematics.
54
Later Hertzl wrote: If you divide death by life, you will find a circle.
55
When a bird has been ringed, the serial number is entered into a global database. The birds, then, are identified with the country where they were tagged: Norway, Poland, Iceland, Egypt, Germany, Jordan, Chad, Yemen, Slovakia. As if they have been ascribed a homeland.
Ornithologists in Israel and Palestine sometimes find themselves in competition if a rare bird, a diederik cuckoo, say, or a windblown stone curlew, is spotted in the seam-zoned sky between both.
Sometimes whistles are used to coax the bird down into a mist net so it can be taken and tagged.
For the ornithologist, it is always a matter of disappointment if the bird has already been ringed elsewhere.
56
When out cataloguing birds in the field, Tarek could feel the ortolan tags moving on the necklace at his throat.
57
Songbirds produce an elaborate call: a meld of territorial protection and courtship.
58
The original meetings of Combatants for Peace took place amid the pine trees of the Everest Hotel in Beit Jala, in Area B, just across the hill from the bird-ringing station.
The two sides met in the hilltop restaurant. Nervously they shook hands and greeted one another in English.
The room had two large sofas, a long table and eight red chairs. Nobody took the sofas at first. They sat at opposite ends of the table. The language that they might use for each other was already fraught: Muslim, Arab, Christian, Jew, soldier, terrorist, fighter, martyr, occupier, occupied.
Eleven of them altogether: four Palestinians, seven Israelis. The Israelis took the batteries out of their phones, placed them on the table. It was safer that way. You never know who’s listening, they said. The Palestinians glanced at each other and did the same.
The initial talk was about the weather. Then the journey past the checkpoints. The roads they had taken, the turns, the roundabouts, the red signs. They had different names for the areas they had traveled through, varying pronunciations of streets. The Israelis said they were surprised how easy it had been to get there: they had driven only four miles. The Palestinians replied that they were not to worry, it would be just as simple to get back. An uneasy laughter went around the table.
The talk returned to the weather once more: the humidity, the heat, the strangely clear sky.
The Palestinians drank coffee, the Israelis carbonated water. All the Palestinians smoked. Only two of the Israelis did. Plates of olives arrived. Cheese. Stuffed grape leaves. The specialty of the restaurant was pigeon: nobody ordered it.
An hour slid by. The Israelis leaned into the table. One of them had, he said, been a pilot. Another, a paratrooper. One had
spent much of his service as a commander at the Qalandia checkpoint. They had been in the forces, yes, but they had begun to speak out: against the Occupation, humiliation, murder, torture. Bassam sat stunned. He had never heard an Israeli mention such words before. He was certain they were on an operation. Intelligence, surveillance, an undercover ploy. What confused him was that one of them, Yehuda, looked like a settler. Stout and spectacled, with a long beard. Even his hair wore the mark of a kippah. Yehuda had been an officer in Hebron. He had, he said, begun to rethink it all, the conscription, the operations, all the talk of a moral army. Bassam leaned back in his chair and scowled. Why would they send such a glaring ruse? What kind of mockery was this? Perhaps, he thought, it was a form of double-think, triple-think: the Israelis were known for it, their mesmerizing chess, their theater, intricate and ruthless.
The sun went down over the steep hills. One of the Israelis tried to pay, but Bassam put his hand on the man’s elbow, and took the bill.
—Palestinian hospitality, he said.
—No, no, please, let me.
—This is my home.
The Israeli nodded, bowed his head, blanched. The two groups shook hands, bid each other goodbye. Bassam was sure they would never see each other again.
That evening he put their names in a search engine. Wishnitzer. Alon. Shaul. They had used some of the same words in blogs he found online: inhumane, torture, regret, Occupation. He closed out the files, reloaded his search engine, just in case: perhaps his computer had been interfered with somehow. He would put nothing past them. He searched again. The words were still there. He put a message through to Wishnitzer that he was ready to meet with them again.
A few weeks later they ate dinner at the Everest Hotel. Two of the Israelis ordered pigeon. A toast was made. Bassam raised his water glass.
It slowly dawned on Bassam that the only thing they had in common was that both sides had once wanted to kill people they did not know.
When he said this, a ripple of assent went around the table: a slow nodding of heads, a further loosening. A shiver went amongst them. My wife Salwa, my daughter Abir, my son Muhammad. Then, from across the table: My daughter Rachel, my grandfather Chaim, my uncle Josef.
It was an idea so simple that Bassam wondered how he had ignored it for so long: they too had families, histories, shadows.
After two hours they extended hands to shake and promised they would try to meet a third time. The light slanted through the tall trees. Some of the Israelis were still worried about getting home: what if they strayed by mistake into Area A, what would happen?
—Don’t worry, said Bassam, drive behind me awhile, I’ll show you, just follow me.
The Israelis laughed nervously.
—I’m serious. If there’s any trouble I’ll take care of it. I’ll tap my brakes three times. I go right, you go left.
They sat for another half hour over coffee and discussed what names they might use if they really were to create an organization together. It was a difficult thing to find a good name. Something catchy, provocative, yet neutral too. Something with meaning but not offensive. Combatants for Peace. That might work. It held contradiction.
To be in combat. To struggle to know.
59
On the wall of the restaurant were photographs of frigatebirds scissoring over the sea.
60
Area A: administered by the Palestinian Authority, open to Palestinians, forbidden, under Israeli law, to Israeli citizens. Area B: administered by the Palestinian Authority, with shared security control with Israel, open to Israelis and Palestinians. Area C: an area comprising Israeli settlers and mostly rural Palestinians, administered by Israel and containing all the West Bank settlements.
61
Among the Israeli contingent in the Everest Hotel was Rami’s twenty-seven-year-old son, Elik Elhanan, who had served in an elite reconnaissance unit in the army.
At the second meeting Elik talked about his late sister Smadar, killed in a suicide bombing in Jerusalem, but the story did not register fully for Bassam until many months later.
Bassam himself was just a few years out of prison. Abir was still alive. Bassam had not met Rami. Rami was a member of the Parents Circle, but Bassam was not yet.
All of that confusion was still to happen.
62
(Area A being comprised of the main Palestinian cities and villages, hemmed in, patchworked, and secured by dozens of Israeli checkpoints, patrolled by Palestinian security forces but open, at any time, to the Israeli army.)
(Area B, under Palestinian civil administration, under Israeli security control with cooperation from the Palestinian Authority police, so that the Palestinian security forces operate only with Israeli permission.)
(Area C, the largest of the areas, containing most of the West Bank’s natural resources, controlled by Israel, with the Palestinian Authority responsible for providing education and medical services to Palestinians only, with Israel providing exclusively for the security and administration of the settler population in over one hundred illegal settlements, with ninety-nine percent of the area being heavily restricted or off-limits for construction or development to Palestinian residents, it being almost impossible to secure a permit for any building or water project.)
(Also, Area H1 and H2 in the West Bank city of Hebron, eighty percent of the city administered by the Palestinian Authority and twenty percent controlled by Israel, including areas open only to Israelis and those with international passports, known as sterile streets.)
(Also, Zone E1, twelve square kilometers of disputed/occupied undeveloped land outside annexed East Jerusalem, home to Bedouin tribes and bounded by Israeli settlements, falling within Area C.)
(Also, the Seam Zone, the land between the Green Line and the Separation Barrier, in the West Bank, also known as the closed zone, also known as No-man’s-land, lying entirely in Area C, populated mostly by Israelis living in settlements, accessible to Palestinians by permit only.)
63
Beyond their immediate calls of distress, it is not known exactly how, or even if, different species of birds communicate with one another.
64
Rami likes the feeling of entering the tunnel while it is still dark outside. A bit of comfort. It’s different than entering during daytime when he feels subsumed by the darkness. This early in the morning it is almost the opposite: he enters the light, fluorescent as it is.
The motorbike purrs along in the fast lane. He shifts up into fifth gear, leans into the machine a little, his knees touching the petrol tank. In his helmet, the sound of the stereo. The Hollies. The Beach Boys. The Yardbirds. The Kinks.
It is a cold morning with a late October chill. He reaches down and zips the vent in his riding pants, tightens his fingers in his gloves. Nothing in his side-view mirrors, he slides across into the slower lane, keeping the revometer steady.
A kilometer long, the tunnel was blasted out from the mountain under the supervision of French engineers. A number of New York–based sandhogs were brought across to supervise the work.
The tunnel runs under the town of Beit Jala, dovetailing in parts with the Way of the Patriarchs, the ancient Biblical route.
Rami emerges beneath the concrete blast walls into the still-dark, and after a few moments passes the large red sign—in Hebrew, Arabic, English—without even thinking about it.
THE ENTRANCE FOR ISRAELI
CITIZENS IS FORBIDDEN
The engine scoffs slightly as he turns the handle on the throttle. He will circle around and take the back road this morning, past the yellow gates and beyond. No nerves, no fear. He is well used to it: he makes the trip to Beit Jala at least twice a week.
All morning he has driven fast, but he likes the moments when things slow down to a near-halt and he can feel the space around him,
everything held in suspension like in a photograph where he is the only moving thing.
It never ceases to astound him what a difference a border can make: the arbitrary line, drawn here, drawn there, redrawn further along.
No soldiers in sight, no border guards, nothing.
The road rises in a steep ascent. He knows the area well, the barbed-wire fence, the rusting cars, the dusty windshields, the low houses, the hanging flowerpots of fuchsias, the gardens, the wind chimes made out of tear gas canisters, the black water tanks on the roofs of apartment blocks.
Once, long ago, these roads were so much easier to travel. Even in the bad times. No bypasses, no permits, no walls, no unapproved paths, no sudden barricades. You came and you went. Or you didn’t. Now it is a tangle of asphalt, concrete, light pole. Walls. Roadblocks. Barricades. Gates. Strobe lights. Motion activation. Electronic locks.
He is not surprised by the three dark-haired Palestinian boys who seem to appear straight out of the ground. The first hops a section of broken concrete and puts one foot on a roadside tire as if to trampoline off it. The boy is lean and jaunty. The others are older, slower, wary, keeping to the side of the road. Fifty yards, forty yards, twenty, ten, until Rami is almost level with the lead boy. He lets off the throttle and edges the bike closer, beeps the horn in tandem with the slap of sandals.