by Colum McCann
—It’s not working, said Rami.
Her eyes were an alarming shade of blue. She replaced the receiver, stepped off the curb, began pacing back and forth.
—Did you hear?
—Yes.
There was something of the stalked about the woman: the pupils of her eyes seemed to have fully disappeared. Already the other man—short, wiry, electric—was at the phone.
—It’s broken, said the woman.
The short man slid his Telecart into the slot.
—It’s kaput, said Rami.
The man shrugged, pressed his finger on the hook switch anyway, tapped it up and down.
One of the business cards fluttered to the ground. Ariel Landscaping: Let Us Mow You Down. The short man kicked the card away, went back to the phone, put his ear to the receiver once more.
—We already tried it, said the woman, we’re waiting, we’re in line.
The short man stepped past the tracksuit man, then stared at the girl still flicking her hair and laughing.
Rami leaned forward and tapped the girl on the flesh of her shoulder, said: We’re waiting, honey, can’t you see that we’re waiting?
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Bomb in Jerusalem. Bomb in Jerusalem. Bomb in Jerusalem.
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Rami’s first call was to Nurit’s office. It rang through to her answering machine. He paused a moment, waiting to see if she would pick up. Hey, buttercup, it’s me, are you there? He heard the machine beep. Hi buttercup, he said again. No response. He closed the line, fished in his shirt pocket for the Telecart again. The second call was home to Smadar. It was picked up instantly. Hello? He was thrown by the voice a moment. I’ve been trying to call you, Nurit said. My phone’s dead. Where are you? On the way to the airport. I called your office. I came home. Why? I let Smadar go downtown, I let her go with her friends, she wanted to buy some books, she said something about a jazz class. Where? Downtown. Have you heard from her? Not yet. Okay, okay, what about her friends? Nothing. Who is she with? I don’t know, Sivan, Daniella, a few others, she went by bus. Did something happen on the bus? Nothing, no, no, I don’t know, I just haven’t heard from her, normally she calls. She doesn’t have a phone with her, does she? She can use a pay phone. Maybe the lines are jammed. I can just about hear you. Everyone here’s trying to use the phone. I can hardly hear you, speak up. Rami. She’ll be fine, love, she’ll be fine, where are the boys? They called, they’re okay. Where did you say she went again? Shopping. Should I come back? Maybe, yes, maybe. The radio said the traffic is chaos. I’ll leave a message with my mom, she can get a taxi from the airport, the buses will be hell, I’m going downtown, have you got your phone? I told you, my phone’s dead. How long will it take you to get here? I don’t know, half an hour, forty-five minutes? Okay. You should get a babysitter for Yigal, just in case. Rami. Yes? Hurry.
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Seventy kilometers per hour, eighty, eighty-five. Every single hole in the traffic seemed to open up for him. Even in the breakdown lane. He felt as if he was not in a car at all, but on his motorbike, a series of sliding gates in front of him, a gap here, a space there, nobody tailgating, nobody honking, nobody flipping him off, not even when the traffic backed up outside the city and he got in behind a police car that moved like a myth in front of him, parting the waves. He would puzzle over it later. The journey defied all expectations. The cop even pulled off to the side of the road and waved him on for no reason he could fathom. The exit ramp was clear. Every traffic light he hit was yellow.
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We will mow you down.
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Traffic in front. Traffic behind. There was nothing he could do. He knew the streets of Anata so well. There were no shortcuts. He couldn’t swing left, he couldn’t swing right. There was no pavement to mount. No room to move. Bassam reached across and touched Salwa’s hand. She keyed her phone alive. No more news, she said. Moments later she keyed her phone again. They’re waiting for us, she said, she’s going to be okay. He resisted the urge to blow the horn. He opened his window. Helicopters spun overhead. Something was happening somewhere. He scanned the skyline for smoke. I just hope, he said, she doesn’t need stitches.
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The men stirred outside the shops. There were teenagers running now between the cars. Some already had their scarves over their faces. Bassam stepped out into the street. He put his hand up. They ran past him. Someone’s been shot. Where? At the school. They streamed past. He put his hands up again to slow them down, but they slalomed around him. Stop, he pleaded. Stop. He thrust his hand into the chest of a tall young boy. The urgency froze him. Which school? The girls’ school. Are you sure? I think so, yes.
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They abandoned their vehicle half a kilometer from the hospital. He left the keys in the ignition. They ran together. She wore a long green dress and headscarf. He was in a dark shirt and pants. His limp was more pronounced when he hurried, but even in his haste there was a quietness to Bassam.
At the clinic there was a hush when they entered. The crowd in the corridor parted for them. They knew. They hurried toward the operating rooms. Bassam was taken aside by a doctor. They recognized each other from the mosque and from Bassam’s peace work.
A hand against his chest: It’s critical, Bassam. Prepare yourself.
—I’m prepared.
It had always been, Bassam thought, his duty to keep others calm: ever since prison he had been called upon to deliver news.
He returned to Salwa. She was standing under a flickering fluorescent. He squeezed her hand. She turned quickly and sobbed into his shoulder.
—We have to prepare ourselves, he said.
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When he stepped outside, his car was there, parked in the hospital lot, with a note in Arabic to say that they were praying for Abir and that the keys had been left at the front desk. Underneath the note, a single tulip with a Post-it note: Get Well Soon.
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Just exactly how, Bassam wondered later, would Spielberg have filmed the rubber bullet flying through the air? Where would he have placed the camera? How would he have framed the sharp turn of the jeep on the street? How would he capture the crunch of the wheels? How would he portray the slide of the small metal grate in the rear door? The burst of light onto the border guard’s face? The inside of the jeep, the mess of newspapers, the uniforms, the trays of ammunition? The emergence of the M-16 through the rear door? The curl of the finger against the trigger? The shell emerging from the candy cane of grooves? The rifle’s kick into the border guard’s shoulder? The bullet’s spiral through the sharp blue air? The shot sounding out against the school bells? The crash of the bullet into the back of Abir’s head? The vault through the air of her leather schoolbag? The shape of her shoe as it flew off her foot? The twirl of it? The tiny bones being crushed at the back of her brain? The delay of the ambulance? The gathering at the hospital? The flat line of the machine?
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The deaths occurred ten years apart: Smadar in 1997, Abir in 2007. At a lecture in Stockholm Bassam stood up to say that sometimes he felt as if the rubber bullet had been traveling a whole decade.
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So much of what Spielberg did in Schindler’s List was achieved in the opening frames when the flame of the Shabbat candle was lit. It was one of only five instances of color in the film: a tiny flicker of yellow light.
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Every year in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem—where Christ was crucified, entombed and then believed by Christians to have risen from the dead—a holy fire is said to erupt spontaneously, lighting candles which eventually spread a flame that is carried around the world.
On Holy Saturday before Easter, the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem enters the darkness of Jesus’s tomb, where all the lights have been extinguished. The doors have been sealed with wax and the tomb sea
rched for any item that might contribute to fire: flame, flint, lighter, magnifying glass.
Inside and outside the church huge crowds wait for news of the fire: loud, fierce, electric, raw, packed together.
At the door of the tomb, the patriarch takes off his robe and is thoroughly searched for anything that might ignite. He is then ceremoniously allowed into the sealed room. He kneels at the foot of the stone where a blue light is said to rise slowly.
The light is, at first, cool to the touch. It forms a column from which the patriarch lights his two candles.
Once the candles are lit they are passed through openings on either side of the tomb. The Orthodox patriarch gives the flame first to the Armenian and then to the Coptic patriarch. The flame is raced by priests up to the Patriarch’s Throne.
The church comes alive in a blaze of light and a clatter of bells. Shouts ring out. Ancient drums boom. Arguments erupt. Laughter. The flame is passed backward through the crowd, candle to candle.
The fire is then carried through the narrow streets of the Old City, into Christian homes and in some cases those of Muslims and Jews too. It spreads, then, to all the Orthodox churches in the Holy Land.
In centuries gone by the flame was carried by mule out of the city, or by camels across the desert, or taken in glass containers on steamer ships around the world. By the middle of the twentieth century, the flame was being driven out of the city by police car to Ben Gurion airport where—like an Olympic torch—it was put in specially designed vacuum tubes and placed on flights to Greece, Russia, Argentina, Mexico and beyond.
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In 2015 a representative of the Greek Orthodox church entered into negotiations with representatives of Elon Musk to bring the flame into outer space through Musk’s rocket manufacturing company, SpaceX. The talks went unresolved.
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On the back of Sir Richard Francis Burton’s silver compass he engraved an inscription from the Qur’an: Travel through the earth and see what was the end of those who rejected Truth.
300
During Operation Embellishment the prisoners were told to remain silent as the Red Cross contingent moved through the town: any word out of place would result in certain death.
301
Imagine, then, the Danish ministers moving politely through the spruced-up streets, listening, nodding, their hands entwined behind their backs as if in some form of inquisitive prayer.
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There are many theories about how the Church of the Holy Sepulchre flame might be made to spontaneously appear: the candles may have been dusted in white phosphorus so that they self-ignite, or a piece of flint has been secreted in the floor, or a jar of naphtha is hidden in the tomb, or the patriarch manages to sneak a lighter inside, hidden in his beard or in a tangle of his hair.
These possibilities are scoffed at by the legions of faithful who say that the fire is simply ignited by the Holy Spirit.
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When Sinéad O’Connor sang the ancient Irish ballad I Am Stretched on Your Grave—on the album which Smadar loved to dance to—her performance was, she said, influenced by her readings in the Kabbalah, the mystical interpretation of the Bible.
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The Kabbalists, in their attempt to examine the nature of the divine, are known to envision two aspects of God. The first, known as Ein Sof, finds God to be transcendent, unknowable, impersonal, endless and infinite. The second aspect is accessible to human perception, revealing the divine in the material world, available in our finite lives.
Far from contradicting each other, the two aspects of the divine— one locatable, one infinite—are said to be perfectly complementary to one another, a form of deep truth to be found in apparent opposites.
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Borges, too, was fascinated by the Kabbalah. He suggested that the world might merely be a system of symbols and that the universe, including the stars, was a manifestation of God’s secret handwriting.
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Borges wrote that it only takes two facing mirrors to form a labyrinth.
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When Bassam was a child he found a picture of Muhammad Ali in a magazine article about Vietnam: he brought it home, cut out the picture, tacked it on the wall of the cave right near the hanging kerosene lantern.
In the photo Ali was standing over Sonny Liston, arm cocked, eyes ablaze, triumphant, angry. Liston was supine on the floor beneath him, his arms behind his head in dazed surrender.
In the rear of the cave, Bassam stood in a mirror of Ali’s stance, the grin, the clenched fist, the body of a soldier at his feet.
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Muhammad Ali was known in the Muslim world as a da’ee: one who strives to convey the message of Allah to the world. One of his prized possessions was a silver Timex watch, with a qibla compass hand always pointed in the direction of Mecca.
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The ceiling of the cave formed a dome. Ventilation holes had been bored out with a thin handmade auger. Chambers were dug out of soft rock. Ledges were used as natural shelves: they were used also as steps into the upper reaches of the cave. Alcoves were cut deep in the walls.
Bassam’s brothers called it Sesame after the cave in Kitab Alf Layla wa Layla.
Flat paving stones lay at the front entrance. Deeper in, rugs covered the floor. The kitchen and living room walls were plastered smooth and brightly painted. Kitchenware and earthen jars of olives were ranged on high wooden shelves, above the taboon oven.
A row of books and photographs decorated the southern wall. The northern wall was bare except for a hanging carpet that was said to have been in Bassam’s uncle’s family since the days of the Ottoman empire.
The water came from a well half a kilometer away. The other families in neighboring caves pirated electricity from the grid, but Bassam’s father preferred their own cave without electricity.
There was a light shaft in the ceiling near the front of the cave: as a child Bassam could tell the time of the day to within minutes.
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He led the donkey up and down the rocky slope, carrying carpets, shelving, mattresses, chairs and cookware. The journey to the village took forty-five minutes, the donkey straining under the weight and the piling heat.
Each time Bassam returned to the cave, he bathed the donkey’s feet with a poultice, then set off again. The donkey placed each hoof precisely, buckling a moment before catching itself, braying, and moving on.
All along the hillside, in the shade, stood armed Israeli soldiers. Most of them, he noticed, didn’t even turn to watch him as he moved the contents down the hillside.
The soldiers—his Sonny Listons—had somehow perfected the art of sleeping while standing.
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The caves were demolished the evening after the eviction, blown asunder with sticks of dynamite.
Bassam, playing in the rubble a month afterwards, found the stone which had arrowed out the direction of Mecca.
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Years later, in Boston, Bassam recalled the story of the eviction from the cave while he sat in a swivel chair in the office of Senator John Kerry.
Earlier in the conversation he had seized the Senator’s attention by leaning forward in his chair and saying: I am sorry to tell you this, Senator, but you murdered my daughter.
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He had such a distinctive way of talking, quietly but forcefully, always laying emphasis on the final syllable—you muh-der-red my dawt-ter—so that everything emerged in a kind of singsong.
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At the end of the meeting—which had lasted an hour and a half beyond its allotted time—Senator Kerry bowed his head and led everyone in his office in prayer. He would, he vowed, never forget the story of Abir.
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The tear gas used by the Israel Defense Forces was once made in Saltsburg, Pennsylvania, but in 1988—after
federal investigations ruled the gas had been misused—the sales were suspended. Lobbyists were called. Congressional meetings took place. Local meetings were held. Editorials were posted to say that the people of Pennsylvania had a kinship with Israel. Jobs were at stake. The tear gas, they said, would be made elsewhere anyway. It was time to make a stand.
After eighteen months, production started up again, and then, in 1995, manufacture was switched to a company in Jamestown, Pennsylvania, one hundred miles away.
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In order to throw back a tear gas canister, a protester—already shrouded in clouds of gas—must be nimble. The canister must be picked up with a gloved hand. The direction of the wind needs to be immediately judged. The can is placed in the sling in such a way that, for just a moment, the gas is blocked from escaping.
If the rioter does not have a gas mask, he wears swimming goggles or welder’s glasses, and covers his mouth with a scarf moistened with diluted baking soda. The can is swung above his head and released as quickly as possible, especially if the canister is of the triple chaser variety, a special container designed by Israeli scientists to split into three parts on impact.