Apeirogon

by Colum McCann

  395

  When carrying a bier, even in a thronging crowd, attempts are made to keep the head in the direction of Mecca.

  394

  The bus rattled. Bassam was traveling alone. He leaned his head against the window. He had memorized the geography of Mecca since he was a boy, the soaring minarets, the geometrical streets, the distant hills. Salwa had insisted that he go, even on his own. It was too expensive to take the whole family anyway. She would, she said, return with him someday.

  Above the highway at the entrance to Mecca were giant green signs directing drivers toward Muslim roads and non-Muslim roads.

  He entered Masjid-al-Haraam, circled the Kabaa seven times in the pale light. I am here, he thought. His ihram was made from two white unhemmed sheets of rough toweled material. He cast his stones at the pillars of rock, went to the cave at Hira, saw the mountain of Uhud from afar.

  He was the quiet one who sat in the back of the bus. He stepped forward when they approached a stop: he wanted to have a smoke.

  393

  Further along, he spotted rows of checkpoints.

  392

  391

  At a conference in Glasgow, Abir’s image was blown up to five feet by three so that she loomed over the stage. When Bassam was finished speaking, he couldn’t bear to leave her there, so he asked the organizers to take the poster down. They didn’t have a cardboard tube to fit it in, so they rolled it up, tied shoelaces around either end.

  Bassam carried his daughter’s image with him on the train back to Bradford.

  At the station he hailed a taxi. The rolled poster was so large that he had to open the car window and prop it on the edge of the seat.

  390

  The water clocks were used in courtrooms to gauge the length of the lawyers’ arguments and the speeches of witnesses. The timbre of the drip changed as time went on until, at last, there was no more.

  389

  In the written score for John Cage’s experimental work titled 4′33″, the musicians are told to remain tacet for four minutes and thirty-three seconds.

  388

  Tacet: that is, not to play their instruments at all.

  387

  Cage conceived of the composition in 1948. He had recently been in an anechoic chamber designed to maintain absolute silence, and had been studying some new paintings by his friend Robert Rauschenberg: huge canvases of white—only white—the surfaces of which varied mostly by their refraction of the light.

  Everything coalesced for Cage—the blankness, the chamber, his thoughts on the nature of sound—while he stood in an Albany elevator listening to a piece of canned music filtered over the speakers.

  His original intention was to replicate the length of a typical piece of canned music and to call his composition Silent Prayer.

  386

  On car trips, Smadar’s game was to take a breath and hold on to it for as long as possible while passing any graveyard. She undid the seat belt and leaned forward and tapped Rami on the shoulder, held her nose with thumb and forefinger, whirled her other hand in the air, made circles, gesturing them to move faster, faster, faster, her face growing redder until she could hold it no more.

  385

  Years later, Bassam told Rami that Abir had played the exact same game.

  384

  When you divide death by life you find a circle.

  383

  Cage’s piece was not just about the nature of silence, but also about all the sounds that could be heard within the silence: the foot shuffle, the sigh, the cough, the scuttle of the mouse beneath the stage floor, the raindrops on the roof, the slamming door, the car horn, the boom of a plane outside the concert hall.

  What interested Cage was the idea of the aleatoric, in which the course of music may be determined in a general direction, but the details rely on associations discovered by the performer or the audience or even the sounds themselves.

  These chance moments then become the core of a process where each note, each freestanding particle, or even non-note, confers on the next the character of mystery.

  382

  In the ambulance several different voices came through all at once. Then a single dispatcher: Roger that, we’re still waiting.

  The static crackled and fizzed.

  —Permission to move?

  381

  On the night of the premiere of 4′33″, in a converted barn on the outskirts of Woodstock, New York, the crowd waited for the pianist, David Tudor, to strike a note on the piano.

  The piece consisted of three movements—the first for thirty-three seconds, the next for two minutes forty seconds, and the third for one minute twenty seconds.

  Tudor marked the beginning and end of each movement by opening and closing the keyboard lid.

  At the end of the four and a half minutes—without once touching the keys—Tudor stood up from his piano stool and took a bow.

  The audience laughed, a little nervously at first. After a moment one or two began clapping until the applause gathered pace and began to sound around the barn.

  380

  Cage said afterwards that he wanted to make the opening thirty-three seconds as seductive as the shape and fragrance of a flower.

  379

  Abir, from the ancient Arabic, fragrance of the flower.

  378

  At the first court case, the Commander of the border guard unit testified that the reason Abir’s ambulance had been delayed should have been obvious to anybody with an ounce of experience with the Second Intifada. Everybody knew that ambulances were being manipulated by terror groups to bring not only murder and mayhem across the border into Israel, he said, but there was a running trade in weaponry too, and it was not unusual to hear of shipments of guns being tucked under gurneys, and grenades concealed in emergency coolers designed to hold transplantable body parts, and ammunition stuffed between layers of towels, and explosives hidden among plasma bags and other medical paraphernalia. In addition to this, it was generally known that during those days—and here the Commander used the Hebrew word matzav, meaning situation—ambulances were constantly being delayed by rioters who were willing to put their own people, yes, even ten-year-olds, in severe jeopardy. The lives of the first responders had to be protected at all costs. He wanted to make clear that he felt great sadness for the subject even though it was obvious to him that she should not have been in the street in the first place and perhaps the school authorities should shoulder the blame. He was under the impression that nothing in the subject’s condition had changed during the delay and that at all times she was given proper medical care. There were riots: of that there was an absolute certainty. The fact of the matter was that he himself had felt the startling thud of rocks against his jeep that very day, it was akin to being inside a drum, just imagine what it might have been like to be in an ambulance if it were to come under siege. It might even be more accurate to point out that the supposed delay had actually protected the child and the father from coming under siege in the ambulance. Such were the terrifying conditions of war.

  377

  The judge had to slam the gavel several times in order to get the court to calm down.

  376

  In response, Bassam’s lawyers said that there was absolutely no evidence of rioting near the school on the morning of the shooting. Construction of the Wall was taking place at the rear of the secondary school a couple of hundred meters up the road, and while it was true that the border guards were sometimes subjected to sporadic rock-throwing, it generally happened much later in the afternoon, after school, and Abir’s death had occurred just after nine o’clock in the morning. Abir was outside the school gates at the time because school was in recess and students were allowed to cross the road to go to the local shop. There was adequate supervision from a crossing guard who had also testified that there were no dist
urbances in the vicinity except that of the army jeep itself. It was true that there were known incidents of rock-throwing that had occurred after the death of Abir, but they had taken place at a significant distance from the hospital and the various locations where the ambulance had been halted. As for the assertion that ambulances were regularly used to ferry weaponry, it had indeed been documented, though never proven, during the Lebanon War, and was suggested on several other occasions in relation to incidents in Gaza and the West Bank, but the assertion that an ambulance might be running guns, or gunmen, from East to West Jerusalem was patently absurd since there would have to be a crew in the Hadassah hospital to process and hide the contraband. The idea that grenades might be held in emergency coolers was so fanciful and indeed imaginative that perhaps the Commander—who had, incidentally, been promoted just six months after the incident—should follow a new career in fiction, though he should be perhaps a little more attentive to his metaphors. There was no doubt that the Commander was likely at times to have been present in a jeep when it was being stoned, and it was noted that he had said, rather flamboyantly, that it was akin to being inside a drum, but it should be pointed out that it was probably safer to be inside the drum than outside the drum and certainly that was the case for Abir Aramin, who really wasn’t so much a subject, as the Commander had asserted, but more likely, in his eyes, an object.

  375

  Each day, after the hearings, Rami met with Bassam to go over the day’s events. They drank coffee and combed meticulously through the documents and petitions. They tried to figure out the angle at which the jeep came around the corner. They matched the autopsy and the X-rays, created time charts, pored over photographs and maps.

  The information came to them, drip by drip. The next morning they met with lawyers and spread the sheets out on the table.

  The jeep was here, they said. It came around this corner just here. It went down along the graveyard there. That had to be a couple of minutes before nine, because recess was at nine. And here, see here, that’s the entrance to the school. It takes about two minutes to get from the classroom to the gates, here. She might have walked, she might have been running, who knows. But we do know that she had been in Niesha’s shop. The crossing guard saw her too. And Areen, of course. Abir stepped out of the shop after a minute or two, which is exactly the time the jeep would have come from the graveyard considering they would have had to turn here. There were no cameras, no time stamps, but the other girls were waiting outside, remember. The jeep turns the corner here, at the asterisk. See here, there’s a clear sight line to the shop. The angle and the distance match with the autopsy report. If you look at the photographs here, the X is exactly where she fell.

  374

  Rise up, little girl, rise up.

  373

  Years later—after the court case was settled—Bassam and Rami were delivering a lecture in the Jerusalem Gate Hotel. The room was cramped. Twelve Swedes from a visiting advocacy group had come to hear them lecture. The guide, an Israeli, remained at the back, behind the row of chairs. He paced up and down during Rami’s talk, then froze when Bassam started speaking. He let out a low guttural sound.

  It was not unusual for one or two of the listeners to begin crying, even openly weeping, during the talks, but Bassam was surprised to see the guide choke up and leave the room.

  When the question-and-answer session was over, Bassam stepped out into the hallway and shook the guide’s hand. There was something familiar about him: compact, clear-cut, dark-eyed.

  —Sorry, said the guide and then stepped away.

  372

  A few days later a one-thousand-shekel check arrived at the offices of the Parents Circle with a note at the bottom: Michael Sharia (former ambulance driver).

  371

  At the top of the monastery road Bassam sees the single brake light flicker.

  370

  He watches as Rami pulls the motorbike to a dirt patch at the side of the road. A thin stream of raindrops shines in the red flare. He eases himself off the bike and rocks it onto the kickstand, walks back towards the car. Bassam powers down his passenger window.

  —You’ve a headlight out, says Rami.

  Bassam cups his hand to his ear.

  —Your headlight’s broken, brother.

  Bassam moves through the dark, his cigarette flaring. He hunkers down to the front grill and taps on the light with his knuckles, raps on the side panel as if this might somehow spark it. He rounds the car again, scrunching the cigarette on the ground as he goes. A damp chill in the air. He leans in the open window and flicks the lever for the high beams.

  —Must be the bulb, says Rami.

  Bassam reaches around the steering wheel and turns the keys in the ignition, then slips into the seat, puts his foot on the brake, starts the engine again in the vague hope that the light might somehow flare back into life.

  —You could park it here, says Rami. Come back with me. We can pick it up in the morning. I have an extra helmet.

  Bassam clicks his tongue and half-smiles. A familiar and hopeless gesture: they can travel together anywhere in the world, but not these few miles.

  —I have to get home.

  They glance back at the burned-out light.

  —At least, says Rami, it’s on the passenger side.

  369

  The men part ways at the top of the monastery road, Rami pulsing his brake light three quick times, their own form of morse.

  368

  Bassam’s one headlight shining small and votive in the dark.

  367

  This, then, is his nighttime route home: from the monastery through Beit Jala, through Bethlehem, down the hill to Beit Sahour, out the road to the Wadi al-Nar, the Valley of Fire, to the Container Checkpoint. Only Palestinian I.D. holders in Palestinian plated cars. Diving down into the valley, from eight hundred meters above sea level to four hundred meters below.

  A drop of over a kilometer, down, down, down, over the stunned landscape.

  A drive like a gasp.

  366

  The tires drum out a quiet meter on the road as he passes through the twists of Bethlehem: University Street, New Street, Mahmoud Abbas Road. He has memorized all the speed bumps. Even in the dark, with one headlight, he knows where and when to brake.

  365

  On my way, he texts Salwa when he slows and pulls over for a large pothole. An hour or so, I hope. A good day. x B.

  364

  There was fresh falafel and sea salt and virgin olive oil and hummus and romaine lettuce and tomato and cucumber and garlic and yogurt and pomegranate and parsley and mint and maftoul and there were beans and sprigs of rosemary and several cheeses and jars of water with slices of lemon, all laid out on the wooden table.

  363

  It is a tradition in both Israel and Palestine—hachnasset orchim in Hebrew, marhabaan fi algharib in Arabic—to give gifts of fresh bread and sea salt to newly arrived strangers.

  362

  This, thought Bassam, was pure Palestine.

  361

  There was still no news, the South American monk said, about the construction of the Wall across the valley. The plans were in place but they hadn’t yet been carried out. There were several reasons why, he said—the first being optics, the second being politics, and the third being military of course, but let’s not talk of this just yet, he said, come along, let us first break bread while we have time.

  360

  End the Preoccupation.

  359

  The monks made their wine in cedarwood barrels. The staves were cut from blocks of wood. They followed the grain of the tree. The pieces were sanded, and then cut at an angle, wide in the middle, narrower at the end. The monks used more staves than traditional coopers: thirty-three in all, one for each year of Jesus’s life. They placed the staves inside a hooped metal ring
in the shape of a flower, a mise en rose. The hoop was tightened and the staves brushed with water, then bent in the heat of a fire.

  The staves were tightened with a vise and then the monks toasted the interior with lit straw and leaves to lightly singe the inside of the barrel.

  Tiny pieces of straw were inserted between the staves to make the barrel watertight. The monks sanded it, drilled a hole in the side, and created panels for the top and bottom. The Cremisan stamp was imprinted on the top panel.

  A blessing of the wine took place when the barrel was filled and stored. The monks aged their wine for up to five years. Then the barrels were put on donkey carts and rolled into Bethlehem. It was sold primarily to holy places, including the Church of the Nativity where Jesus was said to have been born.