Apeirogon

by Colum McCann

  Sometimes at night she would steal out from the house, alone, and call Rami again, in the dark, in the rain. She tried not to mention Smadar: the name alone twisted her core. She fed the phone slot with a pocketful of fifty-pence pieces. The coins tumbled in the space between minutes. She bid him good night and walked home again in the dark. In the morning she woke before Yigal, sat at her desk and wrote her academic treatises. She railed against the Occupation, military service, racism, myopia. She wanted to plow through the anger, to turn it into language. The translations were easier. There had always been something about Hebrew that released her. It brought her back to herself. But there were times she wondered if even Hebrew was failing her: it took a moment to remember certain words. It was odd to walk through London and see no script, no aleph, no tav. No home without language. She loved her job, her husband, her children, even her Israel, or what was left of it, that original idea, that smoldering mess, her father’s heartbreak. There were times she thought she mightn’t return at all, but she knew it was chimerical, she would have to go back, where else was there to live, where else could she survive, what else could she possibly know?

  225

  ISRAELI GOVT. KILLED MY DAUGHTER, Haaretz, September 8, 1997. General’s Daughter Accuses Israel of Murder, Yedioth Ahronoth, September 9, 1997. Family of Bombing Victim says Israel Breeds Terrorists, Associated Press Newswire, September 9, 1997. Israel Bomb Victim’s Mother Blames Leaders, Chicago Tribune, September 10, 1997. Bereaved Mother Rips Government, Jerusalem Post, September 11, 1997. MOTHER BLAMES ISRAELI POLICIES FOR CHILD’S DEATH, L.A. Times, September 11 1997. Bereft Mum Blames Israel, Courier Mail, Queensland, September 11, 1997. BIBI KILLED MY GIRL, The Sun, England, September 11, 1997. Oppression Drives Arab Extremists to Violence, Grieving Mother Says, Moscow News, Sept 12, 1997. Mother Blames Israel for Daughter’s Horror Death, People’s Daily, China, September 13, 1997. Israel’s Uneasy State, The New York Times, September 14, 1997. OCCUPATION AT FAULT FOR MY DEAD CHILD, Paris Match, September 14–21, 1997. “Out of Lebanon!”: Mother’s Cry Rouses Israelis, Tel Aviv Journal, September 19, 1997. “BIBI, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?” Le Monde Diplomatique, October 1, 1997.

  224

  Abir’s sister, Areen, was in the habit of scissoring out the newspaper clippings. Most of the time the newspapers used the same photograph: her sister at the age of nine. She kept the clippings in a shoebox under her bed, even when they went to Bradford. Sometimes at night, when she couldn’t sleep, she reached in under the bed for the box, woke in the morning with her sister scattered all around her.

  223

  Abir was hurtled through the air with such force that the shoe skidded on the road and came to a rest, perched on its emptiness.

  222

  Bassam disappeared into the coal shed for hours at a time. Wind whistled through the slats in the door. Giant cobwebs hung from the corners of the ceiling. He rustled through the items the previous renter had left on the shelves: bags of coal, a broken weed whacker, gloves, a Garden News jacket, pruning shears, fly killer, fertilizer, a handsaw, jam jars full of old screws, a plastic bottle stained red with petrol: it struck him that all the ingredients of a bomb were here, in this suburban English house.

  When he lifted the old tins of paint a strange universe of bugs appeared in the damp: earwigs, slugs, daddy longlegs. He tidied the shed but left the cobwebs on the ceiling.

  He stepped outside with the small pitchfork under his arm and began to perforate the patch of lawn, turning the soil at the bottom wall, made a row for planting.

  —An English garden, he told Salwa.

  He planned out what he would grow: courgettes, cucumbers, scallions, rhubarb, lettuce, parsley. He contemplated a small fountain, decided against it. He found a cherub statue in a flea market, painted it white.

  At the edge of the shed he planted two roses, one named Sally Mac, the other Red Devil.

  He loved to work the garden on Saturday afternoons in particular: the neighbors were out listening to football games on their radios. He could always tell how the local team was doing by standing in the middle of his garden and listening to the shouts from the fathers and their sons in their own gardens.

  221

  Sally Mac: an apricot-pink floribunda, yellow at the base with a gentle fragrance. Red Devil: medium-red hybrid tea, with a high centered bloom, dark at the base with a deep perfumed fragrance.

  When they bloomed he cut them for Salwa and put them in a vase on the windowsill.

  220

  I repeat: Amicable numbers are two different numbers related in the sense that when you add all their proper divisors together—not including the original number itself—the sums of their divisors equal each other.

  The numbers—esteemed by mathematicians—are considered amicable because the proper divisors of 220 are 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 20, 22, 44, 55 and 110 which, when added together, reach 284. And the proper divisors of 284 are 1, 2, 4, 71 and 142, of which the sum is 220.

  They are the only amicable numbers under 1,000.

  219

  Do not let the olive branch fall from my hands.

  218

  Salwa didn’t open the newspapers. She stepped away from the television. She didn’t ask where Bassam had gone that day, or what he had seen, or with whom he had talked. It wasn’t isolation, and it wasn’t exhaustion, and it wasn’t bitterness, though she knew it could have been a little of all of these, wrapped in the desire to remain intact. She didn’t go to the Parents Circle. She didn’t attend women’s groups. It was not that she disagreed with them, but it was, she knew, her silence that spoke. It was part of her Du’aa. She was not called upon to tell her story. It lived, instead, in the aspects of her devotion. The path to understanding came from supplication. It was not anything the interviewers were able to understand. They were nearly all Western, mostly European. They wanted to tell the story, to write their reports. They were good people, she liked them, she invited them into her home, cooked for them, poured tea, emptied the ashtrays, but she stopped short of letting them interview her. She knew that they wanted to get a picture of her in her hijab. She understood it, but she also understood that it would be misunderstood. Once she was filmed carrying her youngest, Hiba, through the apartment. She had stopped to look at a photograph of Abir and the cameraman caught her crying. If they could have understood her anger, if they could somehow have captured it without making a spectacle of it, she would have talked with them, but she knew, she just knew: a Muslim woman, a Palestinian, the crime of her geography. She supported what Bassam did, Rami too, Nurit as well, but she wanted only to pursue the ordinary. She would find blessing there. In the late morning, after prayers, when Bassam and the children were gone, she went down to the marketplace. She wore long patterned dresses and a veil. Sometimes she had sunglasses propped on her head. Her name rang out among the stalls. She laughed and waved. Yalla, yalla, yalla. She answered questions about her children, about their school, the scout troop, the kindergarten food drive, but mostly she stayed quiet about Abir. Even years after Abir’s death, the sellers in the market still dropped a little extra in her shopping bag: a pear, a pinch more spice, some dates. She left the market with her bags overflowing. She drove fast, a habit she had picked up from Bassam. There was no recklessness in it, just a thrill. She had liked the narrow streets of Anata, but the wide boulevards of Jericho were better. She sped past the palm trees and the abandoned casino, her window open, the warm breeze playing at her hijab. She slowed down near the mosque. After noon prayer she would gather with the other women. They were gossipy: who might get divorced, who was sick, who left the country, whose son was lifted during the night. They asked her about Bradford. She told them about the five-bedroom house, the garden out back, the walks in the park, the English lessons, the mosque in Horton Park. It was like recalling someone else’s life: she wasn’t quite sure it had happened to her. No checkpoints. No strip searches. But s
he had been homesick. Her family, her friends. There was something about the light of Palestine that she missed, its sharp yellowness, the way it clarified shape. The air too. The dust even. She was glad to return. She had become so adept at packing boxes that—on the week of the move—she sharpened both thumbnails so that they would easily slice through the tape. Coming back through the airport they strip-searched her again. Her youngest two were kept in the same room as she took off her clothes. She had them turn away. She could hear them weeping as she stepped out of her dress. She stayed stoic. Then they strip-searched the children too. In front of her. She knelt down by their sides, whispered to them as the clothes came off. Down to their underwear. She dressed them, then, slowly, button after button. She told them never to give in. Remain steadfast. Trust in Allah. Things would change. It was bound to happen. There was so much to deal with—Araab’s anger, Areen’s guilt, Hiba’s confusion—but she would deal with it, she had to, it was her lot in life. So many other mothers had it much worse. She looked after her own, made sure they came home safe: that was what mattered. She counted them home—one two three four five pairs of shoes by the door. It was only then that she could breathe. In the evening when the children had gone to bed she waited for Bassam to return. She lit the coals and arranged the hookah outside on the porch beside the small card table. She spread the cards out and watched for the pinpoints of car light coming up the road.

  217

  The house in Jericho was extraordinary. It lay on the outskirts of the city, down a rutted dirt road lined with orange and apricot and palm trees, with a view to the open desert.

  Four bedrooms. Tall ceilings. Thick walls. Vaulting archways. Latticework windows. Intricate tilework in the kitchen. Pine floors.

  The waste systems were reliable. The heating pipes. The electricity too. There was even a small concrete swimming pool at the back.

  When Salwa first saw the house she walked up and down the staircase, touching the surface of things, skimming over them with her fingers. She switched the lights on and off. In the kitchen she stood under the air from the circling fan, paused for a moment by the stove, wiped the dampness from her cheeks.

  Bassam climbed the stairs and looked out from the second-floor windows. The neighbors’ houses were well kept too: whitewashed walls, intercoms, satellite dishes, electronic gates.

  Around the house, three dunams of land: enough to plant a small orchard.

  216

  The architecture of well-appointed houses in Jericho is such that they are considered introverted—many of their rooms point their gaze towards the inner courtyard rather than out into the street: they gather into themselves.

  Some of the houses are crowned by malqaf or windcatcher towers: a tall tower which faces, on one or more sides, the prevailing wind. The windcatcher scoops the high-density cool air and funnels it down into the belly of the house, where it acts like an air conditioner. Water vessels are sometimes placed inside the shaft, or damp towels are hung across the bottom vents, to increase the cooling effect.

  In certain homes one can feel the immediate cool nudge up against the curtain of heat.

  215

  In the nineteenth century, imported ice—packed tightly in sawdust and transported in wooden boxes from the east and north—could remain cool in the basements of the towers.

  The ice was taken in giant straight-edged blocks hauled by oxen from frozen lakes in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, moved at first by train and then, when the stations were reached, hauled by camel. The boxes, then, were lowered underground by rope and pulley.

  To have a glass of tea with ice and a sprig of mint was the height of Palestinian luxury.

  214

  A week later, on her birthday, Bassam handed her a sheaf of papers, rolled up and fastened with a ribbon: the deed to the house.

  Outside, the tiny concrete pool. Bassam stepped into the back courtyard, uncurled a hose and began to fill it with water from the outside tap. He had already nicknamed it the Puddle.

  One by one the children clambered in and splashed around.

  213

  All, of course, except Abir.

  212

  Late in the evening he woke to hear Salwa tidying up the living room. He sat on the top of the stairs, looked down past the wooden railing.

  She didn’t notice him. She moved quietly, picking up towels, T-shirts, a small beach ball that sagged in the corner. She leaned down to the coffee table, brought a plate and a glass to the kitchen.

  When she shut off the water from the tap he could hear her breathing. She turned off the kitchen lights and stopped once again in the living room.

  A single lamp remained lit. Salwa reached to turn it off. She noticed something hidden in the folds of the couch. She lifted the cushion. Underneath lay an orange plastic swimming armband, crumpled and deflated.

  She pulled up the adjacent cushions, searching the folds for the second armband, found nothing.

  He watched as she moved to the bookshelf and stood by the photo of Abir. She popped out the small plastic nipple of the armband, put it to her lips and blew. She pinched the top and sealed the air inside, slipped the armband above her wrist.

  She remained there a moment, then stepped towards the cupboard, deflating the armband on the way.

  211

  Rami didn’t like seeing the casually thrown uniforms when the boys came home for the weekend. A green jacket slung on the coat rack. Brown boots askew at the door. He could almost tell what area of the country they had been in by looking at the soles. The dust from the Negev. The salt marks of the Dead Sea. The worn-down heels of Hebron.

  210

  Elik served from 1995 until 1998: first sergeant in the Maglan unit. Guy served from 1997 until 2000: lieutenant in a tank regiment. Yigal entered a noncombat educational unit and served from 2010 until 2013.

  209

  Salwa kept Abir’s clothing for Hiba to wear. She brought it out in increments over the years: a shirt here, a scarf there. The only thing she didn’t use was the school uniform or the patent leather shoes. She couldn’t bear the thought of her youngest going off to school a close mirror of Abir.

  208

  When Nurit came home from London she laundered everything except the military uniforms.

  207

  A week after shiva, Elik was back with his unit. His commanding officer found him in the control room at base. The officer had seen footage of Smadar’s funeral on television. He put his hand on Elik’s shoulder. It was all about action now, the officer said. It was psychological. Something had to be done. Elik had to get back in the field. There was an operation coming up in Lebanon in a few days. They were going to take out some Hizbollah. Elik should get ready for it. Someone was going to pay for his sister’s death. He would feel better. Trust me, said the officer. He could score a bit. Hit some Hiz.

  Elik sat, silent. His commanding officer hadn’t yet seen any of the comments that his mother had made in the newspapers.

  Two days later his commanding officer said that there had been a change of plans. Elik was transferred to an intelligence unit where he would not be allowed out on field operations.

  Elik knew that the decision had been made for fear of a public relations disaster.

  206

  Salwa drove the English roads: it was the only way to get Hiba to sleep in the daytime. She tucked her into a child seat and drove round and round the neighborhood. After a couple of weeks, she ventured further. To the outskirts of town and then beyond.

  No military barriers. No checkpoints. Out through Shipley, Bingley, Keighley. It didn’t bother her to be driving on the other side of the road.