by Colum McCann
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The grenades rolled in around the body of the jeep. One, two. They looked to him, from a distance, like small round stones. One grenade stopped by the back wheel. It bucked around and brought up a plume of dust.
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Other newspapers said the Aramin case was a landmark decision. Despite the lack of an earlier criminal conviction, the defendant had been afforded due process in a civilian court and the judge’s decision was a significant step forward in reinforcing the democratic essence of the State. It reiterated the integrity of the judicial system while simultaneously questioning the nature of what was often referred to as the world’s most moral army. If indeed the army was to be moral—as it had been designed, decades ago, to be, by the founders of the country—it had to embrace the system of checks and balances. The action of a single soldier or a rogue commander was not necessarily the policy of the army, and it was important for the integrity of the military to acknowledge the nature and extent of its mistakes. The verdict opened up the landscape of possibility for both Israelis and Palestinians and enabled them to properly question the actions of those whose duty it was to protect them. Throughout the process it had to be remembered that the life of Abir Aramin, ten years old, had been lost and nothing, now, would ever bring her back.
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A second small bang came from under the wheel. He thought he saw the tire shred. He waited for the other to blow. Nothing happened. The jeep lurched forward and then the doors opened. Two, three, four shapes spilled out.
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Other papers said that the case of Abir Aramin was the single exception that proved the existence of a brutal system. It was a victory, but a Pyrrhic one. The fact that this single case garnered so much attention highlighted the wildly unbalanced nature of the Israeli judicial system and military courts wherein not a single criminal case, including the Aramin case, had ever been successfully brought against an Israeli soldier for the murder of a noncombatant, even a child. A criminal case would have brought into question the true nature of the conflict, but that had been dismissed out of hand. The actions of the civil court judge, while admirable in the specific, were but a minuscule gesture in the wider political context. The Aramin case was diverted into the streams of civil law. The verdict encouraged the illusion that Palestinians were afforded a self-determining series of rights within the wider system. It was an essentially undemocratic system in which children, when not being shot with rubber bullets, could be brought to military courts where there was a 99.74 percent chance of being found guilty. Abir Aramin had suffered the same sort of fate—she had been guilty of being a Palestinian, ten years old, standing outside the school gates, having bought two shekels’ worth of candy.
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Apeirogon: a shape with a countably infinite number of sides.
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From the Greek, apeiron: to be boundless, to be endless. Alongside the Indo-European root of per: to try, to risk.
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As a whole, an apeirogon approaches the shape of a circle, but a magnified view of a small piece appears to be a straight line. One can finally arrive at any point within the whole. Anywhere is reachable. Anything is possible, even the seemingly impossible.
At the same time, one can arrive anywhere within an apeirogon and the entirety of the shape is complicit in the journey, even that which has not yet been imagined.
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Later—when the compensation was announced—Bassam saw Y.A. again. This time Y.A. wore a kippah on his head. He had made a decision to become a repentant, a chozer b’teshuva, to be born again, to go back to his roots.
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Maimonides, the twelfth-century Jewish philosopher, said that the process of repentance included three stages: confession, regret, and a vow not to repeat the misdeed.
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In the Qur’an, God is variously called Al-Ghafoor, Al-Afuw, Al-Tawwab, Al-Haleem, Ar-Rahman and Ar-Rahim: the Most Forgiving, the Pardoner, the Clement, the Forbearing, the Most Merciful and the Most Compassionate.
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At times Bassam would imagine Y.A. not living the life of a chozer b’teshuva at all, that it was a ploy, a ruse, and the soldier had turned his back on the idea of repentance altogether, left the army, found himself a job, high tech of course, low on the ladder, but still highly paid, a surprise even to himself, a lucky break for an ordinary border guard, not a repentant at all, no, and he was possibly living, nowadays, in a light-filled apartment in Tel Aviv on the edge of the sea, something he liked showing off, small but impressive, a room so full of mirrors that he would not have to look back.
Artwork on the walls. Brazilian hardwood floors. Handwoven carpets. Lots of fancy white machinery in the kitchen. Modems and television screens and wires neatly tucked behind the walls. Soft rock music coming from hidden speakers.
Y.A. would walk around in his bare feet, marveling at his new life. His white linen trousers rolled to the ankles. His short-sleeve shirt flagrantly open. A number of thin string bracelets displayed on his wrist. He would be carrying a glass of ice water with perfectly square cubes and he would catch a full reflection of himself in the plate glass windows, pause a moment, turn, glance again, cock his head sideways, finish his water, dump the ice in the sink, run his hands along the high silver tap, place the glass in the drying rack, check his mobile phone as he crossed the floor.
At the door of the apartment Y.A. would slip into a pair of white loafers, lean down to pick up a beach bag, flick another look in the mirror, close the door, making sure he locked it.
He would step along the corridor in soft fluorescent light and move towards the elevators. The elevator would come quickly, efficiently. He would nod to a neighbor—someone tall, elegant, smart perhaps—carrying a poodle in her arms. Y.A. would pause on the ground floor to let the woman out, then glide around her to open up the first of two heavy glass doors.
Outside, in the street, the woman would set the poodle gently on the ground and the dog would strain against its leash. Y.A. would lean down and pat the dog goodbye, begin his glide down the street, the sort of walk that would make him seem as if he wore cushions on his feet. He would hear the high beep of a reversing truck. The tinny sounds of a coffee shop. The thrumming engine of a crane. The click of car locks. A bicycle bell from the path along Frishman Beach.
He would walk past orange construction barriers, pause a moment at the lights, pat his beach bag against his leg. The traffic would roar by: taxis, trucks, a plain white police car.
He would cross at a clip towards the promenade, stop at the bicycle path, watch the bare-chested runners go by, the young women in their running bras, the elderly in their purposeful seaside shuffle. Y.A. would slip off his shoes and carry them in his hand, then unbutton his shirt further as he strolled.
On the beach, the dull wooden sounds of the matkot players, their shouts, their laughter, their paddles slapped against their bare thighs. The umbrellas, the coolers, the towels, the oiled bodies, even now, early in the morning. The babies held to chests. The older men with their copies of Haaretz, their coffee flasks, their flip phones. The single discarded stiletto. The radio music: a mizrahi rhythm, a rap song, a Degibri jazz riff. The immigrant vendors. The English football shirts. The French football shirts. The Spanish football shirts. Y.A. would find himself a patch of sand and unfurl his towel from his beach bag, tuck his mobile phone in a zip compartment, crack open a bottle of water, and stand there, looking out at the bright kayakers and the three-colored windsurfers and the blue of the Mediterranean and the lines of swimmers churning along the shore, and at the sun climbing in the high and very blue sky. He would stretch his arms wide and pause a moment, and then he would re-cap the water bottle, place it back in his beach bag, before stepping out of his linen trousers to reveal a tight blue swimsuit, and then he would move towards the shore, zigzagging past the last of the matkot players, easing into a slight jog, and making
his way blithely along the shoreline, a man known to, and intimate with, the sea.
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At times like this Bassam would imagine, too, a single rubber bullet in flight along the beach, coming in over the waves, over the sunbathers, over the deck chairs, over the umbrellas, the bullet pausing a moment, mid-beach, as if to make a decision, spinning in place, defying time, then slamming forward without warning into the back of Y.A.’s head.
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Splintering, precisely, the back of his skull.
86
You’re the victim here, not me.
85
Rami, on the other hand, imagined Y.A. in a low-ceilinged flat. In a town in the Negev maybe. In an apartment block. A little run-down. Shabby at the edges. On the third floor, maybe the fourth. At the end of a corridor. Several locks on the door. A Likud sticker by the bell. The door slightly ajar. A creak from the hinges. The cramped darkness inside. The smell of cigarette smoke. The shape of Y.A.’s mother at the sink, gently humming over last night’s dishes. Her expansive floral dress. Her hair in a net. A radio on in the background, Reshet Gimmel, 97.8 FM. The hanging dishtowels. The Formica counter. The jar of Nestlé. The mismatched crockery. The chipped olive dish. The Armenian ceramic clock ticking just to the side of the stove. The curling linoleum rolling up against the tassled carpet. The Seder plate on the wooden coffee table. The floral motif. The handblown crystal bowl beside it, full of knickknacks. The photographs ranged along the shelves: Y.A. at the Dead Sea, Y.A. with his mother before he went to camp, Y.A. at his bar mitzvah, Y.A. at a skating rink, Y.A. blowing a ram’s horn, Y.A. graduating from vocational school, Y.A. in his border guard uniform, Y.A. under the hood of his very first car, Y.A. at a dance hall with an unknown girl, and—at one end of the shelf—in a tiny silver frame, Y.A.’s father when he, too, was young, along the banks of the Lena River outside Yakutsk in northern Siberia, with a pair of homemade skates slung over his shoulder, taken in the year before he emigrated to Israel to work in a munitions factory in Netanya.
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With Y.A. in his room, stretched out in his bed, one hand holding a cigarette, the other shielding his swollen eyes.
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No chozer b’teshuva at all.
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What Rami wanted was to take Y.A. out into a large field, no stones, no fences, and push him around, gentle to begin with, just jab him in the shoulder, rock him back on his toes a little bit, to ask him why in a logical way, to jab him in the shoulder again, the right shoulder, then the left, with Y.A. stepping quickly backward through the field—moonlit now, a sea of dark grass—with his hands up in the air, in half-surrender, saying it was a mistake, just a mistake, hold on, hold on, not my fault, leave me alone, not my fault brother, and Rami would push Y.A. harder, saying don’t call me brother, and Y.A. would stumble in the grass, his hands up, his fingers splayed, hey wasn’t my fault man, you’ve got to believe me, I was just following orders, the Commander told us to shoot, you know what it’s like out there, it’s a jungle, man, I was just a kid, he told us to fire, we didn’t mean to hurt anybody, honest, man, we didn’t even look where we were firing, it was a mistake, I had no idea we were near a school, we were being pelted with rocks, you know what that’s like, come on man, you served too, come on brother, the stones were pounding off the roof, it was orders, it’s terrifying man, how would I know it was a girl anyway, tell me that, and here Rami would punch him for the first time, hard, in the very center of the chest, so that Y.A. would bend over, gasp, his hands closer to his face now, to protect himself, hey leave me alone, you don’t know what you’re doing, and he would snarl a little now, get away from me, I did nothing wrong, don’t blame me, I was just doing my job, I saw her, yeah, she was throwing stones man, she had a rock in her hand, they’re a bunch of liars, born to lie, fucking Arabs, all of them, she was there, just like the rest of them, and here Rami would come with a hard flurry of punches, right, left, right, left, so Y.A. would stumble backwards, cowering, fuck you, man, fuck you, you have no idea, leave me alone, she had a rock in her hand, I saw her standing there, she wasn’t hit by a rubber bullet at all, she got a rock in the back of the head, that’s what happened, it wasn’t me at all, fuck you, I didn’t fire, she was hit by one of her own, and now Rami’s punches would be raining down upon him, a fury of knuckles, hitting the soldier’s head, his neck, his ears, and the punching would continue until the soldier fell and lay splayed out beneath him in the dark grass, and Rami would stand above him, and here the soldier would begin to whimper that he was sorry, he didn’t mean it, he had no idea what happened really, just listen to me please, it all happened in a flash, the metal flap opened, the gun was sticking out, the truth is man I was scared, I was just scared, I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, you would have done the exact same thing, admit it, man, admit it, you would have.
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Eighteen years old: there are sometimes no ways out.
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In prison Bassam would occasionally wonder if the grenades had been planted near the mouth of the cave on purpose. Two explosives sitting on a bed of brittle straw. They thought at first they had come upon a crate of pomegranates.
The grenades were ancient, probably leftovers from ’67. It was not beyond possibility that they had already been tampered with, the gunpowder reduced, the pins disengaged.
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The Hebrew word for pomegranate, rimon, is also the word for grenade. It was, according to some Biblical scholars, the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. It is said to consistently have 613 seeds, corresponding to the number of commandments in the Torah.
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Commandment 598: That those engaged in warfare shall not fear their enemies nor be panic-stricken by them during battle.
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On the morning of his third meeting with the Parents Circle—twelve days after the death of Abir—Bassam was stopped at a checkpoint in the Walaja valley. He was taken into a side room in a prefab hut and told to strip.
The room was small and cramped. A Beitar Jerusalem poster hung on the wall. He noticed a camera in the corner of the ceiling: it swiveled on its metal arms.
He took his clothes off, down to his underwear and socks. He laid his shoes on the ground, folded his shirt and jacket and trousers on the table. A soldier came and put the clothes in a white plastic bag.
—Wristwatch too.
—Why?
—Testing.
—For what?
The soldier said nothing.
A January wind whistled through the open door. Bassam handed him the watch.
—I need a blanket, said Bassam.
He was surprised when the soldier came back moments later with a small red blanket. Bits of dog hair clung to it. It smelled slightly of a young child.
—How long will I be here?
—As long as it takes.
Bassam pulled the blanket around his shoulders. This was how the Occupation worked: you waited. And you waited. And then you waited to out-wait the waiting. It was always best, he knew, to pretend not to be bothered. You wait standing, you wait sitting, you wait stretching against the wall. You wait for another soldier to come in. You wait for him to leave. You make waiting into an art.
The door opened. The soldier asked him if he wanted a smoke break. It was as if, Bassam thought, he, too, was on a job. Yes, he said, he would have a cigarette.
The soldier lit the cigarette, placed an empty soda can on the table for Bassam to use as an ashtray, then left again.
Bassam inhaled deeply, made the cigarette last as long as possible. He glanced at his wrist for the gone watch.
It almost came as a disappointment when two new soldiers came into the prefab, carrying his clothes.
—One more thing, they said.
They told him to drop his remaining underwear, stand over a mirror and squat.
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In his book Pensées, a collection of fragments of theology and philosophy, the seventeenth-century French philosopher Pascal suggested that all of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to sit, alone, in one room.
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What Salwa hated most of all was when, at the airport, they pulled on plastic gloves and searched through her hair. As if her scalp contained something which would very soon blow apart.
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On the Henley passport index, the Palestinian Authority passport, a laissez-passer, is consistently among the world’s most useless.