What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist who Tried to Kill Your Wife?

by David Harris-Gershon

  I glanced up, saw their demeanors darkened. I couldn’t muster the word “reconciliation,” the word “dialogue.” What I had said was enough. “And that’s all. Just wanted to say it.”

  They looked at each other, and Katherine said, “How much do you know?” I wasn’t sure how to interpret this question, so I didn’t answer. She went on. “Because I don’t know anything, haven’t wanted to know anything about the attack. Just kept myself away from the details, I suppose, and I’m not sure I want to know them.”

  Fear as opposed to anger. It was a relief. “Well, I do know things.”

  “Oh,” she said, eyes down. I knew she wanted to ask me, Are you writing about Ben? It’s a question I was anticipating, the question they would have had every right to ask, the question I would have felt bad answering, No, I’m not. He’s mentioned, of course, sometimes at difficult moments. But no, I’m not writing about him. But the question never came. Instead, recollections of Ben trickled out. Stories. And then Rivka dashed to her room and returned with a series of essays she had written about her brother. She handed them to me. Richard and Katherine added, “We were hoping you could look at them. We’d like to see them published. It would be nice for people to know the story, for them not to be blind to what happened, and anything you could comment upon would be appreciated.”

  “Of course, I’d love to.”

  Then Rivka said, “For a couple of years, I wrote imaginary letters to my brother in my journal. I wrote his responses back.” She looked at me, smiled, said, “Life of the dead brother’s sister” in a sarcastic, light-hearted tone.

  I thought, I want to see them, saying nothing as I rose to leave, as they showed me oil paintings and charcoal drawings of Ben that Rivka had been working on, rendered from photographs that were resting on the living room floor. Looking at the images, our reflections lightly coloring Ben’s face, I turned to Rivka. “You know, the difficult thing about charcoal is that you are never really finished – you can always lighten or darken at will.”

  I was amazed by their ability to talk openly about their bereavement, by Rivka’s ability to display their loss, by her ability to create beauty from it. And looking at her portraits of Ben, the same feeling began to well that I had experienced while viewing Encounter Point, watching Israelis and Palestinians, mothers and fathers, trying to build connections across lines that had been severed, trying to plug the cord in somewhere else, somewhere meaningful, somewhere charged. Holding Rivka’s essays rolled between my fingers, it seemed wrong to leave, to step out the door and begin the drive back to North Carolina. To shake hands. Say goodbye. Yes, I know how to get to the highway. Thanks. Yes, take a left at the light. Thank you for everything. I’ll email Rivka about the essays. Goodbye.

  When I drove the 477 miles to Pennsylvania for the opportunity to see Robi Damelin on screen, I was hoping to learn just how she did it – how a Jew prepared for a meeting with a Palestinian terrorist, before I traveled the 6,108 miles across the Atlantic to do it myself.

  Me:

  This is for me. For my sanity.

  Me:

  Even though you don’t understand from where this desire for a meeting with the perpetrator is coming?

  Me:

  Yes.

  Me:

  Even though all the research on South Africa, searching for a connection between them and you in order to understand what seems to be a twisted desire – to confront Mohammad – has shed no light on the psychology of this? On why you’re driven to do this?

  Me:

  Yes.

  Me:

  So even without understanding, you’re going through with it?

  Me:

  Yes.

  Me:

  For you?

  Me:

  Yes.

  Me:

  You’re crazy.

  Me:

  Perhaps.

  All of it was for me. Thoughts of reconciliation, of confrontation, of traveling across the world to confront the other – all of it was driven in large part by selfishness, by a personal need to somehow move beyond the trauma by going to the source. But after seeing the film – after watching bereaved Palestinians and Israelis struggle through personal pain to further the chance for political resolution, for peace between two warring peoples – something shifted inside me. I walked out of the theater and was no longer able to look upon my efforts through the tiny, solipsistic frame within which they had been housed, a frame ripped open and replaced by a window that looked out upon history. My journey was not just a narrative of personal healing, but a larger, historical narrative of two peoples clawing at each other, of those trying to change this narrative, trying to pare the nails, stop the fighting. A narrative I was entering at the edges. Unwittingly.

  Most striking was the film’s focus on the Parents Circle – Families Forum, an organization which brought together Israelis and Palestinians who had lost immediate family members in the conflict. It brought them together simply to talk, people torn open by grief who were willing to make themselves vulnerable again, to see the other side and accept a previously unrecognized humanity as a necessary step in reclaiming their lives and their own humanity. In the documentary they wept and hugged and marched arm-in-arm down city streets, and watching that in a dark theater in Harrisburg did something that all my research on South Africa and all my emails with peace activists – with Leah – had failed to do: revealed the context of my journey.

  Perhaps the size of the screen had widened my frame of reference, revealing my place on the far margins of a burgeoning peace movement among Israelis and Palestinians that had previously been hidden from me. This was no longer just about me, about my desire to stop yawning intentionally in order to breathe. A meeting with Mohammad would have wider reverberations. I wasn’t sure how. But Encounter Point resonated so strongly that I began to consider the potential power of what I was doing, thinking, What if this personal act isn’t so personal?

  18

  Leah emailed. The Odeh family wanted to learn more. Wanted to learn more about my motivations from Leah, whose trip to the Middle East had been delayed until the summer. She would visit the family in the sweltering desert heat, would sweat in their home – an invitation having been extended – her perspiration evaporating while Jamie and I perspired in the humid hills of southern New England, perpetually drenched.

  We had chosen to spend the summer working at a sleep-away camp, a Jewish enclave situated on old farmland in Northwood, New Hampshire, where the kids ran wild. Jamie taught Jewish studies and I wore two hats: athletic director and writer-in-residence. Each morning, I sat before an open window and pecked away at my laptop, occasionally lifting eyes toward the fields, picking up binoculars to check on the boys playing basketball on the blacktop or the girls on the diamond playing softball.

  Often, a thought would come: I am hungry. Gazing upon swarms of campers buzzing around granola bars and bug juice, unfinished sentences scattered on the desk, the words malnourished, starving, I mouthed this often, a whisper, barely audible. “I am hungry.” In any other context, it would have been metaphoric, an expression of some profound longing, some desperation. But at camp, despite the stack of chocolate chip pancakes and two bowls of Raisin Bran I normally downed at breakfast, it was elemental. I wanted to eat constantly. To be fed.

  They came quickly at camp, such feelings of hunger, where for hours at a time I forgot entirely about Mohammad, about Leah’s impending trip. And the spoken word came just as fast – you said what you meant, plain as day. And often, even saying all that you meant was profligate. “Juice” meant “please pass the pitcher of juice.” “Quiet” meant “close your mouths for an important announcement.” And “here” signified any number of things: “pass me the ball; give me back my hat; get over here this instant.” I warmed quickly to such economy, such simplicity.

  Many of my afternoons at camp were sweat-filled festivals. Example: after losing a heated game of dodge ball, then challenging middle-school b
oys to some pick-up basketball after taking some cuts during a Wiffle ball home-run-derby, I would look around for a group of kids needing inspiration. Often, my gaze would fall on a gathering of young girls, doing cartwheels or chatting in a circle on the soccer pitch. One afternoon, I jumped in front of a goal post, yelling, “You score, you get chocolate.” Limbs flapped frantically, a flock in sudden disarray flying into lines, girls poised to fire shots from all angles, penalty kicks reaching the net in rapid succession as they yelled back, “We get chocolate.”

  One evening, I sat down with my laptop in the administrative building as counselors secretly planned Maccabiah – the camp’s Jewish version of a color war. Logging in, I found a narrative waiting in my inbox, a story generated by my story, a story which I had temporarily forgotten amidst all the ice cream and games of four square. Leah had traveled to Israel, and her trip was chronicled in several messages strung together, messages which, for days, had been sitting there, waiting to be opened.

  After landing in Israel, Leah found the mukhtar of Silwan, Fakhree Abu Diab, whose family was related to the Odehs, a particularly large and eminent clan in East Jerusalem. After speaking with Mohammad’s mother and reassuring the Odehs that Leah was friend, not foe, Fakhree arranged for a visit. The deal: he would accompany her, acting as a chaperone and sentinel, not for Leah’s benefit, but for the family’s. His presence served as proof that no revenge was about to be exacted upon them. The next day, as Fakhree sat in the Odehs’ living room, preparing them for Leah’s visit, explaining in clear terms her role as surrogate for me – for the one whose wife was injured by Mohammad’s act – the mother turned pale and unsteady, then quickly turned ill. Fakhree called for a doctor, who instructed the family to rush her to the hospital at Hebrew University. To the place Jamie was rushed, scorched and bleeding, after Mohammad’s bomb went off.

  When Leah arrived at Fakhree’s home with her friend and translator Mariam – a Palestinian teacher – they all sat down to tea. The meeting would be postponed, Fakhree said. The father died twenty years ago, he said. The mother’s heart has been broken by the actions of her son, he said.

  A day later, the mother had returned home from the hospital. She was ready. The family was ready. And so Fakhree picked up Leah and Mariam and rattled over the bumpy side roads of East Jerusalem to the Odeh home, where Mohammad’s mother greeted everyone weakly, cautiously.

  Inside were two of Mohammad’s brothers, seated, and tucked in the corner, eyes averted, was Mohammad’s wife. Everyone was nervous, uncertain what, exactly, to expect from the other. So Leah, with Mariam translating her English into Arabic, sat down softly and began explaining the purpose of her visit. Sunlight streamed through some gauzy, white curtains that led to a stone courtyard, where Mohammad’s two children played outside. She glanced at the wall, where there was a poster cataloguing Mohammad’s sentence – nine concurrent life sentences, one for every person murdered. Looking back to the family, Leah tried to set them at ease by chronicling her seventeen-year history working with Palestinians, hoping to gain their trust, to pry them open. After she spoke the word – reconciliation – the family shifted in their seats, their defensive postures relaxed. Then the stories, the pent-up emotions, poured out. An avalanche.

  They spoke of shock. Of disbelief after learning what had happened. Felt as though they themselves had gone through a trauma. Not the same, of course. But a trauma.

  They spoke of sadness for the gravity of it all.

  They spoke of what-ifs and regret – that they would have stopped Mohammad had they only known. That he was no hero. Not to them.

  They spoke of Mohammad as the gentlest of the family. Always the most sensitive. The most vulnerable.

  They spoke of rough experiences with the Israeli army, about how, when Mohammad was fourteen, he was first imprisoned. Then again at sixteen, for throwing stones. Something all the kids did out of anger and humiliation.

  They spoke of how he was not considered ultra-religious, of how he liked to pray at Al-Aqsa Mosque – it was a ten-to-fifteen-minute walk from their home.

  They spoke of how the soldiers would mistreat and humiliate him, sometimes beating him.

  They spoke of how he must have reached a point where he just broke under the pressure that his older brothers might have been better able to handle. He must have silently shattered. It’s the only explanation.

  They spoke of the children. Of how his girl was newly born when he entered prison. About how he’s unable to hold her, so they kiss each other through the glass.

  And they spoke of his supposed remorse. Of how they see Mohammad twice a month. How he tells them everything. That he’s filled with remorse for what he did. And that if he could roll back time and remove his actions, he would.

  The family told Leah that they were sure Mohammad never received any requests to meet with a victim of the bombing, and that they were certain he would have agreed to any such meetings. Then they told her, as Mariam tried to keep up with the flow of Arabic pouring out, that Israeli intelligence interviewed Mohammad two weeks prior and asked him if he thought he should be on the list of prisoners to be released in the prisoner exchange for Gilad Shalit.

  And what did he say? Leah asked.

  He said yes, they said. He said yes.

  19

  From Leah’s emails, I gleaned that the meeting with the Odehs went better than anyone could have anticipated – that the connection was genuine, the family lovely, and the outcome beyond expectations. She reported that the family welcomed me with open arms. Told Leah they wanted me to come. That I should come and meet them. And that they would ask Mohammad, on their next visit, about meeting me. That they would ask him personally and tell Mariam, the translator, Mohammad’s answer.

  Upon reaching the end of these emails, my head spinning, I closed the computer and walked to the old farmhouse where we stayed. Noa jumped off the porch and ran toward me screaming, “Abba, Abba. You said we could go to the agam. Can we go to the agam now? Please? You said. You said.”

  “Yeah, we can go swimming,” I said. “Go get your bathing suit on.”

  “Yipee,” she yelped, skipping up the stairs and into our room.

  “And do a last potty,” I yelled, following.

  “But I don’t need to.”

  “She hasn’t had anything to drink all day,” Jamie said, rocking on the porch.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know, she just hasn’t.”

  “We have to make her drink, Jamie. It’s hot.”

  “You make her drink.”

  “I mean get her something.”

  “Her bottle is right there,” she said, pointing to the railing.

  I sighed as Noa ran toward me, jumping. I turned to Jamie. “Hey, don’t open my computer.”

  “You have nothing to worry about.”

  “I mean, there’s Israel trip stuff on there that I need to deal with when I get back, and I know you don’t really want to deal with the details and stuff right now.”

  “Thanks for the warning. I won’t look at it.”

  Though we had not talked about my journey to Jerusalem in any detail, nor intimately discussed my reconciliation plans, Jamie understood the essence of what I was attempting, and had been wholly supportive, being invested in my healing. However, she also did not want the psychological burden of another recovery on her hands. Understandably so.

  I picked a towel off the laundry line and walked Noa down a gravel path to Travis Pond, plopping down on the sand as she ran into the shallows, particular phrases churning to the surface. Considered the gentlest of the family / filled with remorse for what he did / wishes he could roll back time. None of it made any sense, and I didn’t know whom to trust – an enemy welcoming me with open arms or the Israeli government bent on dragging its heels. I wanted to believe the Odeh family, wanted to trust their words, but it seemed too clean, too perfect, having come to expect nothing but obstruction and insincerity. I knew better than to accep
t as reality that which others projected – that the Israeli government really wanted to help, or that a Hamas murderer wanted to roll back time. And yet my intuition kept leaning toward the enemy, kept nudging me and saying, Why would the family lie about this?

  But I knew they had already lied about certain things, if only for the purpose of self-preservation, lies they needed to repeat in order to survive, still viewing Mohammad as kind, as gentle. They all feel that if you meet Mohammad you will see his humanity and his heart very clearly.

  Me:

  They’re delusional.

  Me:

  They have to be.

  Me:

  Seriously. He’s a murderer. I’m not the least bit sorry he can’t hold his kids. Tough shit.

  Me:

  Yes. But it is sad for the kids.

  Me:

  It’s horribly sad, but fuck if I’m going to feel sympathy for him. He robbed parents of their children. He should now be robbed of his own.

  Me:

  Not exactly the words of a reconciler.

  Me:

  I’m willing to talk with them, understand them, learn about them. Make that effort. Consider them in ways I’d never conceived. But I don’t have to forgive.

  Me:

  No you don’t.

  Me:

  I’m not going to.

  Me:

  Then don’t.

  20

  Back in Wilmington, after settling into the autumn semester’s routine, I walked into a classroom in Morton Hall one morning and sat amidst my creative writing students. I placed a cell phone on the conference table and announced to the assembled masses, “I just want you guys to know, before we start, that I may be getting a call from Israel that I have to take. Probably won’t, but it’s due, so I apologize in advance if it happens.”