Pages:
By Palestinians?
Me:
Yes. Shouldn’t I have reason to fear given what’s happened? Even if the fear is irrational? Isn’t it automatic?
Pages:
Of course.
Me:
So then?
Pages:
And so you need justification that your efforts may have meaning, may have an impact outside yourself, because …?
Me:
Because it would give me hope.
Pages:
You already have it. Otherwise you wouldn’t be on this trip.
Me:
I know. But I’m afraid of the fear. I’m afraid of its capacity to kick in automatically, to take over the synapses. Just tell me what I’m doing could have meaning outside myself. Just give me that hope.
Pages:
Fine. What you’re doing fits into the spectrum of things, into the spectrum of what might be needed for reconciliation and compromise between Israelis and Palestinians to happen. It could help. It can’t hurt.
Me:
Thanks.
Pages:
You’re welcome.
23
When the plane touched down in Rome, I exited and wandered the empty, angular hold of Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport. At six in the morning, only an espresso bar was open near the international gates. Red-eyed travelers crowded around the counter, some sitting in elevated chairs, others standing, elbows propped against the bar, chatting. The scene, filtered through my sleep deprivation and the surrealism of trans-Atlantic transport, appeared dream-like. Here were small, porcelain cups with miniature, oval handles no larger than a penny. Here were Italian men sipping and conversing, accenting indecipherable words on the backbeat while fingering the handles with a thumb and finger, holding lattes as I would hold a dirty tissue or refuse. And here was Italy, a way station, its boot preparing to punt me into the Mediterranean as our plane took on fuel and the espresso machine screamed.
I bought a latte and took a table overlooking the parked planes. Runways stretched symmetrically in the distance, the geometry something I thought da Vinci would have appreciated, something he would have sketched. I sketched my conversation with Mordechai Kedar, my mind numb from reading academic articles on the plane, wondering if all the preparation would lead to nothing more than an inhospitable encounter with airport security in Tel Aviv.
I hoped Kedar was who I thought he was.
I hoped they’d let me in.
Four hours later, our plane touched down in Israel as every one in the cabin clapped collectively – a tradition, or intuitive outpouring, that has always struck me as endearing. It wasn’t like the applause that sometimes breaks out spontaneously in America after a pilot sticks a particularly choppy landing. This was something else altogether: Jewish Israelis and diaspora Jews applauding the fact that such a landing could be possible, that Israel itself could be possible, the applause not really for the pilot so much as for God, for history. Clapping and thinking, Can you believe it?
After disembarking, I streamed with the rest of the passengers through an elevated corridor overlooking an expansive atrium. Below, Israelis reclined, reading and sipping and eating before a manmade waterfall. It was all new. I recognized nothing. In my absence, the country had continued to advance at light speed, to play catch-up with Europe and America, to stake its claim on a first-world status.
Nothing was familiar until, passing through a vestibule, I saw the Israeli customs officials sitting in their booths, the lines forming – citizens to the left, visitors to the right. Taking my place, I fingered the passport in my pocket and began rehearsing some lines:
Ani mvaker yadeedeem.
I’m visiting friends.
Esah l’America b’shavuayim.
I’ll return to America in two weeks.
Lamadati ivrit k’sheh garti b’aretz.
I learned Hebrew when I lived here.
Toeing a black strip on the ground not to be crossed until given permission to do so, I waited anxiously until hearing, “Next.”
“Hi.” I slid my passport under a Plexiglas window to the female soldier manning booth No. 23.
“What is the purpose of your visit?”
“I’m visiting friends.”
“Where do they live?”
“In Jerusalem.”
“Can you tell me their names?”
I told her.
“And what is their address?”
“Um. I’m not exactly sure. I might have it in my bag somewhere.”
She looked up and stared as I started rooting around. “How do you plan on visiting them if you don’t know this?”
“I have their phone number. I have to call and get directions.”
“You didn’t get directions before you arrived?”
“No.”
“Why would you travel here without knowing where you’re going?”
“I do know where I’m going. I just have to call and get directions.”
“What’s their number?”
I fumbled through my pockets, knowing the number was actually in my email inbox. “It’s in my computer.”
“You don’t have their number with you?”
“I do. It’s just in my computer.” I pointed to the backpack over my shoulder.
“And how long do you plan on staying with these friends?”
“Two weeks.”
“This is a long visit for friends, yes?”
“I guess. They’re good friends.”
I could feel the sweat pooling under my arms. She was making me nervous, her questions and demeanor taking on a more severe tone than that to which I was accustomed. Eyeing my passport, she riffled the pages and then scanned the barcode. I waited for some flags to pop up on the screen, for her to look up at me and then raise the phone and call security. Do not permit entry. I had given Kedar my passport number. It had been entered into the system – the barcode would give me away. I thought about how stupid I was, how ridiculously stupid.
She reached toward a handle and, raising it, stamped the passport. “Enjoy your visit.” After sliding it back under the window, I grabbed it and exhaled deeply, crossing into the main terminal.
I was in.
I entered a commercial atrium where people were waiting for relatives and friends and lovers to emerge from baggage claim; an artificial wall of bubbling water soothingly separated them from those who had just disembarked, the wall unintentionally satirizing Israel’s separation barrier. On this side, us. On the other, them. I picked up my rental cellphone from a kiosk, settled near a coffee shop, pulled out my laptop and connected the 230-volt power adaptor. As far as the computer was concerned, we were in Europe – in Italy or Germany or France – where 230 volts was the going electrical currency, rather than the 220 used nearly everywhere else in the Middle East. It was an infrastructural code for where Israel stood, where it felt it stood, despite the pesky problem of geography.
I checked my email. Nothing from Kedar. I clicked “compose:”
Julie,
I’ve landed. My rented cell is: 057-743-8350. Call me when you arrive.
Julie was the woman coming to save me.
Before deciding to make this journey to Israel, I had feared the psychological difficulties it promised to present. I feared the power of sensory recall and how it could dislodge all the traumas that remained compartmentalized, remained firmly in place. I feared the smell of falafel frying in vegetable oil, the army of white Mercedes taxis zipping around sand-swept streets, the three beeps played on the radio every hour, on the hour, on all radio stations, indicating a scheduled news update, beeps which, when heard, would stop most people in their tracks, fingers reaching toward the dial to increase the volume.
This fear of returning to the source of things elicited what, for me, was an unusual response: I asked for help. I emailed a select group of friends, titling the message “A travel invitation you’ll probably refuse,” and requested something unreali
stic, something quite unfair. I asked for companionship, for protection, for someone willing to spend a thousand dollars on an international airfare to be my guide, to help navigate the self-constructed maze awaiting me in Israel.
Julie responded immediately: “I want to come with you.” It was a response I hadn’t anticipated, having asked the question with similar expectations an inexperienced archer has when picking up a bow and looking down the arrow’s shaft at a target one hundred yards away, thinking, What the hell? before releasing the cord, knowing the target would be missed, knowing the arrow would likely be lost in the woods or buried in the grass, but firing away regardless, because that’s what one does when holding a loaded bow.
So I fired. And Julie moved the target, said, “I want to come.”
I had befriended Julie in Israel during our time at Pardes before the bombing. A short, folksy intellectual in her twenties, with unconventional sensibilities that bordered on anti-establishment, I was drawn immediately to her flowing, cotton pants and tweed hats, to her quick wit and sharp tongue. Not long after arriving at Pardes, Julie developed a reputation as something of a dynamo in Talmud class, picking up the nuanced arguments and logical puzzles with admirable speed. She’s impressive, I thought. We should know her.
Once, during a lull in the day’s learning, I challenged her to a game of chess, rolling out a regulation-sized, matted board with ivory and black weighted pieces. Julie grinned, recognizing the territorial claim being staked by the personal board, the invitation to play on my home turf. She slid a chair forward and said, “Good luck.”
From that moment, we developed an obsessive rivalry, playing during lunch, on weekends, late into the nights when Jerusalem’s stray cats screeched and mortar shells echoed off the Judean Hills. Sometimes, Julie would visit our apartment unannounced, and as we lounged and chatted, she or I would inevitably eye the board, nod, and set it up without a word. Jamie would roll her eyes and say, “Let me know when you guys return to this world.”
I finished the email to Julie, who had signed on for everything: she would follow me wherever I went – to Jerusalem, to points past the Green Line, to the home of the man who started everything. I packed up the computer and waited for a call from the two friends with whom I was staying, James and Debbie. They happened to be passing through Tel Aviv and had arranged to pluck me from the airport and drive me back to their home in Jerusalem.
When they pulled up, I waved and casually approached their green sedan as a police officer prodded me to pick up the pace, Yallah. I embraced Debbie quickly and threw my things into the trunk as the officer impatiently waved us away, our departure feeling like an evacuation.
As we made our way along Highway 1, I looked out the window and saw Israel – the narrow, rectangular license plates, the road signs in Hebrew and Arabic, the grassy, coastal plain – and exhaled wistfully. I was surprised by the strength of my longing, by the sense of desire, as though I had finally returned to the arms of a belligerent lover.
“How are you?” Debbie asked in her British accent, leaning over from the passenger seat, a knit scarf wrapped around her neck falling into the open space between our seats.
“I’m good.”
“It’s really good to see you.”
“I know. It is. It’s crazy, but it feels good to be here.”
“We’re so glad you’re here,” said James, a tall, lanky scholar and determined mystic.
“I am too.”
It surprised me, this response – not so much its utterance, but the sincerity with which it was uttered, the authenticity of it. I am too. It was true, I was glad. Happy. Even giddy. It was a response utterly in conflict with the fear that I had anticipated would take hold upon landing in Israel. Weird, I thought.
It was the same sensation that surfaced during Jamie’s initial recovery at Hebrew University’s Hadassah Hospital, when, speaking with friends who had come to visit – those friends she permitted to visit – Jamie projected an effusiveness that was somewhat unsettling. People would step into her room, holding their breath, expecting to encounter an outwardly broken woman, and were greeted instead by a smiling chatterbox. It was unnerving for them, and for me: Jamie’s outward projection was so counter to what seemed appropriate or natural. But nothing was natural about what had happened, and as I would come to understand later, Jamie’s effusiveness during those first days of recovery belied an internal brokenness. It was an instinctive, emotional disconnection from what had occurred in the cafeteria, a disconnection that was necessary in order for physical healing to take place. She was not mourning. She was not grieving. She was healing – her body burned, her intestines sliced and stitched back together, her psyche shaken. And in order to heal physically, it was necessary for Jamie to focus only on the immediate, on the faces of friends and the opportunity for engagement – for an escape from the world she had escaped.
Which is perhaps why I felt giddy, sitting in the back seat as James navigated Highway 1. And while I thought, This is strange, experience told me that it really wasn’t. I knew the fear would come, that it was coming, that I could do nothing about its pending arrival. But in that moment, in the presence of friends who had been in Israel with me when the bomb went off, I felt at ease. I was comforted by the memories of studying with Debbie before the bombing. Every morning, after getting our caffeine fix, we would sit across from one another in the shelter of the Beit Midrash and learn together. The light would filter onto our book-riddled table, where we would alternate reading aloud, puzzling over obscure legal decisions. Our learning sessions were always marked by an intriguing imbalance, with Debbie – the painter, sculptor, and abstractionist – lifting intuitive understandings from the Aramaic as I, the literalist, conjugated verbs and looked up the precise meaning of phrases, the rational mind tying itself into knots, trying to keep up with the conclusions Debbie felt.
As we approached Jerusalem, getting closer to Mount Scopus and East Jerusalem and the West Bank, closer to confronting the past that I was working so furiously to jettison, I felt surprisingly calm. Debbie glanced my way and said, “I think what you’re doing is so brave.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s amazing. Really.”
“I don’t know what it is, really.”
“Well, I think it’s really brave. How did you decide to do this? Can you tell me the story? We’re both really curious to know. Is it okay to ask?”
“Of course it’s okay,” I said, explaining how I’d read the reports of Mohammad’s expression of remorse, and about Leah’s visit with the Odehs. Then I mentioned Robi Damelin, featured in Encounter Point.
“We know her,” said Debbie, “she’s James’s cousin.” James nodded.
“We haven’t seen her in a while; we should call her up and invite her over for a meal.”
“Oh, don’t do anything like that for me,” I said, stunned by the connection, the compressed community of people in this place. “I plan on calling her anyway – we’ve been in touch a bit.”
“It’s not a big deal. She’s family.”
We hit heavy traffic and slowed to a stop. The sky had darkened. We were in the hills rising up toward Jerusalem, the limestone apartment complexes clinging to the steep slopes overlooking the high way. Some of the windows flickered with candlelight as brake lights flamed before us.
“It’s Hanukah,” I said, thinking aloud.
“Yes,” said Debbie.
“I’d forgotten.”
“You must be tired.”
“I don’t know what I am. I feel ready to begin.”
“Begin what?”
“Everything.”
“You’re going to be busy, hmm?”
“I hope to be. I don’t know what’s going to happen. But at least I’ll be busy.”
“Well, how about tonight we feed you and let you sleep. There’s an office we’ve cleared; you can sleep on the floor. Tomorrow you can get up and begin whatever it is you’ve got planned.”
“Sounds good.”
“We’ll give you a key – we both leave for school early. Just come and go as you please. Don’t worry about us.”
When we arrived at their apartment, it was late. I unloaded my things into a side room while Debbie and James tinkered with a Channukiah on the coffee table. There were nine candles in place.
“It’s the last day,” I said.
Debbie gave me a bear hug.
James lit a match, set it upon the shamash, and began swaying, chanting, singing the blessings, moving the flame from left to right as each candle caught easily. They began harmonizing, singing Ma’oz Tzur – “Rock Fortress.” The words were an allusion to God, the God of miracles who supposedly inhabited this land, a divine occupation I didn’t believe in but felt nonetheless as Debbie sang and James swayed and our images reflected in the living room’s glass door. I saw past my reflection and looked upon the angular, stone homes in the distance, where others were lighting Channukiot, thanking God for the miracles that had already occurred and praying for miracles that had yet to be.
It was late.
“Do you want something to eat?” James asked.
“No. Thanks. That was a nice way to end the day. I should crash. Thanks, seriously, for letting me stay with you for a bit.” I looked around at the cramped space, the living and dining room mixed together just off the main entrance, affording guests the ability to kick off their shoes onto the stone floor and, in one continuous motion, step in, shut the door, and sit down for dinner.
“I hope it’ll be okay for you.”
“Are you kidding? It’s perfect.”
“The bathroom’s just off your room.”
“Gotcha.”
“Have a good night. We’ll see you when we see you.”
“Goodnight, guys.”
I closed the door and crawled into a sleeping bag already spread out on the floor. The clock showed that it was after 10 p.m. – too late to call Kedar. I emailed Mariam, letting her know that I had arrived, and that I would be in the country for two weeks. “We should arrange a visit to the Odeh family,” I wrote. Next, I sent an email to Ian Domenitz from the Israel Prison Service, confirming my arrival, and another to Kedar. Then I called it a night. Lying down, I thought of all the loose ends waiting to be tied, wondering what the knots would end up looking like, from which angles the strings would be pulled, hoping that whatever ended up being formed would prove permanent, sturdy – knots with which you could trust your life.
What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist who Tried to Kill Your Wife? Page 22