“I not always like or understand my friend’s peace actions, but he is my friend. And so I help him. Because I can.”
I nodded. It was enough.
“Do you understand why you’re doing these things, David?”
The question’s tone was tinged by curiosity, by a desire to learn something elusive, exotic. But it was the one question I couldn’t answer. “Some things are done without understanding why they need doing. That’s all I can say.”
He nodded as I rose and thanked him for inviting me, for attempting to assist me despite such uncertainties. Then I left, walked out of the home of one of the preeminent scholars in Israel on Palestinian society, a man with connections in the Israeli security apparatus. I walked out of his home and passed over the threshold separating hope from ambiguity. My chances of meeting with Mohammad seemed slim. That much was obvious.
What wasn’t clear, as I caught a cab back to Tel Aviv, was what this meant for me. Was this attempt to remove psychological debris from my path now officially a failed one? Simply because I couldn’t meet with the perpetrator? After all, Jamie had been the one caught in the blast. Not me. And she was still alive. I still had her, could still cling to her, didn’t need to grip the murderer’s shirt, just below the collar, and shake her out of him. And anyway, I was uncertain about my desire to meet with Mohammad. There was nothing intellectual about it. What could Mohammad possibly say to me? I’m sorry? I couldn’t accept it, knew that I wouldn’t be able to accept it.
In Jerusalem, I flagged down a taxi and was received by a clean-cut Israeli in his mid-forties with a closely shaved head. He was strong and athletic, with a powerful jaw line and dark, deeply intelligent eyes. A business identification card posted beside the cab’s window read: Moshe Ben-Tzion – Moses, son of Zion. As his car descended into the center of the city, he asked my profession. Without pause, I told him I was a writer, after which the question came, “Ma atah oseh b’Yerushalayim?” – What are you doing in Jerusalem?
I decided to be forthright. “My wife was injured in the terrorist attack at Hebrew University in 2002. I’ve come to try and understand what happened. In a couple of days I’ll be visiting the family of the terrorist who tried to kill her.” I chose not to mention the idea of actually meeting with Mohammad, an idea which suddenly seemed likely to earn a swift kick to the curb if articulated.
“Why would you want to do something like this?”
“I need to understand them, need to understand how someone from a good East Jerusalem family could do something like this.”
“There is nothing you can learn from such a meeting,” he said, eyeing the road, head shaking.
“You might be right, but I’m going to try.”
“Let me tell you something,” he said, briefly staring at me in the passenger seat, his face clenched, serious. “The only possible outcome is that you will be more upset after meeting them than you were before. Nothing good can come of it. Nothing.”
His face turned sad, and I intuited pity. “You think I’m naive, don’t you?”
“You don’t want to know what I think.”
“Yes, I do.”
“My views are extreme. You will not like them.”
“I want to hear.”
“Do you know what I did for twenty years? I’ll tell you. I specialized in Palestinian relations for the IDF. I can speak, write, and read Arabic fluently. I know their customs, their society; I know Palestinians better than they know themselves. And I will tell you this: give a Palestinian your hand, and he will shake it. Give him your back, and he will kill you.”
I wondered silently if it was my fate to meet every self-described expert on Palestinians living in Israel. The taxi driver launched into a long soliloquy meant to supplement his claims, describing his years of patrolling, his years of getting to know Palestinians, of joking with them, of eating meals in their homes and attending weddings and escorting them to work. Of how he knew that if he had ever let down his guard, only for a second, one of his Palestinian acquaintances would have shot him dead without a second thought.
“Look,” I said forcefully through a smile, “I’ve lived long enough to know the limits of what I’m doing. But I’ve also lived long enough to know who to trust.”
“Very well. You go and meet your Palestinian family,” he said, grinning back and handing me his card from the dashboard. “And after your visit, I want to hear about it. I want to hear about how I was correct. I’ll buy you lunch, we’ll go to the shook and I’ll buy you a huge meal at one of my favorite places and you’ll tell me how I was correct and you were mistaken. You’ll tell me how you were wrong over the best meal of your life.”
Taking the card, I nodded in agreement. “I’ll call you.”
“Promise. Don’t be like most Americans who speak kindly because they want to seem kind. Mean what you say.”
“I’ll call you, I promise,” I said as we stopped. “I’ll call you.”
25
After several calls to Mariam’s number had been placed without a response, I began to worry. Her emails were marked by an unmistakable willingness to arrange a meeting with the Odeh family, but they’d all been accompanied by vague, unsettled ideas for when such a visit might happen. The sticking point appeared to be Fakhree, a prominent Palestinian businessman from Silwan who was trusted by the Odeh family, so much so that his presence would signal for them that the meeting was safe, that I could be trusted, or at least not feared, as would be normal given the circumstances. The family was wary of my intentions, afraid that I wanted to slaughter them in an act of revenge, an act of honor. Mariam, serving as both my translator and logistical coordinator, had said that Fakhree was hard to pin down. So I waited for her to call, thinking, Two weeks. Don’t worry, you have two weeks.
Stuck in this holding pattern, I decided to call Robi Damelin, sensing the need for guidance, or a guide. Weeks earlier, Robi had been put in touch with me by a peace activist who learned of my impending journey. She had emailed me and described the loss of her son and her ongoing efforts to gain access to the perpetrator. “I am going through a similar process as you, and that is the reason for my writing,” she had confided.
When I had watched her struggle on the screen in Harrisburg, I recognized something familiar, her unspeakable need to find closure by opening the doors leading toward those whom everyone thought she should hate and fear. When Robi emailed, it was because she too had recognized a shared purpose, a shared vision upon hearing my story. She was on my team, was the only person I knew in Israel who was engaged in an attempt to meet face-to-face with a Palestinian who had violently harmed a loved one.
So I called.
“Robi?”
“Hello?”
“Robi? Hi, this is David Harris-Gershon. We’ve traded emails – ”
“Hello David, yes, I remember. How are you?”
“I’m good. Is this an okay time?”
“Sure, it’s fine. So you are in the country?”
“Yep. I’m actually staying with a relative of yours.” I explained about James and Debbie, at which point Robi chuckled, saying she didn’t even know they were in the country. Then the phone buzzed. It was Mariam. I’ll call her back, I thought.
“So have you made any progress in your journey?”
“Well, not so much. I’m having real trouble trying to find a way to meet with the Palestinian perpetrator in prison. The one who did the Hebrew University bombing.”
“I remember that bombing.”
“Yeah. Well, anyway, I was – ”
“Your wife was injured, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And she’s fine now, correct?”
“Yes, thanks. Yeah, she’s doing well.”
“I’m glad to hear.”
“Thanks. Anyway, I plan on at least visiting the terrorist’s family. Just waiting to hear back about it.”
“David, when do you plan on visiting this family?”
“Um, I’m
not sure, exactly, but I hope sooner rather than later. I’m just waiting for things to be finalized.”
“And who’s doing this finalizing? Who is going with you? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“A Palestinian translator and a well-known businessman in Silwan.”
“A businessman? Why a businessman? Is there nobody else going as well?”
“Not that I’m aware.” The phone buzzed again. Mariam had left a message.
“Why these people, David? Do you know them well?”
“Umm … No.”
“You don’t know them? You’ve at least met them, right?”
“Well, not exactly.”
“Wait, what? David, this isn’t a game. If you think this is a game, it’s not. Are either of these people trained mediators?
“I don’t think so.”
“How are you even connected with these people?”
“They went with someone who already visited the Odeh family on my behalf, someone from the Compassionate Listening Project.”
“This is shit. Excuse my language, but this is total shit. I’m sorry, but this is how I feel. Compassionate listening is not mediation. You don’t know these people, they’re not trained mediators. You think this is a good idea?”
“It was until now. I hadn’t really considered it. Everything was fine with their visit last time on my behalf, so I just figured – ”
“David, I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to think about it seriously: would it be the end of the world if you didn’t meet with the Odeh family on this trip?”
My heart stopped, the words excuse me? on my tongue. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about this – ”
“Because David, and I’m just being honest here, I don’t think you should go. It’s a huge mistake. A huge mistake. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. You think you can just walk into their home and talk without a trained mediator who knows how to navigate such emotional interactions? You don’t have a clue what can happen. Will you be visiting just the family? Or will the whole village be showing up to confront you? You have no idea how these things can work, how these things can become political.”
A mixture of confusion and anger gripped my body as she continued. “My advice to you is not to go. Don’t go unless you have a trained mediator that you both know and trust, David. What you are doing is crazy, absolutely crazy. Promise me you won’t go unless you have someone with you who can navigate this meeting in a professional, skillful way. You might think you can do this on your own, but you’re wrong. You can’t. You can’t just walk in and think it’s just a conversation. It’s not. And you’re putting yourself in danger if you think you can do this on your own.”
She then began giving me the names of people to contact, a list of approved, professional mediators in the region she insisted I’d need in order to avoid having a meeting with the Odeh family turn into a destructive, traumatic confrontation. She asked me to promise her again.
“Promise me you’ll think seriously about not going.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t promise. Here was a person like myself – a woman who had publicly shaken off her fears and launched a quest to reconcile with the other side, to speak with the other side – now injecting me with doubts. A woman who had actually lost her son, telling me I was vulnerable. That I should be prudent. That I should be afraid.
I couldn’t promise. I said something non-committal – “thank you” and “I’ll think about all this” – then hung up the phone, still shaking my head, feeling angry and frightened and confused. What the fuck was that?
Looking down, the phone’s screen read: New message. I fingered the code and listened, pressing the phone to my ear:
David, this is Mariam. I just speak with the mother of Mohammad. The family would like you to come Saturday in the afternoon. This is in two days, very soon. I speak with Fakhree finally. He will come with us. So it is set. We should take advantage of this and go when they like. The family want to meet before the Eid al-Adha holiday, so this is good time. Please call me and tell me you got this message and I can tell family yes or no.
I chuckled at the message, at the odd simultaneity, these two conversations pulling me in opposing directions, these charged magnets sliding across the floor, repelling each other. Yes or no. I was no longer sure, wanting to say yes but afraid of the repercussions, worried that I was being horribly rash, was being set up for something – what, I couldn’t know. But Robi was right. I didn’t know Mariam. Didn’t know Fakhree. Didn’t know where exactly I’d be traveling. How we’d be getting there. Or what Eid al-Ahda was – why its impending arrival necessitated I travel to the family so soon. Fuck, that’s the day after tomorrow, I thought, needing time to think, to consider things. I searched for Eid al-Ahda on Wikipedia. It was the celebration in Islam of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Ishmael.
Stupid site, I thought, It’s Isaac, not Ishmael. Isaac was the one who was almost sacrificed, realizing as the words crystallized the degree of my ignorance, just how unfamiliar I was with the Koran, with Islam, with the ways of the other side. I marveled at the absurdity of it all. Here was a story so familiar to me, turned on its head. In the Koran’s re-telling, Isaac had been traded for Ishmael, filicide becoming a psychic backdrop for Muslims, just as it is for Jews. We’ve been competing as victims since Abraham, I thought, wanting to be the ones under the knife, always thinking we’re the ones under the knife.
The image was easy to conjure – being under the knife, feeling my throat tickled by an imaginary blade. I scratched it away and pulled at my goatee, my nerves pulled taut. I closed my eyes, envisioned a meeting with the Odeh family, and dialed Mariam’s number.
“Hello?”
“Mariam? Hi. This is David. I just got your message.”
“David. Hello, hello. Welcome.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m sorry it take so long to be in touch.”
“It’s okay. I really appreciate everything you’ve done and are doing.”
“It is my honor, David. So you heard what I said in the message?”
“Yes. I was just thinking. See the thing is – ”
“You can’t do this meeting on Saturday?”
“No, well. Here’s the thing. My friend Julie, who wants to come with me, who I want to come with me, doesn’t get in until tomorrow, and I’m nervous that if she is delayed or something happens that she’ll miss it. It’s okay if a friend comes, right?”
“Of course. Yes. You already asked in email. The family said it is fine.”
“So I was just thinking – ”
“I’m sure she will make it. It will be fine, David. We should visit them Saturday. The Eid is coming, and after that we might not find time to go.”
“But is it possible to do it after the Eid? I’ll still be here.”
“All I know is the family invited you to come before holiday. They ask that you come before.”
“I know.”
“David, you sound afraid. Are you afraid?”
“Maybe a little. I guess a little.”
“Aww, David. Don’t be afraid. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Everything will be fine. Everyone is very nice.”
“I guess I just wish I could meet you and Fakhree first beforehand – it would make me feel more comfortable.”
“David, don’t be afraid. Leah knows me. I will take care of you. I promise. The meeting with Leah was very nice. The family is very nice. There is nothing to be afraid of. I will be there with you to help if you need.”
“I know. I know. Okay.”
“Okay so you will go?”
“Yes.”
“So I tell the family you are coming?”
“Yes.”
“Wonderful. David, do you know where the Tayelet is?”
“Sure.”
“Can we meet there on Saturday? Is it okay? I can drive you to the Odeh family from there.”
“Sure, no problem.”
<
br /> “Okay, can we say 3:30?”
“Sure. 3:30.”
“Good. I’ll meet you there. Then we’ll go to visit. Are you sure you are ready?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I just got nervous, that’s all. This is all very complicated.”
“I understand, David. What you’re doing is a good thing. Don’t worry. It will be fine.”
“Okay. Thanks, Mariam. I know this is all extra work for you, and I appreciate your generosity. You’ve been very generous.”
“I’m happy to be help. It is good. So I see you on Saturday, okay?”
“Okay.”
The phone clicked. It was done.
26
What does one buy the children of the man who tried to kill your wife? This is the question I silently repeated while wandering the cluttered aisles of Toys “R” Us, looking at Elmo talking dolls and semi-automatic squirt guns sporting Hebrew stickers that read B’chaniah. On sale.
It was Friday afternoon. The store was empty, and the staff were ready to close up shop, the metal security gate suspended halfway above the ground, warning tardy shoppers not to bother.
Hours before, Julie had slipped into the country, barely making it in before most modes of affordable transportation had shut down for Shabbat, and then she slipped into Debbie and James’s apartment, pushed quietly through the door and smiled at me. After we had embraced, laughing at the melodrama of the situation, I pushed Julie back at arm’s length, holding her at the elbows, and said, “Ready to go to East Jerusalem?”
“Am I ready to go? I just got here.”
“Might as well dive right in, eh?”
“Right now? We’re not going right now, are we?”
“No. Tomorrow afternoon.”
“Shit. Are you serious?”
“Yep.”
“Okay.” She inhaled, her bags still draped over her shoulder.
“Sorry to hit you with this now, but you can take it. You’re tough.”
“Tomorrow, huh? Wow. How are we getting there?”
“Shit. I didn’t even think about it.”
What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist who Tried to Kill Your Wife? Page 24