“This is Silwan,” she said as we bottomed out and moved slowly down a commercial lane unlike anything I’d seen on the western side of Jerusalem. The road, while paved, was dusted with a sandy film, making it seem as though we were on a dirt path. Open shops flanked it. Garages. Taxi offices. Grocery stands. Clothing stores. People were milling about in entrances, sitting on folding chairs, bits of litter being pawed at by gangs of cats. Children chased the cats with raised sticks. Men chased their children with raised arms as women chuckled in doorways. Mothers held their infants peeking out from behind the opaque hijabs sheltering them. Everywhere, fingers played with worry beads and lips lifted from cups of tea.
We stopped and parked in front of a small produce market as Mariam attempted to call Fakhree again. He didn’t answer. “Prince Fakhree – always forgetting. I call him this morning to remind him. I said, ‘We’re meeting at four. Promise you’ll be here.’ And he said, ‘Sure, sure. I’ll be there.’ And now what time is it? After four. And where is Fakhree?” Mariam shook her head. “Always late.”
Some Palestinians strolled by the car and looked in. I watched them watch us, expecting at any moment for a door to be opened abruptly, for calloused hands to grab my collar and rip me out onto the street, for a gun to be placed at my temple and a forearm across my carotid artery, hands pulling me away from the car, my heels dragging in the dirt while being backed into an open door. I was hooded, dragged upstairs and tied to a chair, hearing other voices just as the first blow landed, the back of my head –
Nobody batted an eye as they passed the car. They couldn’t have cared less about us. We were invisible. I was invisible. They don’t see me.
When the proprietor of the produce stand emerged and began glaring at Mariam, she started the engine. “We need to leave. He doesn’t like me parking in front of his shop. Bad for business. Would you like a tour of Silwan?”
Just then the phone rang. It was Fakhree. We pulled out, Mariam speaking quickly and, it appeared, playfully in Arabic. She cupped a hand over the phone and said to us, “He’s here” as we pulled into traffic and headed to the town center. Once we’d stopped, Mariam instructed us to get out and led us to a waiting car. Why are we getting in another car? A man was sitting behind the wheel, the car running, as Mariam pointed to me, then the front seat, as she walked around to the other side of the car and sat behind Fakhree. Julie slid into the back with a smile as I shrugged and opened the door. A large, well-dressed man extended his hand and took mine with unanticipated force. “Ahlan,” he said. Hello.
“Ahlan.”
Fakhree pulled away and began weaving through alleys squeezed between concrete homes that were stacked vertically up the surrounding hills. The car shuddered over potholes and gravel, and as the car shook I heard something fall. Fakhree turned to the noise, which I suspected was just a rock kicking up into the wheel well. Julie tapped my right thigh with a finger. I looked down, and there was my knife in her hand, pressed flush against my side. I took the handoff, discreetly slid the knife deep into a pocket, and turned. She shook her head subtly, rolling her eyes. I looked at Mariam – nothing. Back to Fakhree – his eyes were on the road.
Chance: Julie sitting behind me instead of Mariam, her reflexes quick, reliable. Jamie bending to reach for a folder, head shielded from the blast. You should be thankful, I thought. My wife was alive. Alive. She had been saved. Spared. And yet I refused, heading to see the Odeh family, not a thought of revenge in my head but a knife tucked in my pocket, not knowing what was to come. Not knowing anything. Knowing that had Mariam seen the knife, or Fakhree – the one guaranteeing this meeting’s safety – it might have been canceled. Give thanks, you fuck. But for what?
Mariam looked up and said, “We’re here.”
We weren’t there, at the home of the murderer’s family, but at the bottom of a steep residential slope. We climbed the stone steps, our heels clicking against the uneven rocks, passing courtyards and kitchen windows cut out of concrete, passing doorsteps colonized with scrubby weeds and welcome mats, the rise beginning to feel precipitous. Then the stairs emptied onto a stone patio bordered by a low wall at the slope’s peak. A home stood before us. Fakhree stepped onto the patio and, standing still, clapped his hands ceremoniously. I had never seen anything like it. No calling. No knocking on the front door. Fakhree simply clapped, each slap echoing off the stone loudly until a woman covered by a white hijab emerged from the house and approached cautiously. There was a greeting. I nodded. And then we were led inside into a brilliantly lit room bordered on three sides by a long, olive-green sofa. It must have been twenty-five feet in length and formed a long U along the walls. We were invited to sit, and I plopped down, expecting to be absorbed by its cushions. Instead, I bounced up a foot. The sofa was a trampoline.
I looked around. A finely carved wooden cabinet held a T.V. and stereo speakers. The walls were covered with ornate pictures of Jerusalem and Mecca. In the middle stood a low table meant for tea, which was immediately delivered by a young, cheerfully rotund woman in a full, white hijab, who gestured for me to partake. Shukran, I said to the server – thank you. The old woman, the mother, sat down across from Julie and me. She turned to Mariam, seated nearby, and spoke in Arabic as I brought the small, ceramic cup to my lips, the smell of warm sugar strong in my nostrils. I closed my eyes and ceremoniously burnt my tongue.
“She says that Mohammad’s brother will be coming soon.”
I turned to Mariam. “They know who I am, right?”
“Yes, they know.”
“Should I say anything?”
“Wait until others come, and then we start.”
The thumping feet of children approached. I reached down into my bag and began rummaging. “Is this a good time to give my gifts to the kids?” I asked Mariam.
“Sure.” She turned to the old woman, who bellowed toward the window behind her, “Sajidah! Hamzi!” The scurrying of feet on the front stoop intensified until, suddenly, two children stood before me. As they stared, smiling quizzically, the old woman pointed in my direction. I wondered what they had been told, if they understood. And so I asked.
“No, the children are too young. You are a friend of their father’s. This is what they know.” Mariam’s words were gentle. Her tone suggested that this message did not belong to her – this notion of friendship between me and Mohammad inflected softly to reveal disapproval, or perhaps empathy.
This is what I knew: they were the children of a murderer.
And this: I was not their father’s friend.
And this: they were beautiful.
Hamzi, eleven years old with short, cropped hair, baggy jeans, and a mischievous grin, stood a distance away as I pulled a Rubik’s Cube from my bag. “When I was a child, I was given this puzzle as a gift,” I said, more to the family than to him. “But I could never solve it, and so I would peel off the stickers, re-arrange them, and proudly show the solved cube to friends and family. But they knew what I was up to, because the stickers were crooked. So don’t peel the stickers. You won’t fool anyone.”
Everyone looked to Mariam, then back to me. And then there was laughter. The family began pointing, and Hamzi approached, lifted the toy from my hand, and nodded a thank-you. Then he darted out of the room. It was Sajidah’s turn, and she shuffled shyly toward me, stopping two feet away, smiling widely. Then she shuffled a bit closer and stopped again, as if playfully checking the ground for a trap door. When she moved forward again, her legs brushed against my knees and her tiny hands were cupped below my chin. I placed the stencil set down into her palms and watched her receive it. Brown eyes open wide. Wisps of dark hair falling over her face. Mouth pressed into an embarrassed grin.
There was chatter. “The family says she loves art,” translated Mariam as Sajidah pivoted and clasped the plastic to her chest, then hopped on one foot out of the room.
I am not your father’s friend, I thought, overwhelmed by their normalness.
Then, Samar, one of
Mohammad’s brothers, entered the room. He was wearing a black, athletic jump suit – looking casual and relaxed – and a women in a full hijab was with him. She sat close to the door, as far from me as possible. The woman looked sunken, her face withdrawn inside the fabric hugging her head, her dark eyes staring at me, unblinking. Mohammad’s wife. I feared her immediately, fingering the knife in my pocket.
“They say they’re ready. You can begin,” said Mariam.
I looked at them – Mohammad’s mother and Samar looking perplexed but expectant – and said, “When I tell people I’m coming to meet you, they often call me brave, which I sometimes think is strange. But I do think you are brave, inviting me into your home, knowing who I am, knowing what Mohammad did to my wife and friends.”
They nodded. We are glad you have come.
“I want you to know that I’m not here for revenge, that I have not come here out of anger. I simply want to understand you, to understand better Mohammad and how he could have done something so horrible. Whether we like it or not, we are connected by Mohammad’s actions. And rather than think of you as enemies, and forget about you, I’ve decided to try and understand who you are and how this could have happened.”
There was silence. Nothing.
Then an eruption of Arabic cracked sharply across the room, as Samar and Mohammad’s mother began to speak urgently. Mariam tried to keep up:
His mother says, “Mohammad was a sensitive boy. So quiet. We didn’t know. Never knew. We would have done anything to stop him, if we only knew –”
Samar says, “He broke. He would watch scenes of Palestinians being beaten on T.V., would sit and watch for hours. He would just sit –”
His mother wants you to know that “he was jailed several times as a teenager. Throwing rocks and the usual Intifada things. Twice. Once when he was fourteen, and again at sixteen. And he never talked about it. But we could see he was affected. He was so sensitive –”
Samar says, “Mohammad liked to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. He wasn’t all that religious, but he liked it. And he would see his friends beaten by Israeli police. Old people. He was humiliated by them, hassled by them. He just broke. He –”
His mother thinks that “his other brothers were stronger. They could handle all of it. But Mohammad. I don’t think he was strong enough. He wasn’t strong enough. But if you could only know him, you would see he is a good person. A kind person. When they came and told us what Mohammad did, we didn’t believe it. We thought it was lies. But we didn’t know. We didn’t know what he was doing. Don’t blame us, we would have stopped him if we knew. We were in trauma for three months after –”
I raced to sort fact from fiction, the authentic stories of Mohammad’s childhood from the lies his mother had to believe in order to remain sane: Mohammad is a kind person. I couldn’t absorb it all as the Arabic poured in a steady stream. I turned to Mariam, then back to the family, then back to Mariam again, hoping that something synaptic would click and capture the conversation as accurately as the miniature tape recorder I’d left in my bag. I considered reaching for it, setting it upon the table and pressing “record.” But this wasn’t an interview. It was a reckoning. Or the prelude to one. I wasn’t sure which.
Mariam continued to translate:
His mother says, “We visit him every month, and he tells us everything. He tells us nobody asks him about meeting you, that nobody has ever talked about it. He would agree if they asked him, I know he would agree. He wants to meet you –”
Samar says, “The leaders of Hamas in jail gave him the green light. He can meet with you. He has the green light –”
His mother says, “They don’t let him touch the children. They kiss through the glass. He can’t touch them. He wants to hold them. ‘Why can’t he hold me?’ Sajidah asks –”
“Tell them that I can see this has been difficult for them as well,” I said.
Mariam translated, listened to their reply, and turned to me, “They say that Mohammad is sorry for what happened. He’s sorry for what he did, for the people who died. If he could, he’d take it all back, he would change everything he did if he could. They want me to tell you that he said so. That he is remorseful.”
Samar leaned forward. Mariam spoke for him: “Samar does not understand how you have come here without a gun. ‘Why don’t you have a gun?’ he asks you. If it were him, he would have a gun. He would be angry, and doesn’t understand why you don’t have one.”
I looked at him, the knife tucked away in my pocket, hidden. “What Mohammad did changed our lives and the lives of others forever, changed them in unspeakably painful ways. I’ve been struggling ever since, trying to heal, trying to get beyond what he did. I’ve tried many things – nothing worked. Then I read in a news paper that Mohammad expressed remorse when he was captured, and suddenly, I knew. I knew I needed to try and speak with him, with you.”
Everyone was silent.
“I want to get past all this somehow. Past his murdering of my friends, his harming my wife. Past all the violence. I’m sick of violence. It may sound naive or clichéd, but I want peace. In my mind. Between us. And if coming here can help bring that, then, I don’t know. It would be important. I think.”
As Mariam relayed my words in Arabic, a smile crept across Samar’s face. Then he began to speak again, his eyes shifting shyly to the floor. Mariam translated: “He says that he wants peace too. That they all do. And that he admires you for coming, and thinks what you have done is brave. That it means a lot to them, that you have come. He wishes there were more like you.”
“There are,” I said, nodding to Mariam. “I promise, I’m not alone.”
I looked at Samar, looked at the family. Mohammad’s mother said something to Mariam. “She believes you. She says ‘I believe you,’” Mariam continued. “She says, ‘Will you continue to try to meet with my son? Are you going to keep trying?’ ”
I looked at her and then at Samar, knowing I would never meet Mohammad.
“I will.”
“Promise me you’ll keep trying. Promise me.”
“I promise. I will keep trying,” I said, unsure whether I would ever make the attempt again.
“Good,” said Samar. “This is good.”
I wanted them to apologize, knowing they would not, knowing they could not stand in for Mohammad and apologize for that which they did not do.
A toddler, Samar’s daughter, waddled over and plucked an album of photographs of my family from my backpack, an album Jamie had made for me before I left. The girl plopped down on the floor and began riffling through the pictures, giggling at images of my daughters as the pages flopped in clumps of twos and threes. The family leaned over and smiled at the pictures before squawking at the child to return my property. I reached into my bag and pulled out an orange rubber ball, an item I had been carrying with me during the trip, bouncing it against linoleum floors, concrete sidewalks, limestone walls. I got on the floor and presented the ball to the toddler, turning and twisting it between my fingers, a rotating offering, a negotiation. She reached out and slid the ball from my fingers as I pulled the album from her grasp, the book falling shut in my hand as she lifted the ball to her mouth. The family clapped. “We can tell you are a parent.” And as I looked at their smiling faces, I knew that I would never get my ball back.
27
“Will you continue to try to meet with my son? Are you going to keep trying?”
“I will.”
“Promise me you’ll keep trying.”
I had promised. And so, hoping action would be rewarded with an equal and opposite reaction, I followed through on the private meeting I had attained with the international spokesperson for the Israel Prison Service, Lieutenant Colonel Ian Dominitz. A South African immigrant and decorated Israeli military veteran, the Lieutenant Colonel had suggested for our meeting a coffee shop at Jerusalem’s largest mall – hardly the location for official business. The name of the place he suggested: Café Ne’eman. Trans
lation: Café Reliable.
I was hoping his choice would live up to the hype. Julie accompanied me – it was a coffee shop, after all, and such companionship didn’t seem out of place. Two things soon became clear when the Lieutenant Colonel approached, dressed in military uniform: 1) he was only expecting to deal with me, and 2) nothing that came from his mouth could be trusted with any certainty.
There is an insincere trope achieved by many politicians which, to a trained ear, is immediately recognizable. Perhaps it’s the focus on the projection of their words rather than on their meaning. Or perhaps it’s the practiced, mechanical phrases that seem as authentic as a choreographed smile for the cameras. I hadn’t thought of the Lieutenant Colonel, as I spoke with him from abroad, as a political figure. But what was not internalized before my coffee date with him became clear the moment he took a seat and opened his mouth: spokesperson = spin doctor.
“David, it is a great pleasure to meet you. And this is?”
“Julie,” said my partner-in-crime, decked out in a multicolored, flowing skirt and a turquoise knit hat – business casual by her standards.
“She’s a friend, here for support, so to speak.”
“Well, it’s my pleasure to meet both of you,” he said, spreading out some folders on the table. Then turning to me, he said, “David, I am glad to finally have the opportunity to come here and speak with you. I want you to know that I am here, as a representative of the Prison Service, to do whatever I can to help you, in any way.”
“Thanks.”
“As you know, I have done everything in my power to follow up on your request to meet with the terrorist, Mohammad Odeh, a request that the Prison Service values and has acted upon in a most diligent fashion. And what I have learned is this: the prisoner has not agreed to meet with you, which is a precondition for the Prison Service before moving forward with such a request.”
What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist who Tried to Kill Your Wife? Page 26