by Amy Wilentz
“Yes, yes,” Hassan said. “I know. But people feel the need, and then, there is so little to celebrate these days.”
“True enough,” George said, “true enough.” He felt a shocking swell of tears come into his eyes. My God, what’s happening to me? Everyone’s crying around here, but for God’s sake, not me! Christ, was he becoming sentimental? After a lifetime spent in skepticism and hard brutal facts. Are my tears for Ibrahim? For myself, and my imminent departure? For Palestine, of all things? But he realized that it was something about Hassan, his voice. Hassan had the uncanny actor’s knack of conveying powerful but inarticulate—and possibly nonexistent—emotion. And just then, he had again looked at George with something very like affection or at least sympathy. There was some new emotional connection between the two of them, George felt. This hard man and I: maybe we are more alike than I had suspected. They both had come to understand, and only recently, the futility of everything they had spent a lifetime doing. Or so George thought. Both were hanging on to a few last shreds of dignity.
George began counting the luggage Philip had been piling up. One, two, three, his typewriter (an antique, like me, he thought), Philip’s knapsack, Grandfather’s old valise . . . and then he saw that Marina hadn’t moved. She might as well have been framed by an arched niche in the wall, her position was so still. He noticed, not for the first time, how beautiful his daughter was. She was standing there near the open door, looking out into the moonlit garden. Like some ancient form of jeweled adornment, tears sparkled down her cheeks.
• • •
SHE LOVED HASSAN and she knew she had to leave him.
She was lying in bed earlier, looking up out the window at the moon. Hassan’s hand was on her knee. Blue shadows moved over them.
“Beautiful sky, isn’t it?” he said.
She nodded.
“Sheets are so soft,” he said. He moved closer to her.
She turned her head toward him.
“That was nice, wasn’t it?” he said, smiling. “We’re still good at it.”
“Yes,” she said, letting him kiss her.
He rested his hand lightly on her hip.
“Tell me about the soldier, Marina,” he said.
She was silent.
“You know his name?”
She put two fingers on Hassan’s lips, then took them off. He kissed her again.
“I heard it, I’m sure,” she said. “But I don’t remember it.”
“Ah,” Hassan said. “Effect of stress, maybe.”
She moved closer so that they were facing each other on their sides.
“Post-traumatic stress disorder,” he said, stroking her hair.
“Do you think you’d recognize the name if you heard it?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, turning her head again to look out at the sky. Her heartbeat quickened.
“It’s Ari Doron. Does that sound familiar?”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, it does. That could be it.”
“Good.” He pulled her around to face him. “Again?” he asked, smiling.
“He tried to help us, Hassan,” she said. She felt she had to tell him that.
“Uh-hunh. Good,” he said. “Good for him.” He played with the ends of her hair, and smiled at her. She pushed his hand away gently.
“It wasn’t completely his fault,” she said.
“Of course not, Marina.” He kissed her. “Of course not.”
She could feel him thinking, weighing, deciding.
“Of course not,” he said. “Still . . .”
He pulled her toward him and they began again.
• • •
LEAVING RAMALLAH the next morning was a pleasure, a preview of how liberating it was going to be to leave Palestine entirely, if George could ever, ever, ever get away. Watching the low walls fly by, he thought he understood a little of what it must feel like to be Hassan. Escaping from unrelenting dreariness and hopelessness—George felt that way, leaving Ramallah, and Hassan must have felt it, too, going in the opposite direction, away from Jerusalem and prison, and home to Ramallah and his wife. George and Philip got through the checkpoint without much trouble, using the VIP pass the Authority had issued to George before his break with Ahmed. Ahmed had not canceled George’s card after George walked out of the meeting at Orient House, nor even after the speech at the rally, even though that would be typical Authority protocol, always tit-for-tatting you, George thought. The valid card was a mark of the Chairman’s respect, respect for George’s reputation for making a stink out of anything he chose. Or perhaps it was just a mark of his respect for anyone who was under Ahmed Amr’s protection, which George ostensibly still was.
The Israeli soldiers were respectful, deferential even, and it was too early for protests to have begun, if they were going to begin at all, now that Hassan was released. A few trucks had been moved to the shoulder for inspection, and did not impede their progress. The soldiers practically bowed to George, they were so careful nowadays of anyone named Raad or Hajimi. George enjoyed the show, the quick return of his card, no questions asked, the welcoming, after-you-sir wave the weasely little officer gave the car as he let them pass through. You bet you better bow down before me, George thought. He wondered if any of them had been there that night.
Philip was at the wheel of the tinny little Uno. He drove well. He did everything well. George was glad to be getting out of Ramallah and out of Hassan’s house and out of the little guest bedroom next to the only bathroom, on the way to the laundry shed. He felt engulfed by the crisis and the situation in a way he hadn’t been since the beginning of his political involvement. He didn’t want to be involved anymore. He was overwhelmed by the rest of life already, without becoming a part of Ahmed’s and Hassan’s political games, games that would soon end, possibly wrecking everything that remained of what was valuable: his family, his beliefs, his dream of home.
The worst of it was that the man who was destroying the fabric of George’s past was a part of that past himself. George couldn’t reconcile himself to the paradox. He had never before imagined he was capable of hating someone he loved, but he was beginning to feel he might hate Ahmed now. You loved someone, and then discovered your love was not equally returned, or—in the case of Ahmed—possibly not returned at all. The realization was shaming, and—since shame and embarrassment were the human emotions George experienced most powerfully, more than love and hate, or so he believed—the humiliation began to sour the old affection, began to erode it. George felt it slipping away. How long could we go on squabbling while the rest of the Palestinian people sacrificed endlessly for our mistakes? And Ibrahim was dead.
• • •
“WHAT DID YOU THINK of the celebration?” George asked Philip, as they drove down to the great hulking white statue that the Israelis had erected to commemorate the ’67 war—George thought it looked like three simultaneously unfurling toilet-paper rolls. They made a left, went past the Hyatt and the monolithic Israeli police complex, down through the former villages of Sheikh Jarrah and Wadi Joz—now part of greater East Jerusalem—to the Street of the Wreckage, as Philip had named it. The Street of the Wreckage was a Palestinian version of an industrial zone—really just a place to pick up a used air-conditioner part or a length of fencing, or get a burst tire mended. The journey recapped the entire Palestinian experience, from lost war and destroyed heritage to the blackened junk pile, ending at the American Colony Hotel, which was George’s personal oasis in Jerusalem.
“What did you think, Philip? Come on. Quite a party, eh?”
“Interesting,” Philip said. “Good pickles.”
“Part of Marina’s Palestinian solidarity,” George said. “Sisters probably did ’em.”
“Hassan was happy to be reunited with his wife,” Philip added.
“I’ll say,” George said. He enjoyed the occasional Americanism.
“She too,” Philip said.
“Yup.”
“Am
r was pleased with himself. As if he had somehow obtained the release all by himself.”
“Self-satisfied as ever,” said George. “I don’t believe he has changed since babyhood. He was probably proud of the way he suckled, knowing Ahmed.” George looked out the front window. On the Israeli side of town just across the street from the wall that protected the hotel’s pool, a handful of Israeli hotels were being erected.
“He’s accomplished an interesting thing, though,” Philip said.
“Stop saying ‘interesting,’ Philip. ‘Interesting’ is just a refusal to say whatever it is you really think. Say what you think.”
“All right. He pushed Find the Soldier.”
“That’s nothing. Unless you’re counting the dead at the checkpoints.”
“Oh, not really nothing. As far as he’s concerned. It’s gotten the Israelis back involved, which is what he intended. They’re back at the bargaining table. And Hassan is out of prison. As Amr always says: ‘Judge actions only by results.’ ”
“Despicable motto.”
“Tried and true, though,” Philip said.
“Besides, the only thing the Israelis are bargaining about is how much of our land they should keep.”
“Ahmed would say that it’s a miracle they’re giving back any at all.”
“Please, Philip. You’re undercutting my carefully nurtured respect for you. What other ‘interesting’ things has he accomplished, according to you?”
Philip switched on his blinker while they waited at the light. “His proudest achievement: he has neutralized his greatest enemy.”
“What?” George said. “Who?”
Philip hesitated as he turned past the gas station toward the hotel’s entrance.
“Who?” George asked again. “Hassan?”
“What?” said Philip, as if he had forgotten what they were talking about.
“His greatest enemy is: The Chairman? The Prime Minister?”
“No,” said Philip, shaking his head and almost laughing. “No. You are, of course, Doctor.” They turned into the hotel’s driveway.
George was stunned. Was it true? No, he wanted to cry, no. Ahmed is my best friend. He is the only one who remembers everything, who knows every detail, understands every nuance.
“Don’t say that,” he said to Philip.
“Okay, I won’t.”
“Why am I his worst enemy? Tell me that,” George said, folding his arms over his chest as if he had just demanded the impossible.
“Because you believe in something, and he doesn’t,” Philip said. He stopped the car to wait while a woman piled three children into a minivan and tried to negotiate her way out of the hotel’s small parking lot.
“He and I believe in the same thing.” George tapped his foot impatiently. He felt uncomfortable in this conversation. Philip was approaching truth: Oh, George hated that.
“What is that? Palestinian statehood, you mean? A ‘homeland’?”
Philip put a sarcastic spin on the word. “That’s easy, the easy stuff. I’m talking about the biggest things, Doctor. Imperishable things.” George watched the minivan’s red brake lights flicker on and off.
“Like?” George asked.
“I’m not answering that question,” Philip said. “You know what they are, you’re just trying to trap me into sounding stupid by enumerating them. But it can all be distilled into one word.” Philip leaned back into his seat, shaking his head as he watched the woman try to get out of her space.
“And that word is?” George asked.
“That word is . . . Ibrahim. I know no one says his name, but he is the key. That’s what Ahmed doesn’t get. Decency and honor. There, I’ve mentioned the imperishable things. You happy?”
George was silent. What Philip said was undeniable. Ahmed with his hooded eyes just couldn’t give a fuck about that baby’s fate. Things and people existed only to serve Ahmed’s political aims. But was that wrong? In the long run, was it wrong?
“What is she doing?” Philip put his hands into the air. The minivan was backing up, then moving forward, failing to emerge from its tight space.
“She’s trying to get a good angle, poor thing,” George said. “Listen to you, Philip who is from Beit Jala near Bethlehem. ‘Decency, honor.’ Where did a Palestinian like you pick up this Victorian lingo? You’re beginning to sound like a British officer, Philip. People who uphold those ideals are just silly, useless, and pointless. They’re suckers.”
“Now you’re just parroting what Amr would say.”
“No. First of all he’d never say it, he’d just think it. And anyway, I’m just saying what I believe is true. If you stand for those old useless things, you’re a dead man, like me. And I am a dead man, and I can’t even manage to stand for those things. I stand for my family, only my family, now, after this business with Ibrahim. Imagine my being reduced to that. A Raad man. If I were more like my grandfather, I’d have a blunderbuss and a saber, instead of a heart condition.”
“Still, it’s better than being Ahmed,” Philip said.
“Ah, there you go, young lady,” George said, as the van finally chugged up the hill. “I’m not sure it’s better, Philip.”
“Ahmed’s purely political,” Philip said. “And he’s a preemptor, a first-striker. He doesn’t wait for human feeling to enter in: look how fast he moved into Find the Soldier.”
“That came from the street.” George looked at Philip hopefully. Ahmed always liked to say: I do not lead the people. The people lead me.
“Not entirely, as we know from the meeting at Orient House.” Philip parked the car down near the pool, and they sat there. “Do you trust him, really, Doctor?”
“No,” George said. “And on the other hand, yes. Yes, implicitly.”
“There was a guy there last night.” Philip looked over at George.
“Well?” George looked out at the pool’s entrance. The gate was closed. “There were lots of guys, Philip. Hassan trades in ‘guys.’ ”
“This guy, this one friend of Hassan’s, told me a story.”
“Go on, Philip. I know you can’t hold back.” George wondered what the story could be. He leaned back. By now, I should be able to take what life deals me.
“You won’t like it.”
“I seldom like anything I hear, especially about Ahmed.”
“So?”
“Go on.” He closed his eyes.
“This guy, he told me that the threats against you, after Perils of Peace was published in Arabic? He said that when Ahmed Amr called you up in Cambridge, he already knew exactly who was threatening you, and that there were two reasons nothing was done to put an end to the threats.”
“Uh-hunh. What were the reasons?” George was still sitting back with his eyes closed, but his entire body stiffened.
“One: The people who were threatening you, Amr needed. At the time. These were the guys based in Damascus. And two: No one here cared what might happen to you, except for Amr. He cared, but not too much.”
“Mmmm.”
“What?” said Philip.
“Oh well.” George felt his throat constrict.
“And the attack, the guy said, was to be by letter bomb, and the reason it didn’t come off was the usual: incompetence, disorganization. Thank God for idiocy!” Philip sighed. “Anyway, so he said. Could all be lies.”
“Probably lies, Philip,” George said quietly. “I’m sure.”
Philip’s shoulders rose like a cat’s.
“You just can’t bring yourself to condemn him, can you?” Philip asked. “Sentiment, Doctor. You are confused because of your old affection for Ahmed.” Philip looked across the front seat at George. “But I don’t believe you can let that cloud your judgment.”
“Aren’t you tough as nails,” George said. Two waiters in white emerged from the pool gate. They wiped their hands across their aprons.
“Ahmed is.” Philip looked at him again.
“I feel much less affection for him tha
n you imagine,” George said, using his brisk voice, his professorial clipped inflection. “In fact, right now, I don’t think I can bear the sight of him again. So don’t feel so sorry for my wasted fondness.”
George looked away, and Philip got out.
George clicked down on what appeared to be the Uno’s door handle, but the door wouldn’t budge. He pushed it down again. Nothing.
What a fool I’ve been, George thought. He grasped another chrome handle that he thought might open the door, but still, nothing happened.
Philip had come around to the passenger side by now, and was watching.
To imagine that Ahmed was malevolent; it was too much for George. He thought of Ahmed’s strong grasp, the way he welcomed George each time as if he were standing at the family hearth, the warmth of his every gesture like a winter’s fire, and the light of his eyes under the fold of his keffiyeh . . . and then just the memory of that irritating keffiyeh and all it pretended to stand for but did not stand for, all it suggested but did not mean, all the distance it represented that Ahmed had traveled away from their shared childhood, and all the unfair, unfounded reproaches it offered to someone like George, made an acid rise in George’s throat. George did not want to think that distrust of Ahmed Amr would become his one final unswerving belief.
Fiddling with all the hooks and handles on the car door, George finally snapped a little clasp that exposed a red bar of color. Yes, he thought grimly. It helps to unlock it. Philip came forward and pulled the door open. George looked up at him. Philip extended a hand.
“I’m fine,” George said, refusing the hand and lifting himself out of the car in what seemed like slow motion.
• • •
“THANK YOU, thanks, shukran,” George said, pushing some money into the hand of the bellboy who let them into their suite. The bellboy flipped on the lights, turned on the air-conditioning, motioned to the welcome basket of fruit.
“Have a good day,” he said, bowing backward out the door.
George was exhausted. He sat down heavily on his bed.
“I’m going to order some breakfast,” Philip said. “Do you want something?”