Exile: a novel

by Richard North Patterson

  The village of Mukeble, where Sausan was the principal of an elementary school, bordered the West Bank. Just before the turnoff was a checkpoint, its guard station protected by bulletproof glass, behind which the IDF was building a fortification with barracks and a watchtower. A wire fence at least twenty feet high separated Mukeble from a field of grass, beyond which David could see the outlines of Jenin, home of Ibrahim Jefar.

  Near the entrance to the school, a slender young woman sat expectantly on a bench. At a distance, she looked enough like Hana that David felt his heart stop.

  Up close, this illusion was dispelled. The woman who greeted him had the same swiftness of movement and, David surmised, of thought; her olive skin and straight hair, though lightly tinted with henna, were reminiscent of Hana’s. But her eyes, a striking green, formed a crescent when she smiled, giving her a look of slightly skeptical amusement that signaled that, were he lucky, she might include him in the joke. “You must be David,” Sausan said, extending her hand. “If there were a new man in the village, I’d have heard it.”

  “Guilty.” David surveyed the village perched on a hill behind the school, many of its houses modern, some constructed to the height suitable for extended Arab families. “You’ve chosen a pretty place to live.”

  “It’s hardly Tel Aviv,” Sausan answered. “But it’s unique in this part of the world, as you will find. That is why I stay here.”

  “And the fence? There was trouble, I imagine.”

  “Some. In the beginning, the fence was a dilemma for our village— many here have relations in Jenin.” Sausan frowned. “But before it was built, terrorists would come here, seeking shelter in our homes. We are a town of Christians, Jews, and Muslims, peaceful with one another, sharing the same schools and governing council. No one wanted problems. Though the fence offended some, once more we live in relative tranquillity. Just as, my father tells me, we did in 1948. That is part of our history.”

  The last phrase carried a tinge of sadness, and also satisfaction— the catastrophe that had changed so many lives, including Hana’s, had somehow passed her family by. Sausan stood closer, looking up at him. “Do you think that Hana will die?”

  The directness of her question pierced him. “I hope not.”

  Sausan inhaled. “I wish they’d stayed,” she said at length. “Still my father asks, ‘What is their life, trapped in a pile of rubble, treated like dogs by the Lebanese?’ ”

  “They were frightened, Hana says, by the massacre at Deir Yassin.”

  “That was part of it, I know. The Israelis wanted the Arabs gone, frightening and harassing them and sometimes pushing them out. It is a myth that Arab leaders called on them to leave.” Her voice became somber. “But it is true that those same leaders refused to accept the U.N. partition that separated Israel from the West Bank, choosing war instead. So there is blame to go around.”

  David watched her face; already her shifting moods, like Hana’s, were not hard for him to follow. Abruptly, she said, “Would you like to see my school?”

  Inside, the classrooms were well equipped, with new textbooks and varied displays on the walls. In the art room, David noted a poster showing a menorah, a Santa Claus, and the symbols of Ramadan. “How do your students get along?”

  “That’s not without its complications. Before the fence, Christian or Muslim Palestinians could sometimes settle in our village. But the children from Jenin were poorer than ours, and had absorbed the violence spawned by the occupation.” Sausan stood straighter, her face set in a determined cast. “So we work with them. Without exception, the children who left Jenin much prefer to be here. Over time, their anger begins to subside. That, too, is part of why I stay.”

  Sausan drove him through the village. “What is it like to live here?” he asked.

  “For me?” Sausan flashed an ironic smile. “I am single, yet a multiplicity of people all in one. It complicates my life.” She adjusted the visor, screening the sun of late afternoon. “My father, Hana’s uncle, is Arab. I am Muslim—for better or, as I occasionally think, worse. But my mother is Jewish by birth—her mother came from Poland, and married an Arab Christian. So, unlike Hana, I am mired in ambiguity.”

  Sausan’s life here, David reflected, could not be easy. As though following his thoughts, she said, “I am two months short of thirty, a genetic mutt with a master’s degree. That last seems to qualify me as something of an intellectual—not a quality prized by all Muslim men.” She flashed a grin. “I can’t entirely blame them. By my own admission, I lack docility.”

  David smiled. “You seem peaceable enough.”

  “I suspect you’re not so easily daunted. But in the context of Mukeble, I’m something of a troublemaker.”

  “How so?”

  “When I came here, I organized a forum for Muslim and Jewish women to meet together, unsettling a few husbands. Worse, I organized a rally day for the women to race each other in jeeps, the ‘Queen of Galilee Race.’ ” Sausan smiled again. “In fact, you’re driving with the reigning queen.

  “That much I could get by with. But then I tried to organize a forum for us to meet with Palestinian women from Jenin. Before the intifada, there was a tradition of cooperation. But now the Palestinian Authority is collapsing, and the mayor of Jenin is too fearful of Hamas to stick his neck out at the behest of an Arab-Jewish woman.” Once more, her tone betrayed regret. “The assassination of Ben-Aron, Hana’s supposed crime, has killed this plan for good. We’ve lost the chance to know each other.”

  Passing sprawling houses and prosperous villages, they slowed at a bend in a winding dirt road that separated two cemeteries, one for Muslims, the other for Christians. “Recently,” Sausan said, “an old Christian woman died. First, there was a service at the mosque, then one at our village’s new church, when many Muslims witnessed a Christian service for the first time in their lives.

  “Afterward, both Muslims and Christians helped clean and tidy up that old Christian cemetery, her final resting place. Why, I found myself wondering, do people still choose to hate each other? And why has hatred swallowed Hana?”

  David turned to her. “Whose hatred, Sausan?”

  Frowning, Sausan watched the road. “I’ve wondered that myself.”

  They stopped at the church, a sandstone structure with burnished wooden doors. It was Latin Catholic, Sausan explained, obedient to Rome, its services conducted in Arabic, its construction approved by the government of Israel and financed by Arab Christians in England and America. “Of three thousand people in Mukeble,” Sausan said, “perhaps one hundred and fifty are Christians. But in a hundred years, only a few new churches have been built in the Middle East. This is one.”

  Inside, the church was spacious, featuring an altar filigreed with Arab characters and a confessional with two booths separated by a wooden screen. “If you care to confess,” Sausan said wryly, “I’ll gladly listen. There’s so little entertainment here.”

  David smiled. “Too long,” he said. “Too complicated. Anyhow, I’m Jewish.”

  She gave him a look. “It’s not the Jewishness, I think. It’s the complexity.”

  Outside, David checked his cell phone: no messages. Once again, he felt disoriented, the plaything of forces he did not fully comprehend.

  Sausan was gazing out at the not-so-distant city of Jenin. “I don’t know Hana well,” she said after a time. “Still, I admired her. But even before this, to think of her made me sad.”

  David turned to her. “Why?”

  Sausan nodded. “Two years ago, I visited her in Ramallah. She is smart and lovely, and adores her daughter. But not her husband, I think. Between them lies a struggle for Munira. And, perhaps, some deeper trouble.”

  “Of what kind?”

  Sausan looked at him closely. “I think you are more than her lawyer, true?”

  “True,” David answered warily. “I knew her years ago at law school.”

  “All right. This next is personal, a woman’s instinct
. Whatever the cause, Saeb seemed angry at my presence. Perhaps it was my independence; perhaps the very idea of me, the granddaughter of a Jew, offended him. But he seemed little warmer to Munira, more judge than father. When he left for Jordan, four days into my visit, I felt all three of us become lighter— mother, daughter, and me. And I thought, She does not love this man, and he loves neither one of them. Hana is the prisoner of her daughter, and therefore of her husband.”

  Sorting through his emotions, David chose a lawyer’s question. “Do you know why he went to Jordan?”

  “To see a doctor. He has some sort of heart problem, though its nature wasn’t clear to me. Nor did I understand why he stayed in Amman for a week.” Eyes downcast, Sausan hesitated, then added quietly, “Were he not so strict a Muslim, I would have imagined him with a lover. Hana also. Most of us need more than what I saw there.”

  They spent the next moments in silence. Glancing at the slanting sun, David said, “Is there still time to see where Hana’s parents lived?”

  “I think so.” Then, as if responding to impulse, Sausan continued, “Or we can look at it tomorrow, take more time. I know an inn nearby where we can stay.” Suddenly abashed, she added with a smile, “In separate rooms, of course. I am Muslim, after all.”

  Her embarrassment jogged a memory. We’re a shame culture, Hana had told him, not a guilt culture. “Of course,” David answered with a smile of his own. “I am Jewish, after all.”

  9

  The Upper Galilee, Sausan noted as they drove, was also lushly developed, a legacy of the kibbutzim. But the greenness ended at the border between Israel, Syria, and Lebanon, over which the Golan Heights loomed, its history a reminder of the warfare that ravaged this land, where no border seemed permanent. On the outskirts of a town nestled in a valley that ran from Israel to Lebanon, Sausan pointed out an Israeli outpost, a United Nations observation tower, and—just inside Lebanon—an artillery position once manned by Hezbollah, terrorist client of Iran and Syria, the latter of which held more power in this place than did the Lebanese. “Coming here,” Sausan observed, “makes me think of Saeb Khalid, and why he became so bitter.”

  “It was Sabra and Shatila, I thought.”

  “In the end. But, as always here, there is a history. Before Saeb was born, some Palestinians in Jordan tried to assassinate King Hussein— another reason, years later, that Hussein was pleased enough when Israel took over the West Bank and its populace.

  “But in this case, Hussein was more proactive. He grew weary of the PLO acting as a shadow government, agitating for his overthrow. So Hussein dumped the PLO into Lebanon, lock, stock, and barrel.” Sausan turned to him. “Perhaps you know the rest. Arafat began using Lebanon as a base, helping precipitate a civil war between Lebanese Muslims—Syria’s surrogates—and Maronite Christians, whose militia was the Phalange. The collapse of order allowed the Palestinians to launch terrorist operations against Israel, here in the Galilee. And so the army of Israel entered Lebanon to put down Arafat and the PLO.

  “After that, the murderers of the Phalange became the ally of Israel. So what happened to Saeb and his family at Sabra, as awful as it was, is just another bloody example of history’s cause and effect. This is our curse—too much history, too little geography. That’s what created Saeb Khalid.”

  Sausan, David reflected as they drove, was a thoughtful woman; though keenly analytic, she had a somewhat poetic sensibility, as though the contradictions of her heritage, and of the place in which she chose to live, allowed her to see the horror and beauty in the lives of contesting peoples.

  In the last village before they reached the inn, David inquired about the roofs of reinforced concrete he saw on several buildings. “Those were built before 1982,” Sausan explained, “the year of Sabra and Shatila, when Israel went into Lebanon. Before, the PLO would shell the town; after, when Arafat left for Tunis, the shelling stopped. So the newer roofs are normal. Now, after what has happened with Hezbollah, perhaps the next roofs will be concrete again.” Her voice became softer. “There are so many stories, David, so many ways to look at the same thing. At times I envy those with only one truth, like Saeb or Hana. But that’s the problem in this place— people do not hear one another’s stories. I cannot help but hear them all.”

  Tucked in his shirt pocket, David’s cell phone still had not rung.

  Nestled on a hillside, the Auberge Shulamit was an old stone hotel, appropriated as a fortress in 1948, then reborn as a charming inn. Though the location offered a sense of refuge, its commanding views of the Golan Heights and into Lebanon and Syria reminded David of what made this part of the world so treacherous.

  “Have you ever thought of living elsewhere?” he asked Sausan.

  They sat by a window in the restaurant, candlelit in twilight, and furnished with small wooden tables covered by white tablecloths. Sausan had ordered a glass of red wine; tasting it on her lips, she pondered her answer. “At times,” she said. “A city would be exciting. And it is sometimes lonely.” She laughed. “Perhaps that is why I kidnapped you.”

  David smiled. “I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”

  “Oh,” she said with rueful humor, “it is. It’s just that flattering men jibes so poorly with my temperament. And I’m badly out of practice.”

  Feeling the first glow of wine, David realized how solitary he had been, and how much he was enjoying Sausan’s company. Perhaps, he warned himself, she reminded him too much of Hana. “I don’t mind,” he answered. “I’ll take honesty over flattery.” He paused, then acknowledged, “This has been a difficult time for me. The stakes in this case are very high, and a lot of people don’t like what I’m doing. Sometimes I feel alone.”

  Sausan studied him. “ ‘Sometimes’? Perhaps that is an understatement.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And perhaps, also, you are afraid of losing someone you love.”

  Discomfited, David looked into her eyes. “Before I took this case, I was engaged. But I already lost Carole weeks ago.”

  Sausan shook her head. With unnerving directness, she said, “I meant Hana.”

  David tried a deprecatory smile. “Your cousin’s an old friend who became a client. She’s also married, however happily or unhappily—not to mention she’s Munira’s mother. If all that’s not enough, she’s fiercely Palestinian.”

  Sausan’s smile was at once skeptical and knowing. “So many reasons, so quickly said. I only hope you’re better at deception when you’re in court. Or pity Hana.” Her eyes became serious. “This afternoon, when I was speaking of Saeb and Hana, I watched your face. What I said about their marriage mattered very much to you. Not just as a lawyer, I suddenly knew, but as a man.”

  There was some relief, David realized, in giving up all pretense. “Am I really that transparent?”

  “Perhaps only to me—seeing you, and having met Hana. I’m a woman, after all. For that I need no practice.”

  The waitress filled their glasses, affording Sausan time to study him. When they were alone, she said, “This must have happened in law school, without Saeb knowing. Or at least so you and Hana must have thought.”

  The statement disconcerted him still further. “I’m sure Saeb didn’t know,” David answered. “If he had, he more likely would have murdered her than married her.”

  Sausan looked down, eyes veiled. “And still you love her?” she asked.

  David turned to the window, gazing at the scattered lights of the Galilee. “Years ago, I taught myself not to think about that. Now I can’t—as you suggest, it would be fatal in her lawyer. And how can you love a woman you’re not sure you even know, and maybe never did?”

  Sausan glanced up at him. Gently, she said, “Especially if you wonder what she may have done.”

  David’s silence, he supposed, was as eloquent as speech.

  “As I told you,” Sausan said at length, “I don’t know Hana well. But certain things I saw. Hana is a mother, Munira the person she loves most in all the
world—more than her husband, even more than some imagined country. More, given her circumstances, than she could permit herself to love you.” Sausan contemplated her wineglass. “I don’t quite know what I’m saying to you. But if Hana were involved in killing Ben-Aron, it would have been for her daughter’s sake, not for any cause. However little sense that seems to make.”

  David pondered this. “It doesn’t, really.”

  Shrugging, Sausan let it go.

  By unspoken consent, they left the subject of Hana; eating the flavorful entrées—hers lamb, his rabbit—they talked of their own lives. “From here,” she said, “I really don’t know what’s next. At times I feel ready for an adventure, a dramatic change in a life that feels too settled; at others, I think I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to, close to family and people that I love.” She tilted her head. “What would you do, if you were me?”

  “Change.” David answered with a smile. “But then I’m American, as your cousin never tired of pointing out. And my advice may be suspect in any case: until now, I avoided change like some deadly disease. So maybe I’m too confused to answer.”

  “But once you are through defending Hana? What then?”

  The question unsettled him; intent on saving Hana, he had suppressed any thought of what lay beyond. “I don’t know,” he conceded. “The most I can say is that I’m free to choose—the residue of a broken engagement and a political suicide.” He smiled wryly. “It’s like the old Janis Joplin lyric: ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.’ ”

  Looking into David’s eyes, Sausan returned his smile. “So surprise yourself, David. And then tell me how it feels.”