Exile: a novel (57 page)

And what Jamal was failing to speak of, David knew, was that a second massacre several years later had claimed almost all the Jews remaining. “In 1967,” Jamal went on, “when the occupation began, hard-line Jewish settlers established a presence in the old city of Hebron, harassing their Arab neighbors under the protection of the IDF.

“Now four hundred and fifty of them, protected by three thousand soldiers of the IDF, rule the heart of a city of one hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians.” Jamal smiled bitterly. “It is a special arrangement for these settlers, called the Hebron Protocol. You will soon see how they honor it.”

To David, Hebron felt like the heart of the Middle East. Now and then he saw distinct touches of modernity—a chic perfume and cosmetics store, an outlet for CDs, videogames, and DVDs. But the streets leading to the Old Town were choked with peddlers and pedestrians, bringing the cars and yellow taxis to a near standstill. Virtually all of the women David saw were covered, some so completely that only their eyes were visible, suggesting a culture light-years from Ramallah and any life Hana wanted for Munira. Thinking of Hana, then Saeb, David wondered if he was entering the past or the future. It did not surprise him to learn from Jamal that Hebron, traditionally conservative in its observance of Islam, was now a stronghold of Hamas. “The settlers,” Jamal said flatly, “have reaped what they have sown.”

David’s only certainty was that there was little place for Nisreen Awad or Fatima Khalil if Hebron proved to be the future of the West Bank. As a matter of education and outlook, they had more in common with secular Israeli women like Anat Ben-Aron—or Sausan Arif, a mixture of two worlds—than with women whose faces David could not see. Their only choice, in the end, would be exile; one reason for this would be that the absolutists of two religions had kept women on both sides from making common cause.

“Show me where the settlers live,” David said.

At the edge of the Old Town, the two men left the car behind. Eight hundred or so years ago, when Saladin built the Ibrahimi Mosque, the cramped, narrow alleys and cobblestoned streets had sealed the character of this place and, with it, the way of life David felt closing in around him. With difficulty, David and Jamal snaked through a crowded market crammed with peddlers’ stands and shops purveying fruits, breads, camel meat, sandwiches, clothes, shoes, and toys—it was so besieged by shoppers that, at times, David found it impossible to move. Now and again young men pushed wooden wheelbarrows filled with more fruit or goods, replenishing the stands. Though fascinated by Hebron’s market, David found it odd to be Jewish in this place, so distinctly Arab in its character, and odder still to think that Jews had chosen to settle here.

The marketplace ended with a narrow shopping alley—a souk not unlike that of the Old City of Jerusalem, crammed with merchants and shoppers. But after several blocks, the vibrant character of the souk abruptly ended.

Its architecture was the same. But the shoppers thinned to a trickle; only a few peddlers sat against the wall, as dispirited as their customers. “This is the place of the settlers,” Jamal said.

The sense of emptiness was eerie. “Where are they?” David asked.

“It is the Sabbath—they are inside with their prayer books and assault weapons.” Stopping, Jamal pointed at the second-story windows. “That is where they live.”

Gazing up, David’s view was obstructed by wire mesh on top of which lay heaps of garbage, the remnants of rotting food mixed with cans and bottles and, in one case, diapers. In a crack between the garbage David saw the flag of Israel. With quiet anger, Jamal said, “They come here because, before Islam, the place of the Ibrahimi Mosque was a sacred site for Jews. Now the spiritual heirs of those ancient Jews have returned to dump their waste on Arab peddlers. The wire is the peddlers’ sole defense.”

The souk went on like this for perhaps a quarter mile, its quiet the only evidence of the settlers save for the insults scrawled on the walls in Hebrew, the stench of garbage, and the steel-and-wire barriers that blocked the side alleys, erected by the settlers. Ahead, David saw a rotating steel gate, operated by remote control from a guardhouse manned by soldiers of the IDF. As he approached, two soldiers aimed their weapons at him, their faces drained of expression. “These are the settlers’ guardians,” Jamal remarked sardonically. “Of course, they claim to be protecting us. From the settlers or, perhaps, the next Baruch Goldstein.

“You’ve no doubt heard his name. Goldstein was a doctor in the Israeli
army, and a friend to Barak Lev. In 1994, on a Friday much like this, he entered the Ibrahimi Mosque with an assault rifle and began firing at Palestinians as they knelt close together in prayer, their backs affording him a perfect target. He killed twenty-nine Arabs and wounded another hundred before the survivors beat him to death.”

As Jamal spoke, he and David passed through the first gate and headed for the second, also manned by soldiers. “The Israeli government,” Jamal went on, “denounced Goldstein’s act and compensated his victims. But Yigal Amir claims that shooting Yitzhak Rabin first entered his mind when he saw the hundreds of mourners at Goldstein’s funeral. And it was Lev, I’m told, who helped write the epitaph on Goldstein’s tombstone.” As they reached the second gate, Jamal recited the epitaph from memory: “Here lies the saint Dr. Baruch Goldstein. Blessed be the memory of this righteous and holy man. May the Lord avenge his blood, who devoted his soul to the Jews, Jewish religion, and Jewish land. His hands are innocent, and his heart is pure. He was killed as a martyr of God.” With disdain, Jamal added his own coda, “Jews, too, have their martyrs. And now Barak Lev has joined them.”

David was thinking not of Lev but of Amos Ben-Aron. “After this massacre,” he asked, “what happened in Hebron?”

“A lot of rioting. Twenty-six Palestinians died, and two Israelis. After that, more settlers came to honor Goldstein’s memory, protected by more soldiers.”

At the third checkpoint, David looked into the stony face of the nearest Israeli soldier. Impatiently, the soldier waved David forward. “I will leave you here,” Jamal said abruptly. “Go to the mosque, and wait.”

Alone, David reached the final checkpoint, at the foot of the steps leading to the mosque. With a casual insolence, a young soldier demanded his identification. Examining David’s passport, he asked curtly, “Why are you here?”

David looked at the soldier coolly. “To see the mosque. Is there a problem with that?”

The soldier stared at him. Then he handed back the passport, waving David through. He was not in the best frame of mind, David reflected as he climbed the steps. But then not every holy site had soldiers and a metal detector at its threshold, the residue of a massacre. And his last visit to such a site, the Assyrian Chapel, had led to two men’s deaths; the images of their murders shadowed David’s thoughts as he reached the entrance.

Passing through the metal detector, David crossed the threshold of the mosque. This was the site of the cave where Abraham was entombed, along
with his wife Sarah and the sons who personified the contending claims of Muslims and Jews, Ishmael and Isaac. Though the mosque had been built over the cave, for centuries thereafter Arabs and Jews had worshipped here in relative peace. Then came the influx of European Jews inspired by Zionism; then their slaughter by Muslims and expulsion from the city; then the advent of settlers and soldiers; then Goldstein—all moved by their supposed reverence for this place and the God it proposed to honor.

No one approached him. Warily, he wandered through a spare and airy room in which female worshippers knelt on rugs, passing the tomb of Abraham, surrounded by a glass encasement. He entered a vast and ornate sanctuary, its walls richly filigreed, in which a blind man prayed, the unseeing whites of his eyes open and unmoving. At the back was a wall, the legacy of Goldstein, separating the Jewish section of the mosque from that reserved for Arabs; at the front an ornate altar, inspired by Saladin, was scarred with bullet holes, like the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem.

He paused there, alone, and then another man appeared beside him. “The work of Goldstein,” the man said, pointing to the holes. “For some, they symbolize not loss but lost opportunity. If his aim had been better, more of us would have died.”

David turned to him. He was young, mustached, and handsome, his tension betrayed by the gaze that darted past David’s head. “I do not have long here,” he said softly. “You are seeking men not easily found. Are you willing to risk dying with them, should the Israelis choose the moment of your visit to end their lives with bombs or bullets?”

David hesitated. “If that’s my only choice.”

“Then go to the refugee camp at Jenin and ask to see Ala Jabril. He will start by showing you how our people live.” The man placed a hand on David’s shoulder. “Good luck. And allow yourself some time and patience. These men move from hour to hour, and are best seen at night.”

He went about his normal routine, unpacking, showering, and planning the next day, his thoughts moving between Hana—how she was, what they might say to each other with so much changed—and the risks he was running on her behalf. In itself, Jenin was a dangerous place, and meeting with any leader of Al Aqsa far more dangerous yet. The Israeli practice of targeted killings could not be as surgical as the term implied: bullets fired into a safe house reserved for a clandestine meeting would not choose one participant over another; bombs or rockets would not discriminate at all. But he had little choice—to meet with Al Aqsa was to assume Al Aqsa’s risks.

Distractedly, David scanned the
International Herald Tribune.
Near Jenin, two members of Al Aqsa had been incinerated in their car by an Israeli rocket; at the Qalandiya checkpoint, soldiers had arrested a member of Islamic Jihad, also from Jenin, assigned to carry out a suicide bombing on the terrace of the King David Hotel, where, two weeks ago, David had dined with Zev Ernheit and Moshe Howard. Pensive, David went to meet Abu Jamal, the man who would take him to Jenin and who aroused in him such misgivings, even as David wondered at the wisdom of betting his life, and perhaps Hana’s, on this man’s undisclosed arrangements.

The restaurant, Shepherd’s Palace, was inside a Bedouin-style tent, half as long as a football field and as wide, its flooring composed of one ornate carpet after another. Jamal and David sat at one of many tables surrounded by couches, where friends and families lounged while sharing spicy dishes of lamb, beef, chicken, and vegetables, along with plates of
bread and hummus. The atmosphere was noisy and convivial: friends hugging and laughing and arguing; children running from table to table. Though the diners, whether Arab or Christian, were mostly secular, at scattered tables the women were covered or even veiled. After the seething caldron that was Hebron’s Old Town, David experienced the easy mix of disparate people as a relief. But he could not forget that he was the only Jew in sight.

“A lot of families,” David observed to Jamal.

“It is our way of life,” Jamal responded. “Divorce is very hard here, and our families are extended ones—cousins, nephews and nieces, aunts and uncles, all with their network of friends. So it is with my family.” Scanning the restaurant, Jamal added, “I must know thirty people here, and Bethlehem is not my home. The way our cities are isolated by Jewish checkpoints is a hardship for us all. But not as hard as for Hana Arif, I would think, whose own extended family is trapped at Shatila.”

The remark reminded David of how different Hana’s culture was from his, how little the small family circle of David and his reserved and private parents had resembled what he saw around him. Watching three generations at a nearby table—grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, and boys and girls of various ages—David understood, as he had not at Harvard, how culture had divided him from Hana and made his vision of the future so alien to hers.

All this he thought, but could not say. Of this much he was certain: his affair with Hana, and her feelings for him now, would be repugnant to Abu Jamal. “Your families,” David observed, “seem to work better than your government. At least by the evidence of the Palestine Authority.”

Jamal shrugged, a tacit concession. “That is why there is Hamas. Of course, occupation is our great tradition—the West Bank has been governed in succession by the Romans, the Byzantines, the Saracens, the Turks, the British, the Jordanians, and now the Jewish. As for the Palestinian Authority, I acknowledge it’s been corrupt.”

“It’s been a basket case,” David said flatly. “No wonder so many Israelis felt they couldn’t trust it, long before the rise of Hamas and death of Ben-Aron. Your security forces are weak and divided, and suicide bombers keep blowing up families like the ones sitting all around us. The only difference is that they’re Jews.”

“Perhaps we are better at resistance than at governance,” Jamal countered. “Our experience at self-rule is so much less. To build a civil society takes time—first we must be free of the Jewish and their oppression.”

It was impossible, David thought, for Jamal not to know that he was
Jewish, or that their debate was also a surrogate for emotions far more personal. “And so Israel is your excuse?” he asked. “Are Palestinians so powerless that they have no role at all?”

Jamal’s mouth compressed. “You speak of power. America has power. Your Jews have power. Because of the Jewish media and money, the government of the United States created a state for Jews, and continues to arm and finance the racist State of Israel to ensure its survival and its occupation of our land. So do not speak to me of power. Power is the property of the Jewish.”

“ ‘The Jewish,’ ” David respounded softly, “can be such clever people. But not so clever as to keep from being slaughtered through the ages, whether at Auschwitz or Hebron. If that had happened to Arabs, this restaurant would be close to empty. Perhaps you’d like to guess which of these families would still exist.”