Exile: a novel (14 page)

“As an ideological matter, Iran wishes to eradicate the State of Israel. As a practical matter, Iran needs violence between Jews and Palestinians to divert the world from its nuclear ambitions. Which, once realized, are a mortal threat to Israel.” Softly but emphatically, Ben-Aron finished, “Israel can
stop suicide bombers—by themselves, they cannot destroy us. But one nuclear warhead could do that very well. We must deal with Iran, our greatest threat, which is why I am so determined to give peace between Israelis and Palestinians this one last chance.”

As David had hoped, his question—and Ben-Aron’s answer—seemed to drain the antagonism from the room. “Given all of these enemies,” Dorothy Kushner asked with obvious worry, “do you fear for your own life?”

“Fear?” Ben-Aron gave her a faint smile. “Those who wish to kill me are like customers in one of your ice-cream parlors—on a busy day, you have to take a number.

“I have no wish to die. But I cannot add more days to this waning life by making myself safer at the cost of lives much younger than mine, either Israeli or Palestinian.” With a shrug of fatalism, Ben-Aron finished. “I’ve given much of my life to keeping Israel alive. What will all that have meant if I cannot leave it safer?”

Quickly, Iyad opened the wooden box of plastique.

Wrapped in newspaper, the explosives looked like greenish blocks. Iyad placed one in Ibrahim’s hand.

It was eerie, Ibrahim thought, to hold the instrument of his own destruction.

“Very light,” Iyad said in a conversational tone. “Easy to use.”

Taking the block from his hand, Iyad pointed to the motorcycles. “See those saddlebags on each side of the rear tire? Pack them with these and it’s enough to do the job, even on an armored car. All you have to do is get the wiring right.”

Ibrahim tried thinking of his sister.

Kneeling over the box of plastique blocks, Iyad casually tossed one over his shoulder. Startled, Ibrahim failed to catch it before it clattered on the metal floor.

Laughing softly, Iyad said, “They are very stable—they do not detonate by themselves. That is what the wires are for.”

Within minutes, Iyad had rigged a toggle switch to the handlebars of a motorcycle, then drawn the wires from the switch back to the saddlebags. The black wires, the color of the motorcycle, were virtually invisible.

“It’s really very simple,” Iyad said with satisfaction. “Anyone can learn to do it.”

Before he left, Ben-Aron drew David Wolfe aside. “This was an honor,” David said.

Ben-Aron smiled wryly. “For me, as well. Although, at times, I was reminded of your President Lincoln’s story about the politician who was tarred, feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail. ‘But for the honor of the thing,’ the politician said, ‘I’d have passed it up.’ ”

“They’re frightened for your country, Mr. Prime Minister.”

“Aren’t we all.” Ben-Aron touched his shoulder. “I didn’t say so tonight, but we need more involvement from your government. There are interests who want America to stay on the sidelines, not involved in the process of making peace. That could be fatal.” Leaning closer, Ben-Aron gazed at David with new intensity. “You can be a part of this, David. When your time comes, I hope that you will help us.”

Briefly squeezing David’s shoulder, Ben-Aron turned away, kissed Carole on the cheek, and left, surrounded by his security detail.

From the window, David watched the street below. With the lights of police cars swirling, David saw the motorcade begin to move, headlights cutting the darkness, slowly turning a street corner like a giant serpent before it disappeared.

Ibrahim opened the rear doors. Swiftly, they began loading the van— first the boxes with their uniforms and helmets, then the extra wires. After this, sweating in the cool night air, they hoisted the motorcycles, rigged with wires and plastique.

As they left the compound, the guard looked up from his magazine and gave them a perfunctory wave. Heart in his throat, Ibrahim waved back.

To David’s surprise, Harold Shorr emerged from the kitchen with a snifter of Armagnac and sat heavily in the overstuffed chair that was his favorite. This was unusual; Harold seldom took an after-dinner drink, and it was his practice to leave Carole and David to themselves after a social evening.

Briefly, David glanced at his fiancée. “Well?” he said to Harold.

Harold broke off his contemplation of the crystal snifter, looking up at David with a pained smile. “The ‘right of return’ is a ‘myth,’ didn’t he say? Something that can be wished away like a fairy tale told to children. But they’ve nurtured that myth for sixty years by staying in what they still call ‘refugee camps.’ It’s just another way of saying ‘Jews are not wanted here.’ Just like we weren’t wanted in Germany, or Russia, or Poland.” Harold cocked his head toward Carole. “To what place would we return? The Polish village where I come from, now empty of Jews?”

A look of understanding passed between father and daughter, touched with melancholy and, in Harold’s case, a trace of bitterness. “You are young,” he said wearily. “I am not. And I am tired from watching our history repeat itself. My parents would not believe the Germans would kill
them until they did. Now it’s the Palestinians—a few steps forward, a few steps back. Another handshake, another truce, then another Palestinian blowing up Israelis to prove that none of it matters.

“Forever, there is hope given, hope taken away. Now we have Hamas.” Harold mustered a smile. “I am sorry, David. But I have little hope for Amos Ben-Aron.”

After Harold had left, David stood gazing out Carole’s window at the lights of the Marina District, the dark pool of the bay.

Behind him he heard the sound of Carole’s bare feet. “Can you stay the night?”

“Of course.”

In the bedroom, they undressed, wordless, and slipped into bed. Carole pressed her body against his.

Gently, David kissed her forehead, a signal that he wished to sleep.

But he found that he could not. Harold’s last remark, underscoring his loss of hope, resonated with a memory David could not quite place.

At last it came to him. It was a weekend with Hana, near the end.
You are free to hope for us,
she had told him.
But I am not free to hope with you.

When Saeb flew to Chicago for a three-day conference of Palestinian students, enabling Hana to steal away, David was elated.

They drove to New Hampshire in David’s secondhand convertible, Hana’s dark hair flowing in the wind, Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty providing the soundtrack. “Normal,” David said with a grin, “this is what it could be like—normal.” Not even Hana’s delphic smile could dampen his exhilaration.

They stayed in a bed-and-breakfast at the foot of Green Mountain. Saturday morning, David brought her breakfast in bed, croissants and coffee and orange juice. Still naked, Hana hungrily consumed her first croissant. David thought he had never seen anything more charming.

“Normal,” he repeated.

Her mouth full, Hana could only raise her eyebrows.

“I could do this every Saturday,” David said.

Hana finished swallowing her last bite. “Do what?” she inquired with a smile. And so they had made love again.

Later, they left to take a hike; Hana had never stayed with a man, and David, who had learned to read her restlessness as apprehension, chose to distract her rather than argue that they were safe. After all, hiking was normal, too.

The trail up Green Mountain rose at a steep angle through dense pines, causing Hana to pause for breath, or to drink from David’s bottle of water. Finally, they reached a promontory of rock weathered by wind and rain. The afternoon was temperate—light breezes, the mild sun of a New England spring—and the view went on for miles.

“Beautiful,” Hana whispered.

It was. The wooded sweep of hills and valleys was so vast that it seemed less to end than to vanish on some far horizon. Amid the woodlands they could see only a few clearings for farms or hamlets marked by steepled churches; after the Civil War, nature had begun reclaiming the land, overtaking civilization as the energy of man moved west. David related all of this to Hana.

“So much land,” she observed. “So easy to leave it, if you think there will always be more. Sometimes, I think, land explains so much about a people.”

“It does for Americans,” David answered. “There was always someplace else to go, a sense of things never running out. In the end it’s an illusion. But if a people’s illusion lasts long enough, it can shape who they become.”

Hana gave him a look, the hint of a challenging smile in her eyes, as though she knew he was also referring to the illusions of Palestinians. But she chose not to engage in a debate. After a time, she said simply, “Thank you for bringing me here. This hill, this place, the inn with breakfast for me, in bed. I will never forget it.”

David felt the impulse to speak overcome his instinct to be silent. “This is what life could be like for us. Free to go where we want, do what we like. Free to grow together without always watching the clock.”

Pensive, Hana gazed at the woodland before them. “Free,” she said, as though listening to its sound on her lips. “Such a simple word to you. You’re an individual—obligated to no one, little more concerned about being Jewish than being right-handed. Satisfying your own desires is the simplest thing; you want something, so why not have it.” She held his hand tighter, as though to remove any sting from her words. “You’re so American, complete within yourself. Sometimes, with you, I feel like this girl— happy, almost carefree. Then I look at you again, and you seem so innocent. And I feel as though I’m a thousand years old.”

In profile, she seemed wistful, or perhaps resigned. “You’re twenty-three, Hana. And our time is running out. I graduate in a month—”

“Don’t, David. Please.”

The last vestige of restraint deserted him. “If there were time, I’d be endlessly patient, just letting it all spin out. I’ve got that in me. But we don’t
have time. We have to deal with this now—it’s way too important to treat this like a college student’s summer romance, doomed to end when the girl goes back to school—”

“But that’s all it can be.” She turned to him, speaking in an urgent voice. “Don’t you see? With you I’d be constantly pulled from one side to the other, looking for a balance I could never find. What keeps us apart is so much bigger than we are. To my family, I am Sabra and Shatila, and you would be the murderer—”

“I’m not a symbol, for Christ’s sake. I’m a person. Am I a murderer to you?”

“No.” Hana paused, then added quietly. “But you are the man who’s killing me inside. I want to be with you, David—to talk with you, listen to you, argue with you. And, yes, sometimes I desire you so much it feels like what I’m made for. Which is crazy. Because I’m more than a woman who wants a man.

“In my culture, family defines us. You never understand that. For you, it’s easy—you’re just you. You have no deep ties to your parents, and your parents seem to have no ties to their history or religion. But when your children ask about your family, and where you come from, what will you tell them?”

“Nothing,” David replied. “They’ll never ask, because the question would have no meaning for them. I can’t imagine a child of mine falling in love and asking me, ‘What would the Wolfe family do?’ ”

Hana shook her head, as though losing all hope that he would ever comprehend her. “To you these are stupid questions, really not questions at all. You’re not really a ‘Wolfe,’ you’re only ‘David.’ But not me. Before I came here, my mother said, ‘Please do not love anyone in America. It would only cause you heartache.’ Too late for that. But what she was also saying is that I’d also cause
them
heartache. And that I can never do.”

With these last words, Hana’s pain became his. “Then how can you do
this
?”

“I lie.” Her tone became detached, almost matter-of-fact. “We’re a shame culture, not a guilt culture. We worry about our name, our image, our honor in the eyes of others. But not what we do in private. I know Palestinian women from good families who go abroad and have affairs. But they never talk of it at home, and their family never knows. I don’t need to tell my family about anything but Saeb.”

When they returned to Cambridge, she got out three blocks from her apartment. David watched her walk away.

This is insane, he thought.

He headed toward graduation like an automaton, measuring his days as they passed too quickly, one after the other, toward the moment he had come to dread. On some nights—hastily stolen from Saeb or her studies—they would lie in bed, looking into each other’s faces, bodies damp with lovemaking. They spent minutes without speaking, David running his fingers along her spine. He could no longer imagine his life without her.

One evening they watched
Casablanca
together, and David found himself hoping that Ingrid Bergman’s choice of her husband, freedom’s dutiful savior, over the man she loved would feel as miserable to Hana as it did to him. But when he said as much, Hana answered simply, “Ingrid Bergman was not her husband’s partner. I will be.”

“Are you so sure?” David challenged her. “I’ve only met Saeb once, and already I know how damaged he is. I’m not sure he even sees you.”

“We’re all damaged,” Hana answered evenly. “Tell me, David, do you wish to live on the West Bank?”

The suggestion of a life together, however rhetorical, gave David hope. “I don’t think I’d be welcome there. But you could practice law in America. Or teach.”

“
I
don’t feel welcome
here.
And it’s not my country. It’s the country of the powerful, Israel’s chief ally, without which my grandfather would still be living in the land his parents left to him.” Slowly, she moved her hand from his. “You know that I have feelings for you. But you forget how I feel about your country. And mine.”

She left without making love with him, her face and body expressing too much misery to stay.