Exile: a novel (15 page)

The next night she came back. They made love swiftly, intensely, as if to dispel what both had said.

“Stay the night with me,” David implored her.

“I can’t. You know that.”

“Because of Saeb,” he said flatly.

“And because of me.” She sat up in bed, tears filling her eyes. “You still think you understand me. But you can’t understand that I’ve made a deal— let me give myself to this man for a few precious weeks, and I’ll follow the rules for the rest of my life.

“At least let me take this moment, I tell God, and maybe the next, and I’ll promise to pay You back. Knowing that every moment brings me that much closer to never seeing you again.”

Her voice was suffused with anger. “You wonder if I love you? All right, David, I love you. And if you loved me more you’d wish I didn’t.

“I think of the life I might have with you, but that we can never have. The happiness I have with you carries inside it such sadness. Maybe that makes our lovemaking more intense, more precious. But there is such pain—”

“There’s pain either way, Hana,” David interrupted gently. “Don’t you think you’ll feel pain two weeks from now, if you decide to never see me again? You can’t get out of this without hurting someone. Especially yourself.”

She turned from him. In a muffled voice, she said, “I’ve promised Saeb.”

“Promised him what? A wife who doesn’t love him?” He grasped her by the shoulders. “Look at me, Hana.”

For an instant, he felt her tremble. When she turned to him, she looked wounded, as though it hurt to see his face.

David’s voice was thick. “I want a life with you. I want you to come with me to San Francisco.”

Her expression was stunned, almost uncomprehending.

More quietly, he said, “Marry me, Hana.”

She bowed her head. She seemed unable to speak, or even move. The tears running down her face were her only answer.

16     
A
little before noon the next day, Carole and David walked from David’s office to the Commonwealth Club, on Market Street; at least ten blocks of Market were barred to automobiles, and the street was lined with barricades, police officers, and members of the Secret Service, distinguished by the sunglasses that concealed who the agents might be watching.

Angry demonstrators, Jewish and Arab, united only in their loathing of Amos Ben-Aron, pressed up against the barricades.

“A lot of security,” Carole noted in a worried tone. “They need it.”

David nodded. “Make it daunting enough and the Lee Harvey Oswalds of the world may decide that it’s the wrong day to enter history.” He pointed to the rooftops of the three- and four-story buildings. “There’ll be sharpshooters on the rooftops, and security all over the auditorium. No way the U.S. government is losing Ben-Aron on
its
watch.”

“It’s sad to be afraid like this,” Carole observed. “But still not as bad as Israel. Since the bombings started, you get frisked at shopping malls.”

Her remark, and the demonstrators, were a reminder of the virulent hatred that made peace so difficult to imagine. But David felt lighter of spirit than he had since Hana’s call. The spring day was crystalline; David, responsive to weather, hoped it might auger a fresh season between Israelis and Palestinians. As they entered the Commonwealth Club, he remarked to Carole, “I hope whatever Ben-Aron has to say matches people’s expectations.”

With that, they took their place in line, waiting to pass through the metal detectors.

Feigning the authority of the police officers who manned the barricades, Ibrahim and Iyad cruised down Market, stopping at the corner of Tenth Street. This was his route to the airport, Iyad had explained, the one shown on the map. Once more, Ibrahim wondered at the knowledge of those who had planned for them to join the forces deployed to protect their enemy. They had entered the zone of protection unimpeded; to Ibrahim’s relief, the real policemen remained focused on their duties.

Last night he had not slept, roiled by anxiety and painful images of his sister. Today he felt resolute, yet strangely disoriented. With his face covered by the helmet and plastic mask, Iyad resembled a Zionist soldier in riot gear; among the onlookers lining Market Street, Ibrahim saw demonstrators denouncing Israel as the oppressor of his people. The path to martyrdom seemed so open that it stunned him. When four motorcycle police officers sped by, taking up positions on the first block of Tenth Street, Iyad murmured, “It is just as she promised.”

Ibrahim said a silent prayer. In little more than an hour, should they succeed, they would no longer walk on earth.

Within minutes, David knew they were hearing a remarkable speech.

The crowd of five hundred listeners, San Francisco’s civic elite, seemed to sense this, too; even considering the anticipation that greeted the prime minister’s words, underscored by the presence of cameras from the major news networks, they were uncommonly still.

“The epic story of Jews,” Ben-Aron said, his voice measured and strong, “repeated by our prophets and poets over hundreds of years, called for us to reclaim the land of Israel. Today, Palestinians speak of their historic destiny to reclaim this land as their own. And both stand on the shoulders of those who came before. Consider Jerusalem. Jews were living there before the Bible was written, Muslims since the dawn of Islam. But too often each of us is blind to the story of the other . . .”

When does history begin for you?
David remembered asking Hana. It seemed clear that Amos Ben-Aron intended to transcend the question.

“There are Jews,” Ben-Aron continued, “so consumed by the tragedies of three thousand years that they cannot see the suffering of Palestinians. There are Palestinians so blinded by the suffering of sixty years ago that they cannot acknowledge the suffering of Jews. Today Palestinians call the date of Israel’s founding the ‘day of catastrophe,’ marking it with the
moment of silence with which we, on our Day of Remembrance, recall the victims of the Holocaust. Today Palestinians chafe under the occupation by Israeli soldiers, while Israelis fear death at the hands of Palestinian suicide bombers.

“Enough.” Standing straighter, Ben-Aron surveyed the audience. “To the Palestinian people, I say, ‘I know your history. You, like we, have suffered and died. You, like we, have been displaced and dispossessed. Your history is our history. Yet you the victims, and we the victims, have been pitted against each other in one of history’s cruelest ironies...’ ”

As David turned to Carole, her eyes shone with expectation. “Enough,” Ben-Aron repeated. “It is time to build a future for our children. Our history must not be their destiny; their destiny cannot be still more death...”

Pulling the cell phone from his jacket, Iyad listened intently.

Ibrahim tried not to react. But when Iyad shoved the phone back into his jacket, his mouth was a grim line, his air of self-possession gone. “That was her,” he said. “They’ve changed the Zionist’s route.”

Listening, David lost track of time. “After forty years of war,” Ben-Aron continued, “this is the truth I wish to tell to Palestinians. As a Jew, it hurts me to live in a world where my people’s safety is not assured. It hurts me to live in a world where nations question our value as human beings. I would like not to worry about children who seek honor by killing Jews. I would like not to wonder if there will be a safe place for my grandchildren . . .”

And so, David thought, would Harold Shorr. When he glanced again at Carole, David knew that she was thinking the same thing.

“That is what I would like,” Ben-Aron said more quietly. “And this is what I ask of you. I ask you to recognize our right to exist. I ask you to reject violence. I ask you to help us leave your land by spurning those—such as Hamas—who would kill us in our land. I ask that you offer those willing to abandon terror—such as the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade—the chance to enter your security forces as a bulwark against terror.”

This, David thought, was risky and extremely clever: by suggesting that the Al Aqsa Martyrs might become the linchpin of the Palestinian security forces, Ben-Aron was hoping to pit them against Hamas, dividing two major groups of Palestinian militants while risking still more anger from the Israeli right. “I ask you to work,” Ben-Aron continued, “toward a society that meets the needs of its own people rather than feeds their anger at my people. A society, in short, that will be our partner in peace.

“In return, this is what I offer you.”

As Ben-Aron paused, David felt a quickening of hope.

“An end to suffocating checkpoints,” Ben-Aron continued, “arbitrary arrests, and petty humiliations. A negotiation of fair borders that provide for
our
security and
your
prosperity. A program of compensation to the descendants of Palestinian refugees. A dismantling of illegal settlements. An agreement that Jerusalem will be an open city, the capital of both of our nations. An effort to help build an economy that promises your young people something better than a martyr’s grave. And, at last, a country of your own.”

Once again, Ben-Aron’s gaze swept the audience. “I also offer you these truths,” he continued soberly. “That we as Jews accept our share of responsibility for the violence that caused your grandparents to flee; for the needless slaughter of Sabra and Shatila; for the soulgrinding pressure of your daily lives. That all of us—Palestinian and Jew—are responsible for who our children become. That it is our common responsibility to prevent them from making our land a common grave. That it falls to all of us— Palestinian and Jew—to replace the cult of death and suicide with the promise of peace and dignity. And that you, the Palestinian people, must do your part by rejecting the witches brew of hatred and revenge offered by extremists like Hamas.”

At that moment, David wished he could turn to Hana Arif and tell her,
We can do this. Or, at least, our children can.

“Which brings me,” Ben-Aron continued, “back to the claims of history.

“None of us can resurrect the past. None of us can return to a time or place that vanished sixty years ago. But for those whose lives are more past than future—those Palestinians born in what is now Israel—we can offer a return.” The prime minister’s voice softened. “Not the
right
of return, but the chance, if they wish it, to return to where they lived before the birth of Israel ...”

Surprised, David tried to imagine the emotion of a man and woman he had never met, Hana’s parents. To return might be heartrending, an end to dreams. And yet this dream had consumed their lives, and Ben-Aron was willing to acknowledge this.

“They,” Ben-Aron concluded, “like me, are old. And I, like they, have an old man’s dream—to sit beneath an olive tree and watch our grandchildren play, free of history’s burden. Let this, the best of our dreams, speak to the best in all of us.”

Abruptly, Iyad spun his motorcycle in the direction of the Commonwealth Club. “Fourth Street,” he said to Ibrahim. “We must hurry.”

Hitting the accelerator, Iyad sped back toward where they had come from, pausing only to throw his cell phone in a curbside trash container. Ibrahim followed, his prayers obliterated by panic, the blast of Iyad’s motorcycle, the vibrations of his own.

17     
O
utside the Commonwealth Club, David paused, too captured by the moment to rush back to his office.

He stood with Carole amid the crowd at the corner of Market and Second Streets, gazing at the police barricades, the unwonted emptiness of the street itself, the line of black limousines awaiting Ben-Aron. “I’d like to watch him leave,” he said. “Let’s find a better vantage point.”

He led her through the crowd toward where Fourth Street ran into Market. “When I was in the DA’s office,” he explained, “I knew the cop who ran Dignitary Protection. Sometimes they’ll change routes; if they’re really worried, they might even use a dummy motorcade. But from here there are only three direct routes to the airport—down Fourth, Sixth, or Tenth Streets to Highway 101. If we stand at Fourth, we’re sure to see them passing.”