Exile: a novel (19 page)

“Ibrahim Jefar,” David interjected, “made Saeb’s mission a little tougher. And he’s from Birzeit, where both of you teach. Did you or Saeb know him
or
Iyad Hassan?”

David’s abruptness seemed to wound her. “So, it’s on to business,” she said more coolly. “As for me, I checked to see whether either were students of mine, and no. Nor can Saeb recall ever having met them. Birzeit has several thousand students, and one does not befriend them all.” Her tone became quietly angry. “That leaves Munira—twelve years old—as the plotter in our midst.”

David walked to his desk, picked up a legal pad and pen, and went back to the couch. “Who contacted you from the FBI?”

“A man named Victor Vallis came to our hotel. Do you know him?”

“No. He must be out of Washington.” David wrote down the name. “What did Vallis say?”

“That he had a material witness warrant, and we could not leave America. He wanted to question us right away. When we said we wanted to consult a lawyer, he took our passports. Then he said he wanted to meet with us, and Munira, on Thursday.”

Three days from now, David noted. “Did Vallis indicate why he wanted to question you, or their basis for keeping you in San Francisco?”

“Not specifically.” Sitting back, Hana folded her hands. “We’re Palestinian, we teach at Birzeit, we oppose the occupation, and we followed Ben-Aron to San Francisco. Isn’t that enough?”

“Maybe. But tell me more about the current state of Saeb’s politics. And yours.”

Hana gazed at her hands. At length, she said quietly, “We should start with where you and I left off, David. The dawn of the Oslo Accords, the harbinger of peace. We were going to have a country, remember? Instead the Israelis doubled their settlements, confiscated more lands, and divided us into Bantustans isolated by Israeli security roads, and checkpoints that can turn a twenty-minute drive home into a three-hour nightmare. Unemployment rose, per capita income dropped—”

“What about the first intifada,” David cut in, “all the suicide bombers beginning in 2000—”

“After years of Israeli occupation,” Hana retorted. “Creating more suicide bombers by the day, and destroying any pretense of Zionist morality.” Pausing, Hana spoke more evenly. “Saeb would argue that Arafat was of little help. He imported a group of PLO fighters who became the privileged class, profiting from monopolies, patronage, and corruption instead of building a real government that served its people. Arafat governed—to the extent he had the will or power to govern at all—out of his back pocket. So between them, Arafat and the Israelis helped create Hamas, while Israel catered to a fanatic minority, their settler-zealots. Based on their collective legacy, our children can look forward to nothing but violence.

“I will tell you a story, David. A friend of mine was making a documentary about the children in a refugee camp outside Ramallah. The day I went with her she was filming young boys who’d saved up money to taxi to a checkpoint and throw stones at Jewish soldiers.” Recalling this, Hana gazed into some middle distance. “They passed through two checkpoints to reach a third—barren, without shade, the heat shimmering off the asphalt road. Why, I asked a boy Munira’s age, did they travel to this place?”
Abruptly Hana turned to David, as though striving to convey what she had seen. “He was very thin, with large brown eyes—sensitive-looking, as Saeb had been at that age. His answer was that the Israeli soldiers had not shot anyone at the other checkpoints, but had killed his best friend’s brother at
this
one. And I understood that this boy, barely able to comprehend death, was hoping to be killed.”

To David, her tone conveyed the weariness of someone who had seen such things since childhood, and now was seeing them through the eyes of another generation of wounded children. “I asked,” Hana continued, “what he wished to be when he grew up—a doctor, or perhaps a scientist? He gave me a look of incomprehension—if he lived long enough, growing up to him meant killing some Israelis when he died.” Hana gazed out the window at David’s view of the Golden Gate Bridge, but she did not appear to see it. “I despise the men who turn children into human bombs—one sees no ‘leaders’ of the resistance sending their sons to die. But this boy was a tragedy in the making. Even Ibrahim Jefar will have a story.”

“I somehow doubt I’ll work up any sympathy for Jefar.”

“Perhaps not. But now I find myself remembering how you and I would talk of the Holocaust, of Jews living with a collective memory of violence. I worry about my people in this way—to be the subject of violence distorts the soul. And yet the Israelis themselves still cannot acknowledge the poison of their occupation.”

“This poison,” David interrupted, “how badly has it affected Saeb?”

Hana sat back, choosing her words. “Differently from me,” she said at length. “I, too, am sick to death of Israel and Israelis. But I would accept a two-state solution
if
—and I sincerely doubt this—the Jews were willing to give us a viable country.

“Saeb has no doubt they never will. For him, Jews drove his grandparents out of Galilee, planned his parents’ slaughter, and now occupy the place that Israel calls our ‘homeland’—imprisoning us with or without cause, humiliating us at checkpoints in front of our own children, killing other children who throw stones.” Pausing, Hana studied her hands, and David sensed within her a quiet sadness. “The Zionists have defined Saeb for himself. It shames him to have been studying in America instead of resisting on the West Bank, just as it shames him not to have died trying to protect his sister, even though he was just a boy. Sometimes he mocks himself as a ‘rhetorician—the great theorist of struggle.’ ”

David set down his legal pad. “I don’t know about the U.S. attorney, Hana. But if I were Marnie Sharpe and knew what you just told me,
I
might want the FBI to question Saeb.”

Hana looked into his eyes. “I’m Saeb’s wife,” she answered simply. “I’ve known him since we were children, and
we
have a child now. In his heart he may have wished Ben-Aron dead. But if Saeb were involved in killing him, I believe that I would know.”

David studied her. “When you first called me,” he reminded her, “you told me that Saeb had become much more Islamic. Tell me what you meant.”

Silent, Hana contemplated his question and, David guessed, her marriage. “That is something,” she responded, “that I’ve considered a great deal. And I’ve come to believe that much of it has to do with Munira.”

“How so?”

“I’m not quite sure. But for a man, male authority—to demand the respect and obedience of one’s children—is a hallmark of our culture. And yet Palestinian children see their fathers treated like cattle by teenage Jewish soldiers.” Hana raised her head. “One weekend, we were stopped on the way to a wedding—Saeb, Munira, and I. Two armed Israeli soldiers forced Saeb to get out of the car and remove his shirt and belt. He stood there in the sun, looking frail between these strapping soldiers in combat gear as they joked about God knows what.

“I glanced into the back seat. Munira stared at the soldiers with such hatred that I was glad
she
did not have a gun—this girl, eleven years old. And yet I think what she hated most was not the soldiers but her own confusion at witnessing her father’s impotence.” Hana’s tone bore the weight of a crucial memory, sifted and resifted. “When Saeb got back in the car,” she went on, “I tried to pretend that things were still normal. Neither of them would speak.

“So I think there is this disturbance in their relationship, and that Saeb now looks to Islam as a way of restoring his proper role as a father—just as he has come to believe that it is Islam, and not Marxism, that will restore our dignity as Arabs. But that is a difficulty in our marriage, because I am Munira’s model of a woman. Saeb wishes her to cover, and asks that I do. He forbids her to spend time with boys, and presses me not to socialize with men.” Briefly, Hana looked down. “And he wishes to arrange her marriage, as our parents did for us.”

David chose not to comment. “And you?”

“I wish for a more secular society, and a more secular home.” Hana gazed at him directly. “For Munira, I want the best education and a good career—even to study in America, perhaps. And I want her to have reasonable independence.”

“More than you had?”

Hana’s gaze didn’t waver. “Perhaps,” she answered softly. “There still are things she doesn’t yet know to want.”

What those things might be, Hana’s tone suggested, was not open for discussion. “Munira,” she continued, “has her
own
ambivalence about me. For several years I was a consultant to our peace negotiators, spending nights away. Munira resented that—more than once she told me that when
she
grew up, she would never leave her children.

“One night she even managed to blame
me
for the occupation. At three A.M., soldiers broke down the gate outside our apartment building in Ra-mallah, locked us inside the building, and searched each apartment door-to-door. Munira was badly frightened. But when they had left, she screamed at me, ‘If you’re such a great peace negotiator, why are the Jews still here?’ ”

Quiet, David contemplated the distance between them—the ways in which Hana had been redefined by marriage, motherhood, and thirteen years of living he could only try to imagine. “You said Munira was scarred by the occupation. Is that what you meant?”

Hana gave a quick shake of the head. “I meant much more,” she answered. “As a child she would awaken to the thunder of the Israelis shelling the homes where people they called terrorists lived. For a brief time she wet the bed again. And since she saw Arafat’s compound reduced to rubble, she’s had great trouble sleeping.

“If she grows up whole enough, there is hope. Women can advance in our society—even now, twenty percent of our legislature are women. But Munira must somehow heal, and decide for herself what kind of woman she wants to be.” Hana’s smile was fond but fleeting. “The name Munira means ‘radiates life’—it was my expression of hope for a baby girl. My hope for her now is that this turns out to be so.”

“And what does ‘Hana’ mean?” he asked. “I never knew.”

“ ‘Serenity,’ ” Hana answered. “And satisfaction. As in contentment.”

They both let the remark linger. “If it’s any source of reassurance,” she added with a smile, “Saeb means ‘always truthful.’ A good name for a prospective client.”

“No doubt. Which brings me to whether Saeb—or you—has had any association with what the Israelis so impolitely call ‘terrorist groups.’ Starting with the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.”

Hana’s smile vanished. “I don’t have a membership card in Al Aqsa— or Hamas, Hezbollah, or Islamic Jihad. I don’t ask others if
they
do. But it’s impossible to teach at Birzeit and not know students or colleagues affiliated with Al Aqsa or Hamas—even if you aren’t sure which ones. So if these two students were Al Aqsa, that would be no surprise.

“About Saeb, I have no reason to believe that he plays with matches— or people who carry out violence. But I would say that he has great sympathy for Hamas. They embrace Islam, principally to emphasize that they are not corrupt and will not be diverted from ridding us of Israelis.”

“Including the ones in Israel?”

“Yes. That’s another reason Saeb admires them.”

“But not you.”

“But not me.” Hana looked into his face. “I’m so tired of it, David. I won’t deny distrusting Amos Ben-Aron. But his death will mean more suffering and bloodshed—more Palestinians than Israelis, I believe. Still, it will do great harm to us both.

“You asked me once where history begins. I know that it did not begin in 1948, or at Tel Zaatar, or Sabra and Shatila. I know now that we must tolerate Israel as our neighbor. But we can have no real future without dealing with the past. In that way, Ben-Aron was right—there is no sense in telling my stateless parents, trapped in Lebanon, that the West Bank is their homeland. Israel must give my parents their dignity, and my daughter a country of her own. So that is what I wish for—more vainly than ever, it seems now.”

Silent, David wondered if they would ever be closer to that day than when he and Hana were lovers. “So,” she said abruptly, “the FBI. I know we can refuse to talk to them. Should we?”

“That depends. Someone needs to talk with the U.S. attorney, find out whatever she’s willing to say. Which may not be that much.”

Hana hesitated. “I know,” she said at length, “that helping us would not be a popular course for you. I even worried about coming here—for all I know, the FBI is following me.”

“For all
I
know. But I could hardly turn you away.”

Hana seemed to study him, trying to read his meaning. “Then you believe me?” she asked hopefully. “You will help us?”

I want to believe you,
David thought.
And I wish you had never come.
Every instinct he possessed, personal and professional, filled him with unease.

“Perhaps with the FBI,” he answered. “Not if it goes further.”

Hana summoned a tenuous smile. “With your advice,” she said with more assurance, “there’s less reason that it should.”

Her relief, David found, only deepened his disquiet. “Are you
that
sure about Saeb?”

“As I said, he is my husband—”

“That much I know. Though I’m less sure what that tells me about
Saeb Khalid. I seem to remember disagreeing about his character before you chose to marry him.”

Hana gave him an enigmatic look. “I remember, David. I’ve forgotten very little.”

For a time, David could only gaze at her. “I’ve always wondered,” he said at last, “why you married him so quickly.”

Hana looked down. “I had to, David. You and I were destroying me.”

Abruptly standing, she murmured a brief good-bye, touching him on the wrist with cool fingertips. Only after she left did he realize that her scheduled interrogation fell the day after the memorial service for Amos Ben-Aron.

David’s misgivings, already acute, deepened at Marnie Sharpe’s response. “You’re really giving up your new career as commentator,” Sharpe inquired over the telephone, “to help these Palestinians?”