Exile: a novel (46 page)

At last emerging from the narrow alley, David stood in the plaza before the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He no longer glanced at his watch; he had reached his destination and did not want to suggest that time had meaning for him.

Of Roman design, the church was the oldest in the world, built in the year 330 at the direction of the mother of an emperor who had declared herself a Christian. Inside, the sectarian rivalries pervading Jerusalem reached their apex. The dark and vast interior was divided among various sects, and today each was holding its own procession. David found their discordance at once beautiful, haunting, and disturbing: Franciscan monks in dark robes read aloud from Latin missals as they proceeded by candle-light up the stone stairway, while nearby a group of Armenian Christians, voices raised in competition, sang a hymn of their own. Above them, two chapels, one Catholic and one Greek Orthodox, depicted the crucifixion of their savior according to their own lights; as David descended to the floor beneath, candlelit and redolent of religious mystery, he saw a splinter group of Catholics reciting a Latin mass. Suddenly, he found his path blocked by a congregation of Greek Orthodox priests, kneeling for their separate observance.

Now David had to worry about his deadline. When he looked about him, searching for an alternate route, he saw no one familiar. As time passed with agonizing slowness, he watched until at last the chanting ended, then he resumed his journey with a carelessness he no longer felt.

Minutes later, in the bowels of the church, David entered the Assyrian Chapel. It was small, circular, and dark, occupied only by five Ethiopian women in white veils and cloaks; they made the sign of the cross, then prostrated themselves in the manner of Muslims. When David checked his watch, it was eleven minutes past four.

There was nothing to do but wait.

To his left, through a break in the stone wall, David saw a cave. Peering inside, he heard soft footsteps behind him. “Some believe,” a quiet voice said, “that Christ was buried in this cave. That would be consistent with the custom of the times.”

Turning, David saw a short man of indeterminate age and origin with a high forehead, slicked-back brown hair, and a smooth face that featured full lips and shrewd, crescent eyes. More quietly yet, the man said, “It seems no one followed you.”

“Except you, perhaps,” David answered. “And I have no clue who you are.”

The man shrugged, as if this detail were trifling. “Let us sit together in Christ’s cave,” he said. “A couple of Jews can do no harm.”

David wondered about this, or even if the man was Jewish. For an instant he had a random, skittish thought: were he to die inside the cave, he had no hope of resurrection. “After you,” David said.

The cave was claustrophobic, too confining for David to stand. He knelt beside the stranger, two tourists contemplating the place of Christ’s presumptive burial.

“So let me tell you a story,” the man said in the casual tone of a tour guide. “Several years ago, two men joined our army—one from Tel Aviv, one an immigrant from America. Both were Orthodox, devotedly religious; both were disciplined and highly motivated. Both were taken into our elite military unit, the paratroopers; both became officers. And both came to think of themselves as brothers.” The man’s lips formed a smile, as if at the thought of their friendship. “They took leaves together, visited holy sites, formed a mutual interest in archaeology. But when their times of service expired, only one remained in the army. The second man left, having decided to establish a settlement to fulfill the biblical destiny of Jews to populate the land of Greater Israel. Though he was disappointed that his friend chose not to join him, the settler and the soldier remained close, bonded by their shared experiences and common beliefs.”

David glanced behind him. The Assyrian Chapel was empty; his companion kept speaking, his tone conversational yet hushed. “The soldier knew an Orthodox woman in Tel Aviv who, he thought, might wish to become part of the new wave of pioneers. The woman traveled to the settlement and met his friend; to the pleasure of all three, the two of them fell in love and decided to marry.

“But then the woman fell victim to the terrible lottery of terrorism. Taking the bus to work one morning, she sat next to a suicide bomber from Hamas.” The man shook his head. “Though the explosion killed many, she simply vanished. There was nothing left to bury.”

David thought of the photograph of Eli and Myra’s daughter, her bright smile and warm gaze. “Stricken by grief,” his companion went on, “the settler was consumed by his hatred of Palestinians. The soldier, also grieving, applied for assignment to protect a man he revered as
Israel’s
protector, Ariel Sharon.” The man turned, gauging David’s reaction. “You begin to see the point of my sad story, I think.”

“Not until it ends.”

“They said you were a cool one,” the man responded. “I’ll get to the point. Though the settler found a wife and had a daughter, nothing healed his heart. The soldier, after several years, became the protector of the man his settler friend believed to be worse than Arafat, the new prime minister, Amos Ben-Aron. And the settler, whose name is Barak Lev, became the leader of the Masada movement, the alleged plotter of a
bombing of Palestinian schoolchildren, and the father of a murdered six-year-old.”

David stared at him. “Let me understand you. Are you suggesting that these two men were complicit in the assassination of Amos Ben-Aron?”

The man picked up a pebble near his feet. “What I’m saying is that Barak Lev would have strangled Ben-Aron with his bare hands, but he would never get that close. His friend the soldier could fulfill his wishes by much more artful means.”

“After Ben-Aron’s assassination, I assume the soldier was treated harshly.”

“On the contrary. You would expect that every member of Ben-Aron’s detail would be thoroughly vetted for contacts with anyone like Lev; were there doubts about any individual, he might be subjected to sleep deprivation, polygraphs, or sodium pentothal. But our man remains untouched.”

“Don’t you think their friendship’s already known?”

“We
know
it’s known. But this murder, it seems, is quite complicated. Perhaps our government’s investigators are simply proceeding with the caution such a matter deserves. Certainly those in power have no interest in taking steps that might be uncovered by the media, and that might suggest, before it’s wise to do so, where their inquiry is headed.” The man’s tone became ironic. “In such a case, political self-interest might be the incidental by-product of sound judgment and discretion. Whatever the reason, the truth—if what we suspect
is
true—may not emerge in time to do your client any good. But that is not my interest.”

“What is?”

“The future of Israel. And who will decide that future.”

David’s knees had begun to ache. “Our interests may coincide,” he said with measured impatience. “But so far your story brings me nothing. I need the name of Lev’s army friend.”

“We understand your legal process, Mr. Wolfe. We know your judge will require a name. Even better, would you like to meet our suspect?”

Astonished, David laughed. “You’re joking.”

“Not quite so cool now?” The man took a cell phone from his pocket “This is your new cell phone. Sorry if that makes you feel like an assassin, but you need to keep it with you. And be patient—it may be hours, it may be days. But you will get a call. Shabbat Shalom.”

Without another word, the man left.

The place was formidable, sheer cliff surrounded by desert. Taking the cable car to the walled plateau that held the ancient fortress, David could see miles of Judean wasteland, the blue expanse of the Dead Sea. The fortress itself, an ingenious redoubt of storerooms, living spaces, and bathing pools of which ruins still remained, had once served as King Herod’s palace. It was here where Jewish rebels
,
besieged by Romans, had killed their families and themselves, leaving the victors with corpses instead of slaves.

Gazing out at the desert, David considered his own connections to this tragedy. The rebels were an extreme religious sect, the Zealots, who killed other Jews for not adopting their practices; their resistance had precipitated a Roman military campaign that deepened the subjugation of the Jews. In myth and film, David had seen the Jews of Masada portrayed as martyrs; no doubt this heroic symbolism had caused Barak Lev to attach the name Masada movement to his outposts in the West Bank. But what struck David now was that these “martyrs” had begun by killing their fellow Jews and, having drawn their conquerors deeper into the land of Israel, had ended in self-extermination. He could only hope this cycle would not recur.

David descended to the parking lot and headed for the Lower Galilee, from which, sixty years ago, Hana’s parents had fled the Jewish army.

The e-mail from Hana’s younger cousin, Sausan, had given him precise directions couched in engaging humor. “When the vegetables outnumber the people,” she had written, “you’ll know you’re close.”

Two hours later, so it was. The rolling land of the Galilee was ripe with
corn, sunflowers, olives, citrus, tomatoes, garlic, chickpeas. This richness was the product of water and irrigation, employed by Jews to transform the land years before the State of Israel was born. Here and there David saw the remnants of Arab culture: a mosque, a distant hillside town where the residents, like Hana’s parents, once had grown olive trees but, unlike them, had remained. Among their descendants was Sausan Arif, Muslim daughter to a Christian, granddaughter to a Jew.

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.”