Most of the time the messages ended up scattered in the prison yard or caught underneath the barbed wire, but every now and then one would catch a strong current and make it all the way to the parking lot where the wives waited. Tell Raja to be strong. That day we met was the best of my life. Give the Mecca jigsaw to Ahmed. I cannot wait to leave this place, it rots my heart.
Bassam watched the women from his cell window. When the notes cleared the prison wall, they hurried over, unfolded the paper and shared them with one another. Once in a while he would see the women dance.
52
In the library—under the Open University system—Bassam found a Hebrew version of the Mu’allaqat, the series of sixth-century Arabian poems, translated in a kibbutz by an Israeli literary group just after the Yom Kippur War. It came as a surprise to him. He knew the words by heart in Arabic and so he could compare the languages, learn the Hebrew. He lay on his bare bed and read the poems aloud, then copied them. He brought the poems to one of the prison guards, Hertzl Shaul, a part-time guard and a student of mathematics.
They were still slightly reluctant with one another, the prisoner and the guard, but in recent months had come to think of themselves as acquaintances: Hertzl had saved Bassam from a canteen beating one afternoon.
Bassam had written the words of the poems on the labels from water bottles. Hertzl stuffed the labels inside his shirt, took the poems home. He touched the mezuzah on his door: hidden prayers.
Later in the evening, when his wife Sarah had gone to bed, Hertzl took out the label and began reading.
53
In the hospital where Abir lay dying, Hertzl—who had quickly removed his kippah as he walked down the corridor—remembered a line from those prison days: Is there any hope that this desolation can bring us solace? He stood by Abir’s bed, his head bowed, noticing the pattern of her labored breathing. A mist lay on the inside of her oxygen mask. Her head was swathed in bandages.
Bassam came and stood beside him, their shoulders not quite touching. Neither man said anything. Many years had gone between them since Bassam’s release from prison.
Bassam had co-founded Combatants for Peace two years previously. Hertzl had come to one of the meetings. He was amazed when Bassam began speaking of the peace he had learned in prison, the heft of it, salaam, shalom, its confounding nature, its presence even in its apparent absence.
Now Bassam’s daughter was dying in front of their eyes. The red lights shone and the hospital equipment beeped.
Hertzl reached across and held his friend’s shoulder, nodded to the dozens of others who had gathered around the bedside, including Rami, his wife Nurit, and their oldest son, Elik.
Hertzl slipped the kippah back on his head as he left the hospital. He made his way to the Hebrew University to teach his class in freshman mathematics.
54
Later Hertzl wrote: If you divide death by life, you will find a circle.
55
When a bird has been ringed, the serial number is entered into a global database. The birds, then, are identified with the country where they were tagged: Norway, Poland, Iceland, Egypt, Germany, Jordan, Chad, Yemen, Slovakia. As if they have been ascribed a homeland.
Ornithologists in Israel and Palestine sometimes find themselves in competition if a rare bird, a diederik cuckoo, say, or a windblown stone curlew, is spotted in the seam-zoned sky between both.
Sometimes whistles are used to coax the bird down into a mist net so it can be taken and tagged.
For the ornithologist, it is always a matter of disappointment if the bird has already been ringed elsewhere.
56
When out cataloguing birds in the field, Tarek could feel the ortolan tags moving on the necklace at his throat.
57
Songbirds produce an elaborate call: a meld of territorial protection and courtship.
58
The original meetings of Combatants for Peace took place amid the pine trees of the Everest Hotel in Beit Jala, in Area B, just across the hill from the bird-ringing station.
The two sides met in the hilltop restaurant. Nervously they shook hands and greeted one another in English.
The room had two large sofas, a long table and eight red chairs. Nobody took the sofas at first. They sat at opposite ends of the table. The language that they might use for each other was already fraught: Muslim, Arab, Christian, Jew, soldier, terrorist, fighter, martyr, occupier, occupied.
Eleven of them altogether: four Palestinians, seven Israelis. The Israelis took the batteries out of their phones, placed them on the table. It was safer that way. You never know who’s listening, they said. The Palestinians glanced at each other and did the same.
The initial talk was about the weather. Then the journey past the checkpoints. The roads they had taken, the turns, the roundabouts, the red signs. They had different names for the areas they had traveled through, varying pronunciations of streets. The Israelis said they were surprised how easy it had been to get there: they had driven only four miles. The Palestinians replied that they were not to worry, it would be just as simple to get back. An uneasy laughter went around the table.
The talk returned to the weather once more: the humidity, the heat, the strangely clear sky.
The Palestinians drank coffee, the Israelis carbonated water. All the Palestinians smoked. Only two of the Israelis did. Plates of olives arrived. Cheese. Stuffed grape leaves. The specialty of the restaurant was pigeon: nobody ordered it.
An hour slid by. The Israelis leaned into the table. One of them had, he said, been a pilot. Another, a paratrooper. One had spent much of his service as a commander at the Qalandia checkpoint. They had been in the forces, yes, but they had begun to speak out: against the Occupation, humiliation, murder, torture. Bassam sat stunned. He had never heard an Israeli mention such words before. He was certain they were on an operation. Intelligence, surveillance, an undercover ploy. What confused him was that one of them, Yehuda, looked like a settler. Stout and spectacled, with a long beard. Even his hair wore the mark of a kippah. Yehuda had been an officer in Hebron. He had, he said, begun to rethink it all, the conscription, the operations, all the talk of a moral army. Bassam leaned back in his chair and scowled. Why would they send such a glaring ruse? What kind of mockery was this? Perhaps, he thought, it was a form of double-think, triple-think: the Israelis were known for it, their mesmerizing chess, their theater, intricate and ruthless.
The sun went down over the steep hills. One of the Israelis tried to pay, but Bassam put his hand on the man’s elbow, and took the bill.