—Palestinian hospitality, he said.
—No, no, please, let me.
—This is my home.
The Israeli nodded, bowed his head, blanched. The two groups shook hands, bid each other goodbye. Bassam was sure they would never see each other again.
That evening he put their names in a search engine. Wishnitzer. Alon. Shaul. They had used some of the same words in blogs he found online: inhumane, torture, regret, Occupation. He closed out the files, reloaded his search engine, just in case: perhaps his computer had been interfered with somehow. He would put nothing past them. He searched again. The words were still there. He put a message through to Wishnitzer that he was ready to meet with them again.
A few weeks later they ate dinner at the Everest Hotel. Two of the Israelis ordered pigeon. A toast was made. Bassam raised his water glass.
It slowly dawned on Bassam that the only thing they had in common was that both sides had once wanted to kill people they did not know.
When he said this, a ripple of assent went around the table: a slow nodding of heads, a further loosening. A shiver went amongst them. My wife Salwa, my daughter Abir, my son Muhammad. Then, from across the table: My daughter Rachel, my grandfather Chaim, my uncle Josef.
It was an idea so simple that Bassam wondered how he had ignored it for so long: they too had families, histories, shadows.
After two hours they extended hands to shake and promised they would try to meet a third time. The light slanted through the tall trees. Some of the Israelis were still worried about getting home: what if they strayed by mistake into Area A, what would happen?
—Don’t worry, said Bassam, drive behind me awhile, I’ll show you, just follow me.
The Israelis laughed nervously.
—I’m serious. If there’s any trouble I’ll take care of it. I’ll tap my brakes three times. I go right, you go left.
They sat for another half hour over coffee and discussed what names they might use if they really were to create an organization together. It was a difficult thing to find a good name. Something catchy, provocative, yet neutral too. Something with meaning but not offensive. Combatants for Peace. That might work. It held contradiction.
To be in combat. To struggle to know.
59
On the wall of the restaurant were photographs of frigatebirds scissoring over the sea.
60
Area A: administered by the Palestinian Authority, open to Palestinians, forbidden, under Israeli law, to Israeli citizens. Area B: administered by the Palestinian Authority, with shared security control with Israel, open to Israelis and Palestinians. Area C: an area comprising Israeli settlers and mostly rural Palestinians, administered by Israel and containing all the West Bank settlements.
61
Among the Israeli contingent in the Everest Hotel was Rami’s twenty-seven-year-old son, Elik Elhanan, who had served in an elite reconnaissance unit in the army.
At the second meeting Elik talked about his late sister Smadar, killed in a suicide bombing in Jerusalem, but the story did not register fully for Bassam until many months later.
Bassam himself was just a few years out of prison. Abir was still alive. Bassam had not met Rami. Rami was a member of the Parents Circle, but Bassam was not yet.
All of that confusion was still to happen.
62
(Area A being comprised of the main Palestinian cities and villages, hemmed in, patchworked, and secured by dozens of Israeli checkpoints, patrolled by Palestinian security forces but open, at any time, to the Israeli army.)
(Area B, under Palestinian civil administration, under Israeli security control with cooperation from the Palestinian Authority police, so that the Palestinian security forces operate only with Israeli permission.)
(Area C, the largest of the areas, containing most of the West Bank’s natural resources, controlled by Israel, with the Palestinian Authority responsible for providing education and medical services to Palestinians only, with Israel providing exclusively for the security and administration of the settler population in over one hundred illegal settlements, with ninety-nine percent of the area being heavily restricted or off-limits for construction or development to Palestinian residents, it being almost impossible to secure a permit for any building or water project.)
(Also, Area H1 and H2 in the West Bank city of Hebron, eighty percent of the city administered by the Palestinian Authority and twenty percent controlled by Israel, including areas open only to Israelis and those with international passports, known as sterile streets.)
(Also, Zone E1, twelve square kilometers of disputed/occupied undeveloped land outside annexed East Jerusalem, home to Bedouin tribes and bounded by Israeli settlements, falling within Area C.)
(Also, the Seam Zone, the land between the Green Line and the Separation Barrier, in the West Bank, also known as the closed zone, also known as No-man’s-land, lying entirely in Area C, populated mostly by Israelis living in settlements, accessible to Palestinians by permit only.)
63
Beyond their immediate calls of distress, it is not known exactly how, or even if, different species of birds communicate with one another.
64
Rami likes the feeling of entering the tunnel while it is still dark outside. A bit of comfort. It’s different than entering during daytime when he feels subsumed by the darkness. This early in the morning it is almost the opposite: he enters the light, fluorescent as it is.
The motorbike purrs along in the fast lane. He shifts up into fifth gear, leans into the machine a little, his knees touching the petrol tank. In his helmet, the sound of the stereo. The Hollies. The Beach Boys. The Yardbirds. The Kinks.
It is a cold morning with a late October chill. He reaches down and zips the vent in his riding pants, tightens his fingers in his gloves. Nothing in his side-view mirrors, he slides across into the slower lane, keeping the revometer steady.
A kilometer long, the tunnel was blasted out from the mountain under the supervision of French engineers. A number of New York–based sandhogs were brought across to supervise the work.
The tunnel runs under the town of Beit Jala, dovetailing in parts with the Way of the Patriarchs, the ancient Biblical route.
Rami emerges beneath the concrete blast walls into the still-dark, and after a few moments passes the large red sign—in Hebrew, Arabic, English—without even thinking about it.
THE ENTRANCE FOR ISRAELI