From my first novel through my seventh, whatever the story might have been, my subject was Americans abroad and what they might learn from other cultures. After that - with a one detour into New York City - my subject (apart from my story) was love of my hometown, Tacoma, Washington.
In the early 2000s, though, for about six years, I wrote an (as-yet) unpublished novel, then called The Hotel Shalom, set in Israel and Palestine. It’s the story of a nineteen-year-old boy who traveled to Israel to see his mother, who had immigrated to one of the ultra-conservative and illegal settlements on the West Bank of the Jordan River… that is to say, in Palestine.
I have always been interested in politics whether in America or elsewhere, and I thought, perhaps hubristically, that if I could present the thorny Israeli-Palestinian issues dramatically, through fiction, through love between characters from each side of the divide (Hello, Romeo and Juliet), I might be able to… well, certainly not solve, but unpack those issues a little bit.
So I traveled there three times, to walk the paths my characters walked, talk the talk my characters talked, and otherwise get familiar enough with the terrain to write about it. I said I worked on this project for six years, but really it was longer, especially if you count the fact that I have gone back to it recently, in order to reimagine it.
Imagining is reimagining. Writing is rewriting. That’s what I believe.
My purpose today, however, is not to complain that I can never finish a book, but to tell you about two things that happened, one in 2004, during my 2nd visit, and another in 2007, during my 3rd.
In 2004 I traveled to the West Bank settlement of Elon Moreh, which sits on a hill about four miles from the Palestinian town of Nablus. Elon Moreh is where I wanted my main character’s mother to live, so I needed to know the place. In the Bible, Elon Moreh is also where God told Abraham, "To your descendants will I give this land" (Genesis 12:7), so it’s a pretty heady place.
I’d made arrangements ahead of time, was shown around by an American expat, learned the lay of the land, and heard the harrowing story that, in 2002, a Palestinian gunman snuck into Elon Moreh to murder four members of the Gavish family: Rachel, David, Avraham, and Yitzhak.
At the end of my day there, when dusk was upon me, I caught a ride down to an Israeli road that would take me back to Jerusalem, where I was staying.
The Israeli roads, I should say, were smooth and new and fast, while not far off, the Palestinian roads were rutted and old and slow, with frequent Israeli checkpoints.
At the Jerusalem road I discovered that I had missed the last bus, so I stuck out my thumb and started hitchhiking. It took about a minute before a young Israeli soldier, racing home for the birth of his first child, picked me up. He would visit his wife in Jerusalem, he said, but wouldn’t wait for the actual birth of his child because he needed to go to Gaza, to protest Ariel Sharon’s removal of all Israeli settlements from that part of Palestine.
This might be getting complicated, but Sharon, Israel’s Prime Minister at the time, had ordered his country’s settlers OUT of Gaza, and people like this young soldier intended to lie down on the road to inhibit the exodus. Lie down on the road!
“What? On the night of the birth of your first child? Don’t do it!” I told him.
“But I must,” he said, “for all of this land was given to the Jewish people by God!”
“I don’t know about that, but if you miss the birth of your first child in order to lie down on a road somewhere, you will never hear the end of it,” I said.
Okay, that’s story number one. I don’t know what happened to the soldier.
Three years later I was back in Jerusalem, this time to go to Ramallah, where Arafat lived, and then, in a minivan and on one of those terrible roads, to Nablus, just four miles from Elon Moreh.
On the way to Nablus Israeli patrols stopped the minivan often to check everyone’s papers slowly and with what appeared to be, until they saw my American passport, low-burning malice.
In Nablus I walked around for a few hours, again to get a sense of the place, since I was setting a couple of scenes there. I took photos, ate lunch, walked around some more, and was eventually approached by five young men who’d been watching me. They wanted to know where I was from and when I said “America”, they used their combined abilities in high school English to strike up the following conversation:
“America? Friend of Israel. Enemy of Palestine.”
“Not me,” I said. “I like both sides.”
“No! Not like Palestine. No work for us here. No future. Work in Israel for everyone. Look at those pictures.”
They pointed at a series of posters on a nearby wall, photos of young men who were, to my American eyes, spitting images of the five I was talking to.
“They are our martyrs,” one of them said.
I didn’t say that in Elon Moreh they were called “terrorists.” Nor did I mention the Gavish family.
“May I take a photo of you?” I asked. “So I’ll have something to remember you by?”
This caused them to take a long timeout, in order to discuss, in Arabic, whether or not they trusted me enough to allow that. What if I was an Israeli agent?
“Exchange emails?” asked one, when their confab was over. “Keep in touch?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’d like that.”
“Picture okay, too, then. So you’ll remember us in years to come.”
So they sat in a row and smiled.
We continued talking about their difficult lives, how what they wanted was what everyone wanted: work, girlfriends, a happy home, children of their own someday.
When it was time for me to return to Ramallah, and then to Jerusalem, they walked me to the minivans, warning me that it would be a long trip because of the Israeli checkpoints.
Here is the picture I took of them. It isn’t one of martyrs or terrorists. It’s only a picture of boys.
Now “Years to come” is upon me. Elon Moreh is flourishing - nearly 2000 residents live there now - but I wonder what happened to these guys?
You and I have had a good few conversations on this subject, Richard, and I hope we can have more in person one day. So far as England (where I live) is concerned, it does make me sad that some people think it's a very easy problem to solve. It is, in fact, incredibly complicated.
Hi David, and thanks...
The bus had "The Hotel Shalom" on one side, and "The Hotel Salaam" on the other. I writer friend fo mine in Ramallah told me that even naming my novel "The Hotel Shalom..." Even that much meant that I had chosen a side. That is why I'm thinking of giving it a new name.