Exile: a novel Read Free Page B

He’s just as committed to Palestine, but more radical. And very much more Islamic.” She stopped there. Is it such a good idea, David wanted to ask, to put Saeb and me at the same table once again? But to question this would be to intimate that to Saeb, and perhaps to Hana, David occupied the lingering psychic space that Hana did for him. Then she spoke again.
    “Perhaps you’re right,” she said simply, answering the question he had not asked. “You are well, David?”
    “I’m well. Very.” He felt a brief twinge, his last memory of Hana. “And you?”
    “Yes. Enough.” Once more she sounded hesitant, perhaps rueful that she had called. “And you’ve become a trial lawyer as you wished?”
    “Yes.”
    “And a good one, I am sure.”
    “Good enough. I’ve yet to lose a case—mainly because I spent all my career until last year as a prosecutor, and prosecutors try the cases they can win. Now I’m a defense lawyer with my own practice—me and one associate— working as tribune for the mostly guilty. So I’m overdue for a loss.”
    “I hope not, if only for the sake of your next client.” Her voice softened again. “Your fiancée, does she have a name?”
    “Carole. Carole Shorr.”
    “What does she do?”
    “Good works, mainly. She has a master’s degree in social work. But her father’s quite wealthy, so she’s found her way into causes she cares deeply about—raising money for the Democratic Party, chairing the board of a group that combats violence against women and children. A lot of time put into Jewish charities and promoting ties between Israel and the United States.” He paused briefly. “Without, I might add, despising Palestinians. All she wants for Israel is a stable peace, and an end to killing.”
    Hana was briefly silent. “So,” she said gently. “A nice Jewish girl, and a rich one at that. Things often end up the way they’re supposed to, I think.”
    There was a moment in time for me, David thought, when “supposed to” did not count. Had it ever been like that, he wondered now, for Hana? Then he heard his own silence.
    “So here we are,” he said. “I’m happy about Munira. If there was ever a graduate of Harvard Law School who should downstream her DNA, it’s you.”
    After an instant, Hana laughed briefly. “Then congratulations to us both, David.” Her voice abruptly sobered. “Though I worry she has seen too much on the West Bank, too much oppression, too much death. I can feel her growing too old, and too scarred, too quickly. The Zionist occupation has been criminal—generation after generation, they are always with us. Ben-Aron most of all.”
    David did not respond.
    Hana paused, seemingly uncertain of what to say next, then retrieved a note of warmth. “I’m glad to know you’re well. Take care, David.”
    “And you.”
    “Oh, I will.” A last moment of hesitation. “Good-bye, David.”
    “Good-bye, Hana.”
    Slowly, David put down the telephone, his morning utterly transformed.

2     

F rom the moment David Wolfe first saw Hana Arif—igniting that incandescent spark that, for him, never died despite all his efforts— she was bound to Saeb Khalid in ways more profound than David could then conceive.
    It was February, and he was marking time. In three months, he would graduate from Harvard and begin the law career he had been planning for so long. Grades no longer worried him; a job in the District Attorney’s Office for the City and County of San Francisco awaited, and David was allowing himself the rare luxury of indifference. And so, on a bleak winter evening in Cambridge, David found himself hurrying to the law school with his friend Noah Klein, late for a discussion among a moderator and four students—two Jews and two Arabs—about the Israeli-Palestinian dilemma.
    Ordinarily, this subject would not have diverted David from watching the Celtics game on television. But Noah wanted company and, over dinner, David had allowed that it