I don’t say a word and feel, to be precise, a combination of guilt along with a refusal to feel guilt. We are sitting in the best Italian restaurant in Manchester, where the waiters are solicitous, bring plates and remove plates, and he continues to describe to me the suffering of his family. There’s also a cousin from Gaza who was killed in the last war, it turns out. A plane dropped a one-ton bomb on his home, killing not only him but also three women and seven children. One of them was a baby, he says, and I nod, thinking that it’s not clear how we managed to postpone this conversation until now.
I try to make my nods empathetic, but I’m not willing to lower my head completely.
There are no good guys and bad guys in this story, I think, only strong ones and weak ones.
When dessert arrives, he tells me that—how had he not mentioned it before?—his father is a sculptor, one of a few Palestinian sculptors, and in the great escape from Lebanon to Tunis in ’82, he had to leave all of his sculptures behind. He wasn’t permitted to take even one of them. As an artist, he says, you can imagine the pain. The humiliation.
Yes, I say. That’s the first word to come out of my mouth in the last half hour.
We speak English, although I suspect that Jamal knows Hebrew as well, and in his excellent English, he also asks for the check.
Let me pay, I offer, and he says, Of course not, habibi, you’re my guest.
Yes, I object, but you paid last time, in Jaffa.
He smiles. But you were my guest then too.
I smile back, an automatic smile—
Until I understand what he means.
—
Later, when he drives me to my hotel, we are silent, which is unusual for us.
There’s a security fence between the driver’s and the passenger’s seats.
The streets of Manchester are as empty as suburban streets, and we are the only car to stop at the red lights.
It’s the responsibility of the winner to listen to the loser’s story, I think to myself.
But something inside me rebels at the story he told me. More precisely, at the parts missing from it.
—
He stops in front of the hotel.
I thank him for dinner and ask when he plans to be in my area again.
I say “my area” so that I won’t be forced to choose between “Israel” and “Palestine.” He says he doesn’t know, there’s nothing concrete on the horizon at the moment. But inshallah.
So we’ll talk, I say.
We’ll talk, he repeats.
And, unusual for us, we part with a strong hug.
—
Several weeks later, in the middle of the night, the phone rings.
I fumble around for it in the dark. I’m afraid, almost know, that something has happened to Shira at Sde Boker.
Meanwhile, Dikla wakes up and rubs her eyes.
It’s Amichai on the line. He introduces himself as the head of security at Ben Gurion Airport. Even his voice sounds like a head-of-security voice.
He says that, a few hours ago, at a routine security check, they stopped a Palestinian businessman who had flown in from London, and that “things got a bit out of hand.” He doesn’t say what “things” or how out of hand they got, but I can imagine.
He says that, when he was questioned, the man kept repeating my name. Claimed I was his friend and the purpose of his trip was to meet with me.
I remember that, in one of our conversations, Jamal told me about the seven circles of security he has to go through every time he comes to Israel. And I remember that I really did tell him, explicitly, that if they caused him problems again, he could mention my name.
Dikla, who is wide awake now, gives me a questioning look.
Amichai asks if I really do know Jamal Kanfani.
I say I do, and then he asks if I can come to the airport to clear up some doubts they have.
I ask if we can do it on the phone, and Amichai replies sharply, No.
I say, Wait a minute, and summarize the conversation for Dikla. She knows Jamal. One of the times we met to eat hummus in Jaffa, she joined us, and later said—she doesn’t tend to say such things—that he’s a guy after her own heart. She doesn’t tell me what she thinks I should do now, but I see in her eyes what she thinks I should do.
—
When it’s all over, I drive Jamal to his hotel. I want to ask what the real purpose of his trip to Israel is, but I’m afraid of sounding like another interrogator.
He asks how my kids are.
I ask how his kids are.
I tell him that my eldest daughter is very happy in the boarding school she moved to, but I still worry about her all the time.
He tells me that his eldest daughter is coming to Ramallah for a week this year as part of the Palestinian Diaspora’s Return project. Like your Birthright project, he says.
He doesn’t tell me what exactly happened in the side room the security people took him to.
And I don’t tell him that, halfway to the airport, I almost made a U-turn because I suddenly began to be fearful and suspicious. And that the main reason I didn’t make a U-turn in the end wasn’t our friendship but the knowledge that Dikla would be contemptuous of me if I did.
I stop in front of his hotel.
He turns to me, his eyes shiny, and says, “Thank you.” In Hebrew. For the first time.
I ask if he wants to meet tomorrow, in Jaffa, after my workshop.
Inshallah, he says, and from the tone of his voice, I understand that he has other plans.
So we’ll talk, I say.
We’ll talk, he repeats.
We part with a strong hug.
He gets out of the car, and I watch him through the side mirror, making sure
