Apeirogon

Bassam recalls a memory of Abir and her friends playing with an old wet tire in the street. They would roll it and try to get as close to it as possible as it wobbled over and splashed water onto those who stood too close. Bassam listens and notices that Abir is coming inside every so often to wash the dirty water out of her white dress.

At a checkpoint outside Anata, 30 or more people were with Bassam to help with a construction project. They mixed mortar and laid bricks, dug post holes, put up a wire fence, and dug an irrigation system. The next weekend, after the concrete and mortar had set, they finished the construction and hung a plaque for the new sanctuary: Abir’s Garden. The following weekend they performed a dedication. It was the only playground in Anata.

There is a digression on the riot control tactic of using SKUNK, colloquially called Shit, which is a sprayed liquid that smells of rancid meat, sewage, and decomposition. It stays with someone for three days and often causes vomiting from the malodors. Protestors have developed tactics to lessen the effect, such as rubbing strong vapors under their noses to mask the smell or taking tomato juice baths if they are sprayed. Odortec, which manufactures SKUNK, advertises it as a safe, non-lethal, and effective riot control instrument. It is also, they say, eco-friendly—“harmless to both nature and people” (309).

At a gun show in Tulsa, a top executive of Odortec took a shot of SKUNK in front of a crowd to prove its harmlessness. She stuffed her nose with wool to mask the stench, said the common Jewish toast of “L’chaim,” took the shot and promptly vomited.

During his lectures, Rami admits that there isn’t a minute of his life where he does not think about Smadar. He recalls when Smadar was 13 and had just started to take an interest in boys. He watched her at the pool one day; she was more self-conscious, more aware of what she was doing. Nurit saw a scribbled heart in the back of Smadar’s notebook with a name of a boy: Zev.

Smadar’s head and face were unharmed by the bombing. Forensics surmised that she had her back turned and never saw the bomber or was already running away.

After Smadar’s death, Rami took long showers to mask the sounds of his sobbing from his wife.

In 2001, Nurit accepted a prize for her writing. She received the award alongside a Palestinian writer named Izzat Ghazzawi, who lost his son Abir when he was killed by Israeli snipers in a schoolyard. Two years after the award, Nurit heard that Ghazzawi died of a broken spirit.

During a lecture in Greece, Bassam noted the olive tree was a precious thing to Palestinians and uprooting it would be similar to destroying a Cezanne painting or a museum artifact. Bassam’s father helped to operate an olive press when he was growing up, and in prison one of his favorite songs contained the line “Give my greetings to the olive and the family that brought me up” (327).

There is another grouping of sections on water. First, a section details how Rami’s son Elik was taught in the military to drink their entire canteen in one moment so a half-filled bottle of water sloshing around wouldn’t give away one’s position. They were taught the exact right moment to drink the water to avoid dehydration. In the West Bank, the Israeli national water company was called Mekorot, which translates to “source.” Nurit once had a fender-bender with the vice president of the company. He told her not to worry about the damage, but she insisted. She mailed him a check, and, to her surprise, he cashed it.

Nurit’s book, Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education, caused her to receive hate mail at the university. Her lectures were among the most popular at Hebrew University and the most reviled by those who disagreed with her positions.