She’d had more than a year to figure the mapmaker out from the time she’d first seen him, looking serious and staid, standing behind Abbas, dashing in a suit and tie. The Palestinian president was already seated along with his closest aides, when Shira had walked into the room.
She must have been looking serious herself. It was the highest-level meeting she’d ever been privy to, and easily as secret as anything she’d ever done.
There they were at Prime Minister Olmert’s residence in Jerusalem, making a true and final push for peace. It was the culmination of three dozen such meets, nothing left to discuss, only to initial by the Xs on the map and for Abbas to write his name down.
She remembered how oddly tranquil it felt, stepping into that drawing room. How homey. There were cakes, and juices, sparkling water and flat. There was a bowl of clementines that she’d watched Olmert pick earlier in the day from the trees that run alongside the house.
Catching Shira watching him, he had said that such tasks calmed him before encounters of this scale.
Now she stood inside the door and observed as Olmert himself stepped forward with the map and, after a sort of half-bow, unrolled it on the table in front of Abbas.
Olmert’s body man raced up, an instant’s delay, with four leather paperweights, setting one on each corner, to hold it in place.
She’d looked at it, awed, and in disbelief. An independent Palestine, right there on the table. There was the end to this ancient, bloody quarrel. All Abbas needed to do was sign.
Then she looked at what they must be looking at. Not only at the map, but at Olmert, their partner in peace. This man, the General’s post-stroke replacement, and, in Shira’s opinion, the least prime-ministerial person she’d ever seen. With his shadow of a comb-over, and his wiry, runner’s frame, and the exhausted, in-over-his-head, watery eyes. Yet, here. This map. This was truly brave. Even if the Palestinians were asking for more than Olmert was giving, he was ready to sort it out with them, and to clash with his own. There would be hell to pay on the Jewish side.
It was, she knew, very close to what they were asking. The big solutions in place. The territories marked for swap were, more or less, equitable. There was a corridor to travel from Gaza to the West Bank, a futuristic tunnel to shuttle Palestinians underground.
The tunnels, how could they then have known?
It was history in the making, if Abbas would allow history to be made. It was what she’d dreamed of being part of, once her dreams had changed.
It was then that Abbas, whispering away, pointing to this and to that, turned to glance back over his shoulder at that elegant, handsome man. It was her mapmaker, brought closer, to study the final borders that had been drawn.
She could see on his face that—this deal—he wanted to do it. That he felt, as she did, the momentousness, and fleetingness, the impossible scarcity of this peace.
He, like her, worked for those above. It was not for him to accept; it was for him to help Abbas see what he himself saw.
The mapmaker made his case. The other aides took their turns, talking that map up and down.
Abbas said he needed to think. To advise. He had to discuss it with the Jordanians. To take it to the Americans. His larger cabinet needed to be convened again before such a pact. It was more land than he was ready to lose.
It was silent, what her man did. It was the way he held himself, the way the shape of his face openly yearned. He had not said anything after his first salvo, but he now radiated a singular message that she translated as hope. Let them be two peoples living toward the future, instead of the past.
She knew this was likely her projecting, and romanticizing, and her own desperation to compromise. She wanted to take Olmert by the sleeve and announce, look at him, he is not long for power. As if Olmert knew this too, he reached into his jacket and proffered his own silver pen.
“It’s only a deal if you accept it,” he’d said.
Abbas looked up. Abbas did not take the pen. It was her mapmaker who reached and took it. Her mapmaker who uncapped it and held it out to his leader. He held it out for Abu Mazen, seated in front of the map of their nation. He offered it, with so much dignity, Shira thought, to the man who would not sign.
And like that, the map was whisked away. And like that the meeting was done. And when Abbas stood from his chair to go, her mapmaker dropped down on it and took up a leaf of government stationery, where he sketched out, from memory, the country that was lost. This he folded and slipped into his pocket, returning the prime minister his pen as their delegation left.
There would have to be a call in response, she was sure. There would be another round—this couldn’t be everyone’s bright future lost. She’d see her mapmaker again.
But Abbas’s call never came, and then the invasion of Gaza was delivered instead. No one from their side wanted to talk after that war, with fourteen Israelis killed and eleven hundred Palestinians dead. After that Olmert was gone too.
There was no progress on their lack of progress for more than a year. And then, with Bibi at the helm, talking out both sides of his mouth, there was suddenly a backroom meeting in Geneva, led by the gray-haired American undersecretary whom Shira liked so much. She was a stern and clearheaded negotiator, all business, and also strong enough not to fear, in quiet intermissions, being kind.
In that parley, Shira sat across the table from the mapmaker. And their secret summit devolved into a secret rendezvous.
2014, Gaza Border (Israeli side)
It’s the land of Israel, physically, that Shira loves. It’s hard to explain to those who’ve never been, that, beyond all the flares and tracers, the pops and booms of the nightly news, it is one of the most beautiful and varied places on earth.
The desert trails in that part of the country are wildly beautiful and surprising, the waterfalls and Nubian sandstone, the great dusty mountains and their spectacular views. Makhtesh Ramon, the giant crater, is a favorite, but that is a good, long drive from there. Where she is, well, there’s not so much in terms of wonder nearby. Checking the map on her phone, she’s found—about an hour’s walk down the road—what looks like a tiny copse of trees that the nature authority has designated as a forest. Whatever it is, it is farther from the border and outside the militarized bubble in which she currently lives. She just wants to feel alone instead of lonely, to lie down under some branches and look up through them at the sky.