When he’d said it, she’d used the T word, which was something, between them, that they did not do. She’d been worried for his safety on any number of fronts. And she’d maybe called Hamas—all of them, political and military bunched up together, she’d maybe called them “terrorists” outright.
What if things went bad? is all she’d been trying to say. What if he was arrested by his hosts and locked in one of their prisons? What if Israel did not let him leave. “They do not want Hamas as a third negotiating partner,” she’d told him. “It’s fire that you’re playing with, they won’t take it well.”
She could still feel the anger of it, the coiled force of him.
Then he’d said, in response, composed again, “‘They,’ as you know, are ‘you.’”
She did know that, very well. She was a former spy, at present on the National Security team, championing the treaty they never signed. And that’s why she was giving him her vulgar advice.
She’d been right, of course. They both had been, each in their way. As, when he’d finished the first round of his business and tried to leave, the Israelis had laughed at his diplomatic status and taken his papers away. They’d kept him in Gaza until this very day. But her man! Her mapmaker, he got things done. They’d kept him in and he’d kept working and Israel got just the opposite of what they’d intended—as happens with everything in the region. Hafuh al hafuh, was the rule.
It had taken a year, a year of them apart, a year of him pushing day and night. He’d finally executed his Palestinian unity government. And what good would that progress do in Gaza, when Israel—when the “they” that was “she”—would come in and smash apart whatever was built?
On the way back from dinner, she’d walked alongside him, letting him stew. She was trying to wait out one of his measured responses as it traveled the epic distance from deep inside his reserved, reticent self.
The mapmaker finally stopped and turned to face her. She knew he didn’t notice such things, but they were in the middle of a little bridge. He was going to say something grim, she was sure, and he did not at all notice that the spot was more suited for one of them to propose.
“I’m going either way,” he’d said. “With your support or without.”
It is the bridge that she pictures, missing him, solitary in her cottage. And it is what he’d said then that she holds on to, though she’d initially been unsure of what he’d meant.
“Our issues,” the mapmaker had told her, looking as tearful as she’d ever seen. “They’re insurmountable, far beyond hope.”
“Yours and mine?” she’d asked, already grieving. “Or yours and ours?”
“I don’t know if it’s worth trying any longer,” he’d said, and she followed his gaze across the mirrored black surface of the canal.
Teetering on the frantic, she’d said, “Trying with me, or trying with us? Peoples or persons, which do you mean? On what do you quit?”
“On ‘you,’ the Israelis,” he’d said, taking her hands. He’d not even entertained the option she’d feared. “With Bibi back, we’ll never move ahead, and he will never lose power. It is time for us to join forces—Fatah and Hamas. To forget about Israel and achieve unity for ourselves. Maybe it’s best if we fix our own house first.”
Even just thinking it now, she is ashamed at how deeply she’d been relieved. It was so selfish a thing to hang on to. How happy she’d been to hear her mapmaker still loved her, and it was only a future for the two peoples, together, that he’d thought was lost.
2014, Black Site (Negev Desert)
He paces too much and bites his nails too low. He’s stopped eating his food, and he’s taken to banging his head against the wall—not hard, not hard, is what he tells the guard. It looks worse on the camera, but when it gets this hot, when the seasons bring us here, the tapping on the cinder blocks, it is cooling.
The guard, Prisoner Z thinks, the guard must be concerned. For the guard gets the pills, stronger and better, and on the regular. Prisoner Z imagines it’s because, though the pacing has lessened, it’s more that he’s been having some problems standing up.
It’s not the guard’s business, Prisoner Z feels, and he has been denying. But the guard keeps coming and saying, “Stand up, then, if you can do it.” And when Prisoner Z tries, the room sets to spinning. There is a new thing, a vertigo, that he’s never had before.
He is fine on the mattress. And fine on the floor. But the guard won’t leave off him. Prisoner Z tells him it’s an inner ear infection or a burst eardrum, that, maybe once, he’d hit too hard against that wall.
The guard, who is not a doctor by any means, tells him, “I think it’s because you’re losing your mind.”
Prisoner Z hates when the guard is right, but after a tranquilizer or two, the room slows for Prisoner Z and then stops. Sometimes, Prisoner Z crawls to the toilet anyway and props himself up with a shaky hand, so the cameras don’t betray him and give that torturer the satisfaction.
More and more frequently it is so bad that there is, anyway, no satisfaction to be had, and that’s when the guard would rush in.
“Breathe,” he would say, “you’re having a panic attack.”
“I’m fine,” Prisoner Z would tell him, while looking very not fine.
On those occasions the guard might hold Prisoner Z, he might rock him if the motion didn’t make things worse, or rub Prisoner Z’s back in big circles.
“Try and cry,” the guard would whisper. “This is instead of that. It’s not real. Try and be sad and you’ll feel better.”
“Fuck,” Prisoner Z might also say, between breaths. And trying harder, “Go, and fuck, yourself.”
“Okay, I will,” the guard would promise, with the same serene intonation. “Right after you calm down, I’ll go fuck myself good. That’s right. That’s excellent. Be angry. That’ll help. Angry is as good as sad.”
When Prisoner Z would start to calm, when he’d get his usual color, or lack of color, back—a clamminess, still, to everything about him—after order was marginally restored, neither would admit what had passed between them.
This very last time, holding Prisoner Z’s dizzy head in his lap, the guard had gone as far as either dared at addressing it. He had posed a question to Prisoner Z, to himself, to the cameras, as if confronting a power higher than them both.
How, oh how, has it come to this?
He had asked it, appearing, to Prisoner Z, reflective—not his usual dummy’s face.
And lying there in his cell, long after the guard has gone, Prisoner Z has dedicated many hours to formulating an answer.