Apeirogon

(The first half of the novel goes from Section 1 to 500, then there is a Section 1001, followed by the second half of the novel, which begins at Section 500 and counts down to 1.)

The first of the two Section 500s begins with Rami writing in the first person. He relates some biographical details about his life before launching into the story of his daughter’s death. Rami was driving to the airport when he heard about the bombings over the radio, he hoped it didn’t harm anyone he knew. He starts to search for his daughter and to get her on the phone; he and his wife call and call before driving down to the bombing site. They call out her name before finally seeing her on a medical tray.

Smadar’s funeral, because of her grandfather’s notoriety as a fighter for peace between the two nations, was widely attended. After the funeral they sat shiva for seven days; people came to pay their respects, offer condolences.

Rami’s first thought is to get revenge: “[G]o out and kill an Arab, any Arab, all Arabs” (220). He admits to seeing Arab people as other, remote, abstract. This path of thought leads nowhere, and Rami arrives at an important set of questions: “Will killing anyone bring my daughter back? Will killing every other Arab bring her back? Will causing pain to someone else ease the unbearable pain that you are suffering?” (221).

After some time, Rami meets Yitzhak Frankenthal, an Orthodox Jew. Frankenthal lost a son a few years earlier and suggests that Rami come to a group he created called the Parents Circle. Israelis and Palestinians were both welcome in this group. This gives Rami some pause; he didn’t think a Palestinian could level with his suffering, but then he saw a Palestinian woman holding a picture of her daughter who died. Rami is overcome: “[T]his woman had lost her child […] My grief and her grief, the same grief” (223). In that group was the first time he saw Palestinians as human beings.

This journey leads Rami to an important philosophical question: “What can you do, personally, in order to try to help prevent this unbearable pain for others?” (224). For him, it is talking to anyone that will listen and devoting his time spreading a message of hope based in the smashing of forces that keep people silent. This, for Rami, means putting an end to the Occupation.

The second section is Bassam’s speech. It begins the same way: some biographical details, family and personal history, etc. Bassam’s speech moves into his pride for being Palestinian, for his fellow brothers in arms, and how that pride came out of being oppressed. His childhood involved running from the Israeli authorities. They threw rocks and bottles at the soldiers before graduating to grenades. Bassam was chased and arrested after this. He was sent to jail.

In prison, the Palestinian mission was just to survive. While there, Bassam saw a documentary about the Holocaust on TV. Before then he thought the Shoah was a lie Jewish people told. Recognizing the reality of the Holocaust was important for Bassam. The Palestinians, he understood, “became victims of the victims” (234).

Like Rami, Bassam’s goal shifted toward one thing: ending the Israeli occupation, for it occupies all aspects of your life, according to Bassam. It stops you from going places, from looking up at the sky, “it deprives you of tomorrow” (236). Bassam’s group, Combatants for Peace, is aimed at fostering unity from both sides against the Occupation because the Occupation “corrupts us all from the inside out” (236).

Unlike Rami, Bassam felt no use for violence in the aftermath of his daughter’s death. He joined the Parents Circle immediately. Nobody was charged of any wrongdoing in Abir’s death. It took him four years to even prove that her death was the result of a rubber bullet. Eventually the family was paid $400,000 in compensation, but that meant nothing in the face of their daughter’s death.

All these events keep Bassam fighting alongside Rami and others. They fight for tolerance and to see the humanity in the other. Bassam even forced Rami to visit Germany, a country Rami hated, and he found something way different than he expected. The key is not to be ignorant and to speak out. For Bassam, “we are not voiceless, no matter how much silence there is” (242).