Apeirogon

A conflict with an infinite number of sides

As I get closer to irreversible retirement, reading is one of the things for which I find more time. Why not share my ravings about a book now and then? I dare to review here “Apeirogon,” by James McCann.

1

I am tiring of the renderings of the Israel-Palestine conflict by people writing from outside of that reality. I guess that means I am tiring of myself. I began this book by a much-revered Irish writer with skepticism. That said, if any non-Jewish Europeans can get inside of the inter-generational trauma that pre-dated and has emerged from the Holocaust, and the absolute negation experienced by the Palestinians for 100 years, it might be the Irish.

2

Bassam grew up in a cave in the West Bank, a place that he was quite happy to call home. Yes, in a cave. That all ended when Israelis expelled the family and blew up the cave. Why? It doesn't matter why, the die was cast. No one can be surprised that he had grenades, and that when he deployed them he landed in an Israeli jail for a large part of his life. Harder to understand how he later spent time at university in England, studying the Holocaust. A Palestinian "terrorist" going to England to study The Shoah? The Israeli immigration official had a field day with that one before he allowed Bassam and family to leave.

3

Apeirogon, a polygon with an infinite number of sides. Such a figure approximates a circle, but close examination reveals an infinite number of linear faces. The apeirogon is a perfect image for the Israel-Palestine conflict, except that the figure is two-dimensional, and the conflict defies a single plane. Is there a word for the three-dimensional prism with an infinite number of sides?

4

Abir, daughter of Bassam and Salwa, had a sweet tooth, so she and her friends crossed the road to a candy store on a break from school. While there, she bought the most expensive candy necklace ever exchanged. The jeep came careening around the corner before Abir and friends could make it back to school. They turned and ran. Who wouldn’t? A tiny flap in the back of the jeep, a rubber bullet, impossibly bad luck, and Abir fell.

5

Besides being written by an Irishman, "Apeirogon" is structured like this review...a series of seemingly disconnected vignettes, identified by sequential numbers. What kind of novel is that? I put it down after twenty minutes and didn't pick it up again until my neighbor put in my had a signed first edition and said that I should read it. This near-retiree does what the neighbors say. Still, the structure made no sense until the accumulation of intricate detail, like the accumulation of many distinct needlework stitches, made perfect sense...too much sense.

6

Rami and Nurit are feverishly searching for their daughter, Smadar. They know that she is at a friend's house and just hasn't gotten in touch, but they must be sure. The news says that three suicide bombers dressed as women detonated vests on Ben Yehuda Street in Jerusalem, near The Stay Inn. Rumors have the bombers and five others dead. Heartbeats quicken!

Smadar was seen on Ben Yehuda Street by a neighbor, but that must have been earlier. She is at a friend's house, for certain, and they’ll remind her how important it is that she stays in touch. For now, they will search anyway until she calls. Hours later the news comes. Smadar and her friends realized in terror and tried to run away…too late: The shrapnel ripped through the back of her Blondie t-shirt, leaving the shirt and Smadar barely recognizable.

7

Was this going to be another book somehow equating the misery of an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian? For so many reasons, that doesn't work, now or anytime. When the Parents' Circle and Combatants for Peace brought them together, this was a perfectly predictable outcome. To my surprise, McCann spoiled the prediction. Despite the temptation, he skillfully avoided that equation.

8

Life divided by death equals a circle...or is it an apeirogon that only appears to be a circle, until you examine it closely?

9

Because we'll be wondering, McCann schools us on the origin of the word "shrapnel" and the evolution of its use. When the material of that strange name tore through the body of Smadar, it ended the life of a thoughtful, curious, and an endlessly creative young girl, well on her way to becoming the brilliant and determined human rights advocate that her mother, the daughter of a general, has always been. How can this be? Don't they know that on Ben Yehuda Street, or at the rock concert on October 7 they are killing people who want to help them? Yes, says McCann, they know much better than you or I.

Colum McCann has written a challenging and rewarding, if ultimately unsatisfying, book. What book about such an unacceptable situation can dare to satisfy?

To write such a book, he had to make a Herculean effort to get out of his own skin. Research, long and painful conversations, and working late into countless evenings can help but in the end this requires a super-human act of imagination. How else can one bring Borges, Calvino, and Lawrence of Arabia to bear on these characters? Who am I, so much further from the reality of Nurit and Salwa than McCann, to judge what this bold act has produced?

All I can say is that it is a book that left me thinking well into many nights, and desperately wishing to know these people, especially the women. That this thinking, especially when it turned to those still under the sacred rubble in Gaza, left me twisting and turning is my/our problem. Perhaps we all need to twist and turn a bit more.