December 15, 2010
The novel Limassol by Israeli author Yishai Sarid is a gripping, incisive, and multi-layered portrait of life in Israel today, and a must-read companion to David Grossman's To the End of the Land. An Israeli Secret Service Agent is souring on his job as interrogator of captured Arabs. Once known for his subtle psychological cross-examinations ("the good ones really do use common sense, not force. That takes self-confidence, letting yourself be sensitive, not being swept up in bestiality"), he finds himself succumbing to the pressure of the seemingly always-increasing suicide missions and the constant factor of time ticking away and running out: "I'm also turning into a butcher. I don't have time anymore to be sophisticated with them. You've got to work with force from the first moment."
But when force results in the untimely and unexpected death of a detainee, the agent is taken off interrogations and submerged into an assignment of befriending the father of "the enemy" in order to draw the enemy out into the open, where the enemy can be killed before he can plot and plan the murder of dozens and perhaps hundreds of Israeli citizens. Everyone in Israel understands the necessity of responding to terrorism (a doctor, charged with saving lives, understands that the elderly Arab patient he has been asked to care for is being used as deadly pawn in the war but cannot protest: "I know where I live") but only those actually charged with on-the-ground response know the full cost of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That is the calculation, always: how to meet the threat of Arab aggression with force strong enough to save lives, but not so horrible that souls are lost in the process.
The soul of the agent is on shaky ground, as represented by his quaking family life. The sacrifices he had made and the lines he has crossed have separated him from his wife and child, causing him to be left alone, purposeless and lost. Author Sarid presents the family of the agent against two other families in his novel, the family of Daphna, an Israeli woman who has ties with Palestine, and the family of a Hani, a Palestinian writer, long exiled to Gaza and only now allowed back into Israel to serve as bait for his terrorist son. If family represents the soul, then Daphna's soul is in trouble as well, for she has made a dirty deal to save her drug-addicted son. Only Hani has the stability of family; he is revered by his children and was loved by his wife. He is also the one character who appears to have an untroubled soul, clear of deceit and abuse, and a mind open to conciliation and understanding.
There are no easy answers provided in Limassol and no simple condemnations or excuses. But Sarid does provide the glimmer of possibility, as does Grossman in To the End of the Land, that the horror of what a human being is capable of can be countered by the goodness he can also summon, when the crying of his soul demands. There is a fourth family never mentioned in Limassol but always present: the family of Israel, and the still strong soul of a country.
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