Apeirogon by Colum McCann

This review was published in the San Francisco Examiner on March 4, 2020

https://www.sfexaminer.com/entertainment/apeirogon-looks-at-middle-east-with-empathy/

Apeirogon is a mind-bending and momentous new novel by Colum McCann. On one level, it is the story of two men, Rami Elhanan, an Israeli and Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian. Their lives converge after their young daughters are murdered in separate acts of political violence. In the wake of their misery, the two grieving fathers develop an unlikely friendship and begin to work together for peace. But like the book’s title (an apeirogon is “a shape with a countably infinite number of sides”), this book is so much more.

With the permission of these two real-life fathers, McCann imagines the lives of the two families while weaving their realities into the infinite complexities of the region. McGann’s intelligence and empathy permeate the book. He clearly listened with compassion as he learned about these men and the painful pasts of their people. For Rami, the fear of “dangerous Palestinians” and the memory of the Holocaust haunted his days. For Bassam, his time in an Israeli jail and the indignities of living in the West Bank tormented him.

In 1997, Rami’s thirteen-year-old daughter, Smadar, is killed by three Palestinian suicide bombers as she walks with her friends on a busy Jerusalem street. In 2007, Bassam Aramin’s ten-year-old daughter, Abir, is killed by an Israeli border policeman as she walks out of a candy store near her school in Anata in the West Bank.

Both families are traumatized by the violent deaths of these young girls. Each father ponders revenge. Each, though, eventually joins the Parents Circle, a support group for Jews and Arabs whose children have been killed in the conflict. What drives the narrative is how the two bereft fathers learn to lean on each other. They become friends, begin to call each other brother and speak about their experience around the world. They come to believe that there is potential for peace if they (and eventually others) can comprehend the history of one another. “Bassam and Rami gradually came to understand that they would use the force of their grief as a weapon.”

It is hard to do justice to the multi-layered nature of McCann’s storytelling. The novel is comprised of 1001 chapters, echoing ‘One Thousand and One Nights’, a collection of Middle East folk tales. Some chapters are a single sentence; some several pages. He incorporates numerous non-fiction facts that shed light on the area’s complicated and painful history. These facts add to the richness of this hybrid novel as we learn of the complex quagmire that is the Middle East. He includes details about David and Goliath, the Crusades, the Holocaust, the War for Independence, the Occupation, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Wailing Wall, Theresienstadt and Buchenwald. Also included are anecdotes about Freud, Spielberg, Mahmood Darwish, John Kerry, Arafat, Jesus, the Qur’an and the Torah. He explores the etymology of words, the history of towns and the artists, writers, musicians, mathematicians and scientists whose contributions have impacted both these communities.

McCann points out the paradoxes, ironies and tragic limitations of people to resolve their differences and overcome the persistent cycle of violence. Sorrow hovers in the pages of ‘Apeirogon,’ but McGann’s book does offer hope. As Bassam states, “We were killing each other, over and over and over. There will be security for everyone when we have justice for everyone. It’s a disaster to discover the humanity of your enemy, his nobility, because then he is not your enemy anymore, he just can’t be.” The bumper sticker affixed to Rami’s motorbike states, “It will not be over until we talk.” These statements capture the novel’s powerful themes. Despite criticism from their respective communities for collaborating, Rami Elhanan and Bassam Aramin move forward with courage and leadership. Thanks to McCann’s groundbreaking book, the rest of us can better know their world and try to emulate their example of listening to others with empathy.