Interview: David Grossman - Give Shalom a chance

Published on Friday 10 September 2010 19:15

David Grossman's novel on Israel's troubles is informed by his son's frontline death. He tells LEE RANDALL why he still believes in peace

• David Grossman: 'Israel is more like a family than a country – this is our power, and our weakness'

AS THE Six Day War rages, in 1967, three dangerously ill Israeli teenagers meet in the darkened quarantine ward of a hospital. Virtually alone, swimming in and out of consciousness, they talk and shyly fall in love with each other, sight unseen.

Thirty-three years later, when To the End of the Land picks up, Illan, Ora and Avram remain enmeshed. Ora and Illan, married, have two grown sons, Adam and Ofer, but the couple are close to divorce. Avram has survived imprisonment and inhuman torture in Egypt. Although his body is mostly healed, his psyche has never fully recovered, and he's become estranged from his closest friends. Yet their ties are indelible, for Avram is Ofer's father.

David Grossman's epic novel, which is drawing comparisons to War and Peace, follows Ora and Avram as they trek across Galilee and she recreates, to the minutest detail, the life of the son Avram has never met. She superstitiously hopes this will keep Ofer alive while he serves at the scene of a border conflict.

Though lacking the endless battle scenes of Tolstoy's novel, the setting makes this, by default, not just a family saga, but a national saga, too. When I catch up with Grossman in London, it's the day before Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will sit down with President Obama for a new round of peace negotiations – and at the same time, I'm aware that this interview is appearing on 11 September.

Grossman is an outspoken liberal peace campaigner. It's now a matter of legend that in 2006, along with Amos Oz and AB Yehoshua, he signed a statement calling for a ceasefire in Israel's summer campaign – and that two days later, his 20-year-old-son, Uri, was killed in that conflict. And next month, at the Frankfurt Book Fair, he will receive the 2010 Peace Prize awarded by the German association of publishers and booksellers. What, then, does he hope will come out of these meetings – and what does he think is likely to happen.

His soft, pleasant voice never rises to extreme emotion, but it's clear that Grossman's views are passionately held. "What I hope, you can imagine by yourself, it's not very sophisticated. I think there is really a chance now, if Netanyahu understands that he is at this rare point where the majority of Israelis will support him if he goes for peace, if he comes with reasonable suggestions to the Palestinians, and if Mr Abbas will be courageous enough to receive them.

"But so many times we were in this place. It is always comic, seeing how almost all politicians on both sides work so hard to lower expectations, when expectations were so low, they were on the floor already. People are terrified of hope. We are so frequently and painfully disappointed that we are so suspicious of any idea of hope, exactly as they are so suspicious to the idea of peace.

"Years ago when I was a child, the word peace – 'Shalom' – was the loftiest word. It was the first word every Israeli child learns to write, and how we greet each other in conversation. Shalom is really a very suspicious word now; it's either a password for (the idea that] you are a lunatic, or nave, or that there is a trap there, a chance to be betrayed. It's an alerting word for Israelis and Palestinians, who disbelieve in the option of peace."

Can peace be achieved without Hamas's involvement? No, he says. "The way to weaken Hamas is to have peace, it is to give the people in Gaza and the West Bank some hope for the future, so they will not have to turn to the forced solutions, the fundamentalist, fanatic solutions, of Hamas. I know that the more moderate Palestinians understand that they will have to come to a compromise with Hamas, to integrate them. Is it doable? I really don't know.

"There is so much against the chance of peace, yet we cannot afford the luxury of despair, otherwise we are really doomed. Ten years ago there was more chance; 40 years ago even more chance. Time is against us. We have to use this opportunity. But as we witnessed in the past, we are experts in losing every chance. When I say this I refer to all parties involved."

From the outside, I say, Israel seems bellicose, belligerent, and – I'm thinking of Gaza – like terrorists themselves. Grossman winces, but I sense he's heard it all before. Nevertheless, I continue, it is only since reading his novel that I can truly appreciate the sense of precariousness that goes with being Israeli.

The most primal experience, he explains, is this lack of confidence that Israel will continue to exist. He cites the moment when Ora and Avram stand at the top of Mount Meron, overlooking the colourful Hula Valley, and she tells him: "It is always like this for me with Israel. Every encounter I have with it is also a bit of farewell."

"It is always this doubleness – Israel is here, but for how long? Part of our tragedy as individuals and as a collective is that we have never felt at home in the world, even in the most hospitable places. Israel was created so that we shall have one place that is a shelter and a home. But it's not, because if you think of the threats of Ahmadinejad, it's the most dangerous place for a Jew – for anyone – to live.

"In the last 63 years we were constantly attacked and attacking others, so it's not a shelter. And it's not a home – at home, one should feel relaxation, that all the rooms belong to you, and rightly so, and nobody else has some just arguments or claims regarding your kitchen or bedroom. We do not have fixed borders until now – our borders move every decade. It's as if we live in a house with mobile walls. So you don't know where you end and the other starts."

What does that do to the Israeli psyche, being forever on guard? "As an Israeli and a Jew, I want to see Israel exploring all its potential to live a full life, without fear, with a sense of future, with a sense of home, of being integrated again into reality. We are not part of any normal reality for so many generations now, and it has a tragic effect on us."

Because it diverts all your energy? He nods. "It narrows you. What makes it more difficult is that many of our fears are real. So how can we differentiate between the real dangers and the echoes? Can we? Or maybe, in every small danger, we see all the echoes of our history. There's such a huge potential, if the country's only given the chance."

Grossman asks if I've ever been to Israel, and I say no, that I've always been too scared, and nothing he's said has made me any less wary.

"Don't be frightened. I will tell you why you should come: because of the intensity. It's a very interesting place to be and you feel the vibes (immediately]. It's a buzzing country. Some of this buzzing comes out of nervousness, this living on the edge of the abyss, but I believe if we are given the opportunity to live a peaceful life, Israel can really create big things, real miracles.

"I do not belittle what we have achieved until now. Look at this small country, surrounded by hostile countries and yet in spite of wars, the terrible political situation, the fact that it's a country of immigrants, we created a democracy. Most people came from Poland, Russia, Romania, Egypt, Morocco, Iraq – who heard about democracy in these places? We revitalised the Hebrew language, and created quite an impressive culture, agriculture, and technology. I never forget this. I criticise Israel, I do not agree with the political behaviour, the military, but I never forget it is really a very special, human story we have created."

His own story is intriguing. Grossman's mother was born in Palestine, his father in Poland. When Grossman was very young, his father gave him a collection of stories by Sholem Aleichem, the Yiddish author most famous for writing the stories that inspired Fiddler on the Roof. Reading it was a way of understanding his father's very foreign childhood. But the book also led him to a career in radio – when he was all of eight.

"There was a competition in Israeli radio, about the works of Sholem Aleichem, and I knew them by heart. I told my parents I wanted to go but they said, 'Come on, you're a baby'. So without them knowing, I bought my first postcard and sent it to the station asking to be examined.

"When the invitation came, remember, the radio was governmental, so for my parents it was as if Ben Gurion himself sent the special letter, and they had to take me. (But] the directors of the radio decided that it was not appropriate that such a young child should win such a big prize.

"They said, 'OK, we shall allow you to be present when we broadcast the programme and if one of the competitors shall not know the answer, we shall turn to you.

"And they did. Suddenly they realised there was this kid they could use, and they did, and I liked it. I travelled all over Israel at the age of nine and interviewed all the writers, met all the big soccer players, the president. It was a very unusual childhood that I had."

I ask about Israel's literary scene. In a country of just seven million, he says, it's a tight-knit community. "It is very active and prolific, with many voices. We all know each other. Israel is more like a family than a country – this is our power, and our weakness. There are more and more women writers and writers giving voices to many communities that until now were mute. This is new and it's good."

And who, among this novel's characters, most resembles Grossman. His smile is broad. "Everyone. Everyone in the novel is like me!"

• To the End of the Land is published by Jonathan Cape, priced 18.99