Imagine you’ve been swept up into a high-flying flock of birds – a flock as numerous as a gathering of every swirl of starlings ever seen on a winter’s night. Imagine flocks of every species spiralling into one; every colour, every aspect and temperament that birds can display flickering around you as you swoop and soar.
That analogy is the vision that enlivens Apeirogon, Colum McCann’s treatment of the lives and works of Rami and Bassam, both fathers of children killed as a result of the Israel / Palestine situation. They are fathers who came together to share the stories between the occupied and the occupying peoples.
It’s a brilliant concept. The massive collection of short passages, some memories, some visions, some anecdotes, some scientific and some military or political or historical observations and some conversations between the two fathers, dances around the subject of occupation and military action in Palestine. The patchwork really does invoke the way the untimely death of a child flashes constantly to life in the mind of a bereaved parent for the rest of their own life, showing up in unexpected ways amidst everything else that’s going on.
In its endless swoop and flash, the book gives a full-blooded account of the problems, sufferings and challenges that the on-going Israel / Palestine situation presents to the world, and keeps you conscious of the complexity of it, of the consequences, from momentous to banal, that every military and political decision has on countless lives — and along the way, it tells the story of the incredible flight paths of migratory birds traditionally seen over Israel / Palestine, seen through the eyes of various Israeli and Palestinian observers.
I’ve written about Apeirogon before, but I do so again now because one of my random library-dips brought Survivor on Death Row: One Life to my hand. Both are books I can imagine anyone of a nervous disposition giving a wide berth to and yet each, in its attempt to understand and present human tragedy and horror, also brings you face-to-face with human wonder and love.
They also play in concert to the growing awareness that we seriously have to do something about the monster that is the US of A.
Clare Nonhebel was a volunteer in various survivor projects in the UK who, after signing up to write to prison inmates in the USA, found herself reading the memoirs and the struggles of Romell Broom, who had been on ‘Death Row’ for 27 years when they started writing. Twenty seven years, and counting. That idea alone is a difficult one to grasp but, having digested that, the reader then has to deal with the even more traumatic fact that the good old US of A had had a good go at killing Romell and failed, and then spent years working its way around to deciding what to do about that. I suppose that’s as good a way as any of making a man into a philosopher. It certainly gave Clare food for thought but on top of all that, even more astonishing is what finally killed Romell.
I’m not going to tell you what did that, in case you can get accused of planting spoilers in non-fiction reviews as well as fiction ones but I’ll leave you with the quote from Romell that brought Israel / Palestine and Apeirogon back to my mind…
He said that a company in the UK supplies the poison to the US of A that it uses (occasionally, eventually) to kill the inmates of Death Row. He asks Clare if the people in the UK know that.
Which brought my mind back to BDS, to Israel / Palestine, and Apeirogon. So – I’ll go find out the answer to his question, and decide if it merits a one-strand BDS campaign. Meanwhile, if you haven’t read them already I recommend that you go off and find one of those books. They’re well worth your time … but I expect you’re already off Googling to find out what Romell died of, it’s only human after all.
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Kay
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Kay Green 