Apeirogon

The novel begins in 2016. Rami Elhanan, a 67-year-old Israeli man, adroitly drives his motorcycle through the West Bank between the Israeli city of Gilo and the Palestinian city of Bethlehem.

The story shifts back in time. It is the second busiest migratory bird passage in the world, with a panoply of different bird types passing through. The influx of birds also brings predatory species. To combat this, shepherds of ancient eras created slingshots to scare those birds away from their flock. The slingshots were created for protection but eventually made their way into warfare as weapons. During war times, children still used slingshots to knock birds from the sky. The birds were then captured, blinded, and fed until they became fat, and then they were killed, cooked, and served as food.

Rami notices the clock on his motorcycle and his watch are an hour apart, which reminds him that for a few days Israel and Palestine are an hour different due to daylight savings despite being in the same area. He decides to drive around to kill time.

Ten-year-old Abir is hit with a rubber bullet in the back of the head on her way to the store to buy candy; it crushes the bones in her skull. Abir is the child of Bassam Aramin, a 48-year-old Palestinian man. Bassam walks to the mosque every morning before sunrise to pray after Abir’s death.

McCann recounts the story of Abir’s death. In the city of Anata, “a Palestinian town, in the West Bank, under Israeli occupation, within the Jerusalem governate” (12), Bassam cradles Abir’s injured head in the back of a vehicle that is stuck in traffic on the way to the Hospital. The road to Jerusalem has been temporarily closed at the checkpoint. This closure creates two pathways for Bassam: Either he and the driver will be arrested for crossing the check point illegally or they will be shot.

The Border Police were supposedly being hit with rocks and, according to their commander, were in mortal danger. They fired the rubber bullet from the back of a Jeep. The guard who shot the bullet that killed Abir was 18 years old.

Amidst this story, McCann continues to interject other historical facts and narratives. One example is the continual references to ornithology, such as a section on how to free birds from mist nets. Other additions include historical events and details from the Israel/Palestine region and illustrations of how the continued conflict in this region involves other countries, such as the use of weaponry from a wide range of places like the US and the Soviet Union.

Bassam was at one point imprisoned in a jail in the city of Hebron. He was well liked by the other prisoners, and his limp, even at the age of 17, gave him some pity from the violent prison guards. This pity and reluctance only lasted so long, however, as Bassam was often beaten to the point that he had to go to the infirmary. His calmness in the throes of extreme pain unsettled the nurses and doctors. During this time he learned Hebrew so he could understand the doctors, nurses, and guards. He also educated himself in a number of topics: English, the history of the Zionist movement, and Middle Eastern geography.

In the prisons, the prisoners used cardboard blowguns made from toilet paper rolls to send messages outside the walls to loved ones.

Bassam develops a relationship with a prison guard, Hertzl Shaul, who works part-time and is also a mathematics student. They bond over Arabian poetry. Hertzl saves Bassam from some beatings, and Bassam writes poems on water bottle labels that Hertzl hides in his clothes to bring home to read to his wife.

Hertzl came to the hospital to stand by Bassam while his daughter was being worked on. In the interceding years between the prison stint and his daughter’s attack, Bassam co-founded the “Combatants for Peace” group, and Hertzl had come to a meeting.

These meetings included 11 people: four Palestinians and seven Israelis. These meetings begin tensely, but gradually the members loosened. One member from the Israeli side was Elik Elhanan, the 27-year-old son of Rami Elhanan. Elik spoke of his sister Smadar, who was killed by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem. At the time of this story Abir was still alive.

Rami’s motorcycle ride continues. He sees a white blimp in the air and feels conflicted; he is torn between marveling at it and recognizing its capacity to be harboring evil. He is stopped at gunpoint while on his motorcycle.