81. London, 2000 - Reunions

In which Eleanor opens up to Damien.

Damien consoles Eleanor. And meets Fiona. 

Damien

In London, Damien puts down the phone, his hand resting on the handset for a moment, as he slowly winds his mind back from Jerusalem to London. Collecting himself, he finds his mother in the sun-room, “tidying the plants” as she calls it. He leans against the potting table next to her.

“Eleanor’s passing through London and I told her we’d love to see her. I invited her to stay here for a few nights.”

“That’s lovely, darling,” his mother says, turning towards him. “I’ve heard so much about her from you. I look forward to meeting her.”

“I was thinking maybe we could have a mini-reunion on New Year’s Eve. Get some of the old Jerusalem crowd together again. Would you and Dad mind?” he asks, the heel of one shoe kicking the toe of the other.

“Not at all,” she says, turning back to her plants. “That sounds like a great idea. Arrange whatever you like.”

When he next chats with Eleanor, he tells her the idea. She loves it. “And Damien,” she asks, “what if I also invite a few folks—folks I was with in Cairo. You have so much in common, I’d love to introduce you to each other.”

When Eleanor sees him waiting for her at the airport, she drops her bags, and he folds her in a long hug. Later, as they walk to his car, he keeps looking at her. She is still the Eleanor he remembers, but she seems to have aged ten years. Where she always seemed to be full of energy, now she seems depleted. But she smiles warmly at him, and seems happy to talk. He has so many questions, so much he wants to catch-up on. He’s missed Jerusalem terribly. While the Intifada is constantly in the news here, he knows how little of the real story it tells.

On the drive from the airport, and long into that evening, they talk.

She tells him how in Ramallah the conflict is mostly centered around the checkpoints now. In the heart of Ramallah, life seems pretty normal—except for the bombed out houses that Israel targeted at the beginning of the uprising. Things are generally quiet during the day while school’s in session, then start to escalate in the afternoon. Things will go on this way for a while, everyone getting into a rhythm, and then randomly something will happen that sets off new rounds of intense conflict. An inexperienced soldier gets jittery and fires into the crowd; a protester gets too close and a stone actually strikes a soldier, and suddenly all hell breaks out again¹.

“It’s Bethlehem, Hebron and Gaza that are the worst,” she tells him, as they sit in the lounge before dinner. “The north side of Gaza—” her voice trails off and she stares blankly into the fireplace. “There are so many buildings that have been bombed. And Khan Younis², where your old friends Salmaan and Veronica now are,” she glances at him, “it’s like a prison camp. Palestinians can barely move out of their own homes.”

“You’ve seen them?” he asks, surprised. He’d thought it was impossible to get into southern Gaza these days.

“Yeah, I made it down there a few weeks ago. I went with UNRWA. It was the only way I could get there. Salmaan and Veronica say hello, by the way,” she smiles sadly. Damien feels grateful that Eleanor made the effort to see them. She had only met them a few times when they were living in Jerusalem, but they’re near and dear friends to him, as they took him under their wing when he first arrived in Jerusalem in 1993. As he thinks back to that time, he realizes with a start that while he was there for Oslo’s birth; Eleanor was there for its death.

“Because of the restrictions, they’ve had to move in with Salmaan’s parents, along with his brothers and their families. They’re sixteen people in one house with three bedrooms: it’s a lot,” Eleanor sighs, one thumb rubbing the other, over and over. Damien notices, wonderingly, that there’s a tightness to how Eleanor holds her body now that is new to him. “Their son is having fun being with all his cousins, but Veronica looks exhausted. Salmaan’s mom was so gracious, of course,” she laughs ruefully. Damien had never met Salmaan’s family—but he’d heard a lot about them.

“She insisted I have tea with them. You know, typical Palestinian hospitality, even when they’re struggling financially. None of Salmaan’s brothers can get to work. I don’t know how they’re surviving,” she shakes her head slowly. Damien tries to imagine it, sixteen people in one house, little to no income: he feels his chest constricting just thinking about it.

“Salmaan and I got to talking. He said that in Rafah³ Hamas keeps digging tunnels towards Egypt and that for every one the Israelis find and blow up, there’re another ten. It’s how they’re getting the weapons in.” She looks down at her hands, lost in thought, while one thumb keeps rubbing the other.

“And Bethlehem?” he asks. He doesn’t want to know, and he wants to know. Even while his heart grows heavier and heavier listening to Eleanor, it's still so good to be talking with her, hearing what’s really happening, getting the stories behind the headlines.

“It’s a ghost town. Manger Square is completely shuttered. None of the tour buses can get in. She sighs heavily. “And Hebron’s the same—only worse, of course. The entire Old City is a ghost town. Everything’s boarded up. Soldiers are everywhere. The settlers are allowed to move around and come and go, of course, but the Palestinians are under curfew, checked just about every two steps during the day.⁴” Her tone veers between bitter and hard, to laden with grief and sadness. Her pain rolls off her in waves, as she sits in his parent’s quiet lounge, only the ticking of the grandfather clock breaking the silence whenever she pauses.

“I got into Hebron with World Vision. I went with the Shipleys—you remember them, right?”

“I do,” Damien responds with a smile, remembering them fondly. They had been regulars at the Cathedral.

“World Vision and the other aid agencies are bringing aid in, but they say it’s been a struggle, even for them. I saw it with my own eyes, how Palestinians are treated in their own city. It’s like they’re not even human.”

Later that evening, as they settle back into the lounge again after supper and Damien brings out a bottle of arak, he asks her how she’s really doing. She says she’s fine, how easy the international community has it relative to the Palestinians, how she’s safe. But as he examines her more closely out of the corner of his eye, trying not to be too obvious, she seems thinner, and it strikes him now that her face is positively gaunt, her eyes dull behind her glasses. And the way she holds her body now—she’s like a tightly wound spring.

While Eleanor's always been intense and serious, there’s something different in her energy. It’s more brittle. There’s a quiet anger there that’s new, but which he understands. Yet she also seems more fragile somehow, even while he’s always thought of her as incredibly strong and brave. Beneath the anger, he senses a depth of loss and sadness that brings a lump to his throat. Her spirit of adventure, her sense of fun and aliveness—it’s gone.

“But how are you doing, really?” he probes gently. “I know you feel you have it easy in comparison, but how are you really? I can’t imagine, even as a diplomat, that it's been as easy as you say. Crossing the lines every day. Being there. Seeing it. Hearing it.”

“No,” she says quietly. “You’re right. The new people coming in, even the ones in the mission, they don't seem to mind as much. They don’t have anything to compare it to. They don’t know what it used to be like. It’s all quite manageable to them. But for those of us who knew what it was like before…” her voice trails off.

“Deana Shipley says that what we’re experiencing is grief.” She looks off into the fireplace again. “At first I couldn’t understand it. How could we possibly be grieving? But she’s right. Our hearts have broken.” There’s so much emotion in her voice, a sob just below the threshold. “All the progress made since the peace accords?” She turns to him now, her face crumpling, “It’s gone, Damien. All of it. Seven years of gains bombed into rubble. The clock’s been turned back twenty years.” Tears glisten in her eyes.

“The Palestinians say things are far worse than the First Intifada. We’re all carrying this loss of what could have been. What it used to be.” She shakes her head sharply, cutting off the tears. “But it’s selfish to even think that. We’re the privileged ones. And we have work to do. So we just bury our grief somewhere deep and carry on going. Because what else can we do? That’s our job. To at least try to counterbalance the reporting that is coming out of the Embassies in Tel Aviv. None of whose staff have set foot in the West Bank or Gaza,” her voice is bitter now, hard and angry.

“They say we’re just exaggerating and that we’ve been co-opted by the Palestinians. That we’re not objective. It’s the fight to get Pretoria, our headquarters, to believe us, when we’re the ones on the ground—that’s what’s so wearying.”

She goes silent, looking down at her hands, her hair swinging forward and shielding her face. He moves over to her and pulls her into a hug. He feels the tightness go out of her and she starts to sob, her body heaving with great big racking sobs. He just holds her. It’s what he can do. Just be here for her.

As Damien holds Eleanor, he thinks back to their first meeting at St. George’s in Jerusalem. He remembers how she stood out, even then—tall, confident, and fearless. She had swept into their community with a sense of purpose, making things happen, bringing energy and action wherever she went. She was a whirlwind of activity, always organizing trips, helping friends, and driving through checkpoints with impunity. Her daring, her insouciance, and her ability to navigate the complexities of their environment had always amazed him.

He recalls the desert hiking trip she had charmed him into, refusing to take a no. It was the first time he had ever slept under the stars. He can still see her now, charming her way through the checkpoint, in shorts, hiking boots and T-shirt saying “We’re on our way to an important meeting, let us through.” Then there she was getting them all to climb out of the car while she measured the ground clearance of her car to the inch, and proceeding to drive it across a rugged wadi with a shrug, while a party of Israeli hikers in jeeps looked on in surprise.

Eleanor had always seemed to operate on a higher plane. She had agency, the ability to make a real difference. While he had been struggling to find his path, relying on family support and scrambling for a place in the world, Eleanor had seemed unstoppable. She could go from singing sweetly in a sacristan’s robe, belly-laughing over a cocktail, to jumping her horse in the arena. Was there nothing she couldn’t do? Back then he’d half hoped she would see him in a different way, but then had realized that he valued the warmth of her friendship too much to want it to change. It was only much later that he’d realized he’d never stood a chance.

Now, holding her as she cries, his heart breaks too, thinking of that Eleanor, and this Eleanor, of what the Intifada and the collapse of the peace process has taken from everyone.

Eleanor’s Cairo friends are delightful. Very quickly the two groups become one. He’s particularly drawn to Fiona. She’s a complete livewire, and very fun, but underneath he senses her still, deep waters, and he’s drawn in.

Later he puts on a worn duffle coat and steps out into the garden for a few puffs.

“Can I join you?” Eleanor asks behind him.

He turns around in surprise. “I don’t remember you smoking,” he queries her.

“I don’t. I hate it, but I needed something. When the Intifada started, when it got worse, the gang was hanging out and drinking too much. It was our way of coping with it all. But then I was the only one who could drive them back across the checkpoints at night. The taxi’s weren’t always getting through. So I figured I can’t drive drunk, but I can smoke and drive.”

They laugh darkly; he’s always appreciated Eleanor’s dry sense of humor. He offers her a cigarette, she takes one and lights it, cupping her hands around his as he holds out the lighter.

She inhales deeply. “I refuse to buy a packet myself. I just bum off others. That way I can tell myself I’m not a smoker,” she mocks herself, blowing out expertly up into the damp, cold London air. “I picked up the habit from the war correspondents staying at the American Colony Hotel. They told me, ‘To stay sane, you need a vice.’ So I’ve made smoking my vice for the time being.”

She takes another long draw, exhales slowly. “They’re right, you know,” she says as she flicks ash away, “You do need something. It does help.”

They puff companionably in silence for a bit, stamping their feet and wrapping their arms around themselves to keep warm.

Then they head back indoors to the party. He wants to spend more time with Fiona.

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Bonus Material

• UNRWA: Contested Life-Line

• Hebron, Ramallah and Gaza: shutter, bulldoze, bomb

• Damien and Eleanor’s adventures

1. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_stone-throwing for more on the fraught politics of Palestinian stone-throwing.

2. Khan Younis is in southern Gaza.

3. Gaza’s southernmost city, on the border with Egypt.

4. Hebron, the second largest Palestinian city in the West Bank, holds a unique place. There is a historic Jewish quarter in the Old City. There is also an Israeli settlement on the outskirts of Hebron. Because of this, the city of Hebron is divided into two sectors, H1 and H2. The Palestinian National Authority governs H1, which has about 170,000 Palestinian residents. But H2—which includes the Old City and the Israeli settlements, and has about 30,000 Palestinians residents, less than 1,000 Jewish residents in the Jewish quarter, and about 8,000 settlers—is under Israel military control. What that means in reality is that Jewish residents in Hebron have complete freedom of movement, while Palestinian residents are routinely subjected to harassment and body searches, must obtain special permits to navigate through the 18 military checkpoints Israel has set up in the city center, and Palestinian businesses in H1 are routinely forced to close.