by Mary Cullen

Colum McCann, Apeirogon. Bloomsbury, 2020

Colum McCann’s novel, Apeirogon, is about two fathers and their daughters: Rami Elhanan, an Israeli, and Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian, and their daughters Smadar and Abir. Thirteen-year-old Smadar was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber when she was out walking with friends. Ten-year-old Abir was killed by a rubber bullet fired from the back of a jeep by an 18-year-old Israeli soldier. She had gone to buy sweets during her school break. In their shared grief, the girls’ fathers came together to campaign for peace.

Their story is told in an extraordinary book which the author describes as a ‘hybrid novel with invention at its core’. Transcripts of interviews with Rami and Bassam are placed at the centre of the book, and on either side McCann weaves their experience together with elements of ‘speculation, memory, fact and imagination’ which locate the fathers’ stories within the wider sweep of history.

An apeirogon, he tells us, is a shape with a countably infinite number of sides. The book’s paragraphs, many very short, are numbered from 1 to 500 and back again, giving the narrative a circular shape. The paragraphs add layer upon layer to the story, from flashbacks to the girls’ deaths to the daily experience of living under occupation. We learn that rubber bullets are known to Israeli soldiers as Lazarus bullets, as they can be picked up and used again; and that blasting and cutting through the walls and ceilings of densely packed houses is known as ‘walking through walls’.

We also learn that five hundred million birds fly over the hills of Beit Jala every year: it is the world’s second busiest migratory superhighway. Some fly at night to avoid predators, some during the day to take advantage of warm air rising. Sometimes they are the target for young stone throwers with slings. Ancient slings were designed by shepherds to help scare predators from their flocks, but the slings soon made their way into the art of warfare. David used one to kill Goliath in the Valley of Elah.

Mary Cullen is editor of Open House.