To The End of
The Land by David Grossman, Israel’s finest contemporary writer instills a new
literary life into Israel’s anguished soul, the book piercingly scrutinizes the
ubiquity of death in the lives of Israelis in this age of intifadas, the
existential anxiety that it spawns, and the horrendous price that Israeli macho
military ideology extracts.
At the heart
of the book is a mother’s anxiety about her son in the Army – a feeling with
which most Israelis identify as there is compulsory military service of three
years in Israel. In an interview David Grossman remarked that in Israel most
families plan for three children so that even if one is killed in the Army,
they have another two.
Ora is a
49-year old mother and her younger son Ofer has just finished his compulsory
military service. Adam, her elder son, has already completed his Army tenure
and is currently in Bolivia with his father Ilan, Ora’s estranged husband. Ora
is well aware from her experience with Adam that it is not the same person who
returns from the Army. She knows “…they don’t really come back. Not like they
were before. And that the boy he used to be had been lost to her forever the
moment he was nationalized- lost to himself, too.”
Her motherhood
wants to reclaim this boy to herself after his return from the Army. Towards
that end, she has planned a hike in Galilee with him, all alone, so that the
mother and son can be together and re-discover each other. However, unbeknownst
to her, Ofer decides to volunteer for a new military campaign that leaves Ora
utterly devastated. She is ravaged by the thought of his death and in one
inspired moment of magical thinking comes to the conclusion that she can
protect him from possible death by fleeing from the notifiers who the Army
traditionally sends to the families who have suffered bereavement. She argues
with herself that “…notification will never be given, because notification
always takes two, Ora thinks – one to give and the one to receive - and there
will be no one to receive this notification so it will not be delivered...”
Ora escapes to
Galilee without informing anyone, leaving no forwarding address, and abandoning
her phone so that nobody can reach her. She takes Aviram with her who is her
childhood friend, past lover, and Ofer’s biological father. Ora, Ilan, and
Aviram had first met during 1967 war when they were teenagers. While Ilan is
handsome, self-assured, and witty, Aviram is short-statured, inventive, and
hugely imaginative. She loves them both, but ends up marrying Ilan. Both of them
also served in the Army. But, Aviram returns from the Army a broken man -
damaged in body and spirit because of the treatment that he received as a POW.
Ora and Ilan help to rehabilitate him but Aviram has lost the spark that used
to keep him going. Ora sleeps with him in order to revive his will to live, and
Ofer is conceived. So close are these friends that Ilan knows about Ofer but
still adopts and raises him as his own son along with their first born Adam.
Aviram withdraws from the world, cuts himself off from everyone, and refuses to
talk to Ora about their son Ofer. He is living in the squalid margins of the
society when Ora whisks him away to Galilee.
During this
500 kilometer walk, Ora tells Ofer’s story to Aviram recalling every moment of
his life – from the moment he was born to the first step that he took, from his
feeding habits as an infant to his sweaty body odor after sports, and from his
childhood dread of Arabs to his current girlfriend who has broken up with him.
She believes that talking constantly about Ofer, and keeping him alive in the
conversation, will protect her son from the death she is imagining.
This walk,
then, becomes the central pillar around which David Grossman creates the
narrative structure of a mother’s personal anguish and a nation’s tragedy.
Slowly, flitting backward and forward in time, a pace that he controls
brilliantly, a rich portrait emerges of not only a happy family but also of
three men in Ora’s life who bond in their masculinity, witticism, and a world
view that is increasingly divergent from Ora’s, especially concerning that
nebulous Israeli situation made up of roadblocks, ambushes, suicide bombers,
and violent deaths. She wonders whether she has actually been able to protect
her son despite all her teachings to be good because in the fog of the
situation that they are in; there is a dichotomy between being good and being
alive.
Ora’s
character is really majestic. Although her “flight from bad tidings” may appear
to be a sign of an anxious, neurotic mother, the Ora that actually emerges is a
nurturer who revives, shelters, and comforts as much the failed conscience of
her son as that of a people uncomfortable with the destiny that they have
inherited.
David Grossman
has used this literary technique brilliantly wherein he lets the story drip
drop by drop through exquisite flash backs that meander through multiple
timelines. After building a particular story strand to a crescendo, he takes
the reader on a different track with a deft feint and then gently weaves in the
original strand to gently complete the mosaic. The story often reads like a
thriller.
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