The Attack

A thought provoking fictional novel from Yasmina Khadra. The setting for this book is in present day Israel, replete with all the trappings surrounding the pent-up hate, rage and suspicions that predominant this area of the world. *SPOILER* This is the story of a young, well respected, Arab-Israeli surgeon (Dr. Amin Jaafari) who lives and works in Israel. Shortly after he attends to the victims of a suicide bombing (not an unusual occurrence for him) he is made aware of a development that is about to change his life as he knows it; the suicide bomber was his wife! The news is met initially with denial and disbelief, then a grudging acceptance and finally 'why'. The 'why' leads Amin on a dangerous trail of discovery that uncovers and discusses many of the tenets of belief that occupy the thinking of the Arabs and Israeli in this tinderbox known as the Middle East. Needless to say, Dr. Jaafari also discovers many things about himself and his life that had, up to this time, remained hidden from him. *END SPOILER* The story is well written and holds your interest; the book is hard to put down. Khadra's development of the main character, Dr Amin Jaafari, is parallelled superbly with his (Jaafari's) ever increasing knowledge of the extraordinary situation that is opening up before him. My only minor concern with Dr Jaafari's character was that some of the decisions he made on his 'quest' were somewhat ill-advised (IMHO); but this may be partially explained by stress the man was under and also because I'm dealing with a culture and attitude that I'm not familiar with. It is not, as you might imagine, a pleasant tale, but one does get a sense that the author knows what he's talking about when discussing the 'politics' of the area. What I found particularly interesting was that Khadra, in weaving Dr. Jaafari's story, was able to give a deeper insight into the thinking of both sides. You begin on one hand, to understand the Arab sense of repression and the loss on dignity, but as well, the Israeli increasing distrust and frustration for the Arab regime, particularly since the suicide bombings have begun. Conclusion: An intriguing novel. Although fiction, the story is not outside the realm of being plausible. Even more important is the light shed on the circumstances that reflect the partisan thinking that prevails in this area of the world. You begin to understand that hate, rage and distrust have dominated for SO long that it's hard to consider other more peaceful options; hard to consider because for things to changes it would mean that both side would have to 'give a little' and giving a little would mean 'losing face'. And of all the options available, 'losing face' is not one of them. Easily 5 Stars. Ray Nicholson P.S. Yasmina Khadra also wrote 'The Swallows of Kabul', another one of my favorite books.

Amin Jaafari is a hard-working and talented surgeon at a busy Tel Aviv hospital, two generations away from his Arab origins. He is wealthy, popular with his Jewish colleagues, and devoted to his wife Sihem. The novel opens with Amin taking charge of the chaos in the emergency room after a suicide bomber attacks a restaurant in the Hakirya district of Tel Aviv, killing 19 people including a group of schoolchildren at a birthday party. Subsequently Amin is stopped and searched four times by Israeli policemen on the way home. He only wakes up to his own misfortune when he learns that Sihem has been killed in the bombing and that her wounds correspond to those found on suicide bombers. Amin refuses to believe that Sihem could have committed such an act of terror. He expects her to return soon from Kfar Kanna where she is visiting her old grandmother. Disbelief gives way to horror when Sihem's last letter, posted from Bethlehem, turns up in his post box. As a consequence of Sihem's attack Amin's life, ambition, values and friendships disintegrate. He locks himself up in a nightmare of drink and despair in which he reflects on every aspect of his life, nationality and marriage. A Jewish colleague, Kim Yehuda, calls Amin back from the brink. He retraces Sihem's last journey from Tel Aviv to Bethlehem and back again. There Amin is repeatedly beaten up: by the Shin Bet, his Tel Aviv neighbours and Palestinian militants in the West Bank towns of Bethlehem and Jenin that were under siege by the Israeli army. Nevertheless he clings to his belief that as a surgeon his fight consists in recreating life in the place where death has chosen to conduct its manoeuvres. The Attack uses both suicide bombing and the fate of many Israeli citizens who are of Arab origin. These are the descendants of the Arabs who stayed in the country rather than go into exile at the formation of Israel in 1948. Like Amin Jaafari in the story, they have suffered discrimination and mistreatment but have also prospered, and are now squeezed between an tormented Jewish state and their rebel fellow Arabs in Gaza and on the West Bank.

wow. i mean WOW. i literally started this book last night and i just finished it 10 minutes ago, & this is a day later. it's not really my wish to summarize what the book is about as any person can read the synopsis already provided. i choose to speak of the novel and the emotions it evoked in me, and is bound to do for many readers. first of all, this is not a "happy" novel, so those looking for such a story should probably refrain from reading this. it's filled with pain and truth, but even in that the beauty of it shines through, proof of a true work of art. secondly, this book does not take any particular sides, which i find to be one of its strong points. it merely lays out events and lets readers form their own opinion on each scenario. it's clear that this is hard to find nowadays, since most books concerning the israeli-palestinian conflict tend to have their own biases and usually lean on one side or the other. what i find very remarkable is the fact that although this is not "based on a true story" per se, i cannot help but feel that i know Sihem, and even more so her loving husband Amin who cannot get over his sudden loss, so strong is his love for her, as well as his confusion over the whole issue. the characters are terribly real, forcing me to identify with them while they breathe life into the novel, yet also at the same time making the story all the more tragic because of that very authenticity factor. regardless of what my views are on this issue, i know that this novel has put me at a standstill, providing me with yet another perspective, and most importantly, forever engraving this narrative into my heart. a truly touching novel that is bound to move even the most indifferent hearts.

As the hostilities between Israel and the Arab world grind on with ever-greater loss and blame, it's not difficult to see how the perceptions of an outsider can often fathom both the broad and intimate gestures of a raging civil and cultural conflict. Most who do glimpse the relentless insanity rampant across the present-day Holy Land (with the additional complications of Lebanon) either recoil in horror or exploit its afflictions with cheap and incendiary journalism. Another suicide bombing in the news; today a restaurant, tomorrow a bus, next week...who knows? In THE ATTACK, which viscerally details the prolonged detonation of just such a bombing, Yasmina Khadra has taken the brave (perhaps even brazen) approach of turning the wretchedness of generations-old enmity into very personalized fiction. He --- former Algerian army officer Mohammed Moulessehoul, who until recently used a female alias for protection --- leaps the cultural and geographical gap between North Africa and the Middle East with little awkwardness, compared to the immense challenges of accompanying and revealing the deep psychological trauma of his protagonist. Dr. Amin Jaafari, an eminent surgeon, is among more than one million Arabs who, in real life, are full citizens of Israel. They rarely make news headlines, for they live in a peculiar kind of shadow land; never fully accepted by Jewish society, but accorded all the rights, privileges, resources and opportunities that their brothers and sisters on the other side of the cultural (and now very tangible) Wall both admire and envy --- and for which all too many are willing to die seemingly senseless deaths. Jaafari represents those who (like some dear friends of mine) have worked long and hard to attain skills that make them grudgingly indispensable to the Israeli infrastructure. Jaafari comes across as a convincing composite of many such unsung heroes of this long war, who routinely stitch up Israeli and Arab alike, making no distinction between them when it comes to preserving life and doing no harm. His patients, even in extreme pain, don't always feel the same way, but he's used to that too. By the time the scenes of yet another suicide attack at an Israeli restaurant begin to resolve into distinct visual and statistical elements of death, dying and survival, Khadra has set up the intense emotional context for an abrupt left turn that takes us into the deepest hell an individual of Jaafari's profession can imagine. His own Palestinian wife has been identified by police as the latest suicide bomber to randomly kill dozens of Jewish men, women and children. From that point of numbing disbelief on, Jaafari becomes an intensely empathic study in the tortuous journey of human grief. And grief, as any good pastoral or religious counsellor can attest, is perversely messy. Despite its famous "stages" as defined by luminaries like Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, this particular form of spiritual agony follows no textbook ordering, no

The novel begins in Tel Aviv with a rocket attack, the mayhem and chaos immediate and devastating, the street littered with the wounded and dying, the story segueing into the life of Dr. Amin Jaafari, a surgeon at a Tel Aviv hospital who dedicates his days to healing, basking in a contented marriage to the beautiful Sihem. As a suicide bomb explodes not far away, the doctor works long into the night to save the victims, returning to a silent house, belatedly remembering that his wife is due to return that evening after visiting her grandmother. By morning, Sihem has not returned, but Amin is unfazed, imagining she has just extended her stay. Later, at the hospital, the doctor is approached by the Israeli police, required to identify a body, that of the suicide bomber, who, to they have determined, is his wife, all but her lovely face destroyed by the explosion. His mind shattered by this revelation, Amin returns home with the police, who dismantle his home and question him exhaustively to determine his possible involvement in the crime. By his release, Jaafari's life is forever altered, although he still resists acknowledging that his wife is a killer of children, a keeper of secrets and a betrayer of their vows. His emotions churning, Jaafari leaves his professional world for the war-torn Palestine territories where Sihem spent her final days, the distraught husband plunging into dangerous places where he is unwelcome, careless of his safety in pursuit of truth. Instead he finds a bottomless well of suffering, confronted by his own failings and his inability to see his wife as she really was: "I would have idealized her less and idolized her less...how could I live her when I never stopped dreaming her?" From city to city, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Jenin, each is more violent than the last: "The old demons have made themselves so desirable that none of the possessed wants to be free of them." Suddenly a player in an historical drama with no cure and no comfort in sight, Jaafari is lost in a country torn by violence, passion and conflicting religious convictions. The sense of place is impeccable, disturbing: "By turns Olympus and ghetto, temple and arena, Jerusalem suffers from an inability to inspire poems without inflaming passions." And, "In Jenin, Reason has a mouth full of broken teeth and it rejects any prosthesis capable of giving it back its smile." With stunning imagery and fearless prose, Jaafari opens his heart to the impossible, walking though the fires of a personal hell in search of reason. Writing under a pseudonym, the author's passion for place and the torment of those who claim this country imbue the novel with a resonance that remains long after the last page is turned. Luan Gaines/ 2006.