Apeirogon

by Colum McCann

Then after a while you start asking yourself questions, you know, we’re not animals, we can use our brains, we use our imaginations, we have to find a way to get out of bed in the morning. And you ask yourself, Will killing anyone bring my daughter back? Will killing every other Arab bring her back? Will causing pain to someone else ease the unbearable pain that you are suffering? Well, the answer comes to you in the middle of that long dark night, and you think, dust returns to dust, ashes return to ashes, that’s all. She is not coming back, your Smadari. And you have to get used to this new reality. So in a very gradual, complicated way you come over to the other side: you start asking what happened to her, and why? It’s difficult, it’s frightening, it’s exhausting. How could such a thing take place? What could cause someone to be that angry, that mad, that desperate, that hopeless, that stupid, that pathetic, that he is willing to blow himself up alongside a girl, not even fourteen years old? How can you possibly understand that instinct? To tear his own body apart? To walk down a busy street and pull the cord on a belt that rips him asunder? How can he think that way? What made him? Where in the world was he created? How did he get that way? Where did he come from? Who taught him this? Did I teach him this? Did his government teach him this? Did my government?