Apeirogon

by Colum McCann

She wanted to write back and say that her grandfather was a signatory of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, that her father had fought as a general in the Six-Day War, that her husband had fought in three of Israel’s wars, that her sons had made their own decisions about military service, that her own daughter could have served too if she had been given a chance, which she wasn’t, through no fault of her own, or maybe if the truth be told it was the fault of the Israeli government leaders who were the actual murderers, and while these things did not necessarily make her proud—in fact she felt sure that her daughter might have refused service or would, at the very least, have joined a medical unit—they had occurred in the unfolding of her country’s history, a future for which she no longer held out much hope, though once when young she had dreamed she could be part of a vast mosaic, Jew Christian Muslim Atheist Other Buddhist, call it what you will, a country that would be complicated, nuanced, democratic, visionary, a place where the idea of hate letters, like those which continued to arrive on her desk, would be anathema to the patriotic imagination, the idea of patriotism applying not necessarily to a country or a nation, but to a state of being which could only rightfully be called human, although she was prepared