Midnight's Gate

Knowledge of death is the only key that can open midnight's gate.

Bei Dao

At 3:30 P.M. on March 24, 2002, Air France flight 1992 came to a stop on the parking apron of Tel Aviv International Airport. We took a shuttle to the entrance to the border inspection area and crowded together in line. An official from the Israeli foreign affairs office unexpectedly burst in, collected our passports, disappeared, and then reappeared; we filed out behind him through a special exit. I had just breathed a sigh of relief when I was stopped by an official-looking young man who was clearly a plainclothes police officer. He said that for security purposes, I had to answer some questions. The purpose of my trip? I mumbled that I was a member of the International Parliament of Writers delegation. He heard "delegation" as "interrogation." What? International Writers' Interrogation? His ears pricked up. No, not interrogation, I hurriedly waved my hand to call over our secretary general, Christian Salmon. But Salmon spoke only French, and the three of us grew more confused as we tried to communicate, unable to figure out just who was interrogating whom. Fortunately, the representative of the French consulate in Israel—who had come to pick us up—made a timely appearance and finally broke the standoff. The plainclothes policeman, tapping two fingers to his temple, said goodbye to us in French.

There were eight members of the International Parliament of Writers delegation; they came from eight countries on four continents and included the chairman of the International Parliament of Writers, American novelist Russell Banks; South African poet Breyten Breytenbach; Italian novelist Vincenzo Consolo; Spanish novelist Juan Goytisolo; the secretary general of the International Parliament of Writers, Christian Salmon; Portuguese novelist José Saramago; Nigerian poet and dramatist Wole Soyinka; and myself. At 6 P.M. the previous day, we had held a press conference at the France Television booth in the main hall of the Paris Book Show, where we presented the document "Call for Peace in Palestine," which had been signed by over five hundred writers from more than thirty countries, including several Israeli writers.

On our trip, there were also ten or so reporters, and at the airport gate we all got into a bus that the French consulate sent to pick us up. The highway from the airport stretched into the interior, the landscape becoming more and more desolate. This was a wasteland, hills and mountains of sand and stone forming a bleak panorama, with shrubs and wild grass scattered here and there, that reminded me of the Gobi desert.

In the spring of 1990, the Chinese poet Duo Duo and I took part in the International Poet's Festival in Jerusalem. At that time, we were also ferried around in buses. The trip had been an enormous shift in orientation for us—in language as well as in time and space. I just remember Duo Duo swimming in the Dead Sea, and then regretting it as he crawled back out of the water.

Israel is a paramilitary state, and it is extremely common to see young men holding a gun in one hand while embracing a girlfriend in the other, strolling down the street as though this were the most natural thing in the world. When one brings up the Middle East crisis with Israeli writers, they often say they are dissatisfied with their right-wing politicians but also powerless to do anything. When it comes to the future, most of them simply shift their gaze, their faces full of gloom. We headed for the border between Israel and Syria, where the kibbutzim reminded me of the Chinese military units set up along the Sino-Soviet border in the 1960s and 1970s.

Twelve years had gone by in a flash, from one year of the horse to the next. But this time I was headed for the other side of the border.

Heading into the 1990s, there were real prospects for peace. On September 13, 1993, Rabin and Yasir Arafat shook hands for the...