Matt Beynon (pronounced buy-non) Rees says he'd rather not talk about his background. Well, religious and ethnic, that is. The 41-year-old journalist-turned-crime novelist was born in Wales and lives in Jerusalem with his Jewish (originally American) wife and baby son, Cai. That much he doesn't mind discussing. But, he says, the rest is for "labeling," which - in the case of a former Time bureau chief in Israel, who reported on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for more than a decade - can be and often is problematic in terms of how his work is viewed by members of either side of the divide.
Matt Rees.
Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski
Equally problematic for the author of Cain's Field: Faith, Fratricide and Fear in the Middle East, a non-fiction account, published in 2004, of the internal strife within Israeli and Palestinian societies, has been his own sense that journalism doesn't get at the heart of a story. It is for this reason, he explains, that he switched genres. Fiction, funnily enough, he claims, is a much better way of delving into the mind-set of the Mideast characters he has covered in the past and is now "uncovering."
The literary device he has employed to achieve his aim of "telling the real story behind the news" is a detective series (published by Soho Press), whose protagonist, a middle-aged history teacher in Bethlehem named Omar Yussef, solves mysteries.
On the eve of publication of the third book in the series, The Samaritan's Secret - that happens to coincide with Operation Cast Lead - Rees (who is "fairly fluent" in both Arabic and Hebrew) talks about his take on Gaza, where he has spent much time over the years, and how it served as an inspiration to his novels.
The hero of your series is a history teacher turned detective. Is this some kind of metaphor for what a journalist is - part historian, part detective?
Yes, but what I'm trying to record through these books is the things that were missing from my journalism.
And what were those things that were missing from your journalism?
For example, I would go to Gaza and understand a certain aspect of what was happening there. But then I would have to filter it down so that I could pitch a story to my editors. My editors would then take the pitch and twist it around to fit what they wanted for that week. Then I'd have to write something that seemed to make sense of what they were looking for. But that meant that a lot of what I knew about what was going on there was left out.
Historians looking back at events might read journalists' accounts and ask what is missing from them. Because journalists are manipulated by politicians, who send up trial balloons and often lie. In Gaza, you're manipulated by all kinds of people with different agendas. So the things that journalists write are very much like what you would see if something blew up behind you. You would turn around and point at it, and then turn away again. In other words, you would see an explosion and report on it. And your report would be true. On the other hand, you wouldn't know what had caused the explosion, and you wouldn't know what was going on after it. You'd just have that one blink.
Are you saying that it is the human context that is being left out?
Yes. And the human stories are the most important thing, because what happens inside someone's head - whether it's someone at the top of the political echelon or a refugee at the bottom - is what really dictates the events.
Saying this many people were killed, this many tanks were involved and this many missiles were fired is what journalism does. That's its failing. That's why, to many people who aren't directly involved - who aren't sitting here in Israel or in Gaza - the news of the Middle East seems really flat. In reality, what happens here is so much more vivid. A novel, strangely, is a better way of getting at that deeper reality. You have to go inside someone's mind for him to be a character in a novel. So, whereas journalism has to rest on the surface, a novel has to go very deep.
Why did you write your series from the Arab point of view? Why not an Israeli detective?
For me, the Palestinians are simply more extraordinary. I live in Israel which, despite its weirdnesses and crankinesses, is basically a Western country, and the people living in it - or at least the ones I know - are basically Western people. When I go to the Palestinian towns, on the other hand, I'm not in the West, by any stretch of the imagination. I am among people whose minds work in a different direction, among buildings that look like nowhere I've ever lived, and I'm smelling and tasting things that my mother didn't cook for me when I was growing up. So I feel more a spark of creativity when I'm among the Palestinians.
Moreover, I feel like it's the harder story to tell. It's much easier to tell the story of the Israelis - so easy, in fact, that I would feel I was drawn much more toward cliché than I am when writing about the Palestinians. Now, that's because I approach them the way I do. Most people who approach the Palestinians see them as a cliché - as either terrorists or victims.
A lot of the journalists I've worked with over the years go in to Gaza and argue with the person they're interviewing. They'll try to convince a Hamas guy that suicide bombings are wrong. And while they feel that in so doing, they're prompting something deeper, I feel that they're simply not listening. I'm a very good listener. I don't try to convince them of anything. I try to learn what's in their heads and hearts, so that I can explain it to readers.
When faced with Israel's incursion into Gaza, is it your gut reaction to identify with the residents of Gaza, because of your familiarity with them?
No. Actually, I don't identify with anyone in this conflict. One of the things that years as a journalist in this region convinced me is that politicians are just the most disgusting people on earth, and would do anything to enhance their power. That applies to the Israeli defense minister and the Hamas prime minister. They just disgust me.
