A Bottle in the Gaza Sea

Thematically and symbolically, the novel comes full circle in this final section. When Tal relates a story she read in the news several months ago about “all the victims who are never mentioned: the ones who witness bombings [...] who are still traumatized, frozen in time and paralyzed with fear” (126), she emphasizes The Impact of Geopolitical Conflict on Individual Lives, which often go unseen, particularly to the outside world. However, the revelations that follow suggest that in the battle of Hope Versus Despair, hope may win, and storytelling can change perspectives, even of those closest to conflict.

The first revelation that provides a sense of hope is Tal’s news that she saw Paolo on TV and shared with Eytan the secret of her correspondence with Naïm, which then became known to her parents. Their cautious optimism, characterizing her act as “beautiful” but “dangerous” demonstrates the uneasy balance between Hope Versus Despair. However, the fact that they can hold any capacity for hope through their daughter’s correspondence with a Gazan man highlights the lower stakes of danger in Israeli within the text. Naïm expressed apprehension and fear in their relationship, but Tal’s family feels safe enough to embrace this act. Further, Eytan’s decision to leave the bottle in the sand and keep watch over it, as well as his instinct that Naïm was a trustworthy person when he saw him walking on the beach alone with a book, demonstrates that even those who express skepticism or worry about “fanatics” finding Tal’s well-intended message can still make room for hope, humanity, and connection through shared stories. As a soldier, Eytan put himself at risk by placing the message in the sand, demonstrating something closer to the risk Naïm took in picking up the bottle. That these at-risk characters chose to allow this perhaps dangerous communication to take place demonstrates the longing for hope even in the unlikeliest of people.

Tal’s revelations and her frank discussion with her father also demonstrate the Hope Versus Despair when it comes to putting faith in humanity, as well as The Power of Storytelling and Communication. Significantly, the location of their talk under the Citadel of David harkens back to the early chapters of the novel, when Tal explained her father’s penchant for narrating the history of Jerusalem and its meaning. Their laughter when she completes his story confirms his assertion that it “gives us back our sense of proportion” (134) and takes people beyond their suffering. In a similar way, her communication with Naïm has done the same thing, making her feel as though she has crossed a “frontier.” Their unlikely connection promises hope for the future, as well as the important fact that there are always people more like oneself than people adjacent to conflict are led to believe: The text reiterates that there is common ground to be found if communication is allowed to occur.

Notably, both Tal and Naïm use the word “miracle” in these chapters when referring to the bottle, reinforcing both the bottle’s status as a symbol of hope and the parallels between the two characters in both identity and language. It also suggests that concrete action is necessary to make hopes come true, as Tal takes action by sending her message, and as Naïm does by applying to medical school. In the process of applying to medical school, Naïm “realized that [he] had to roll up [his] sleeves and get on with it to make miracles happen” (139) rather than wait while solutions are “put off, delayed, postponed” (146). This suggests that within the perspective of the text, people who want to reconcile the differences between Israelis and Palestinians must do something more than talk about it. Naïm’s revelations in the final chapter explain how he has chosen to take action, as well as providing a sense of resolution and context for understanding the root of his sympathies and frustrations, which have been opaque until now. Naïm’s final shedding of any shield from Tal speaks to the healing they have both undergone as a result of communicating with each other.

The ambiguous ending, with its allusion to Roman Holiday, a movie about a European princess and an American reporter who briefly find happiness and respite from real life with each other, poses the question of whether or not two people from such disparate backgrounds end up together. As Tal insists when introducing the film earlier in the novel, “in real life things often end badly, especially in our part of the world, so we need films to give us a bit of hope and just to believe that happy endings are possible” (83). Like Tal warm inside her father’s jacket, Naïm’s faith in the “miracle of the bottle” suggests that believing in happy endings can be a shield against despair, even when history is full of it.