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And so, in the age of fable...

after the floods...

KINGDOM 1 HELL

there appeared on earth...

men armed for extermination.

They're horrible here...

with their obsession for cutting off heads.

It's amazing that anyone's survived.

"Forgive us our trespasses...

"as we forgive those who trespass against us."

As we forgive them and no differently.

As we forgive them and no differently.

We can consider death In two ways...

the impossible of the possible...

or the possible of the impossible.

Now, "I" is someone else.

KINGDOM 2 PURGATORY

Are you here for the European Literary Encounters?

I thought you made films.

I was asked to give a talk to the students.

On what?

The text and the image.

So, what's going on?

The flight from Zagreb is late.

If your father was an Egyptian Communist...

he must have known Henri Curiel.

They even followed the same itinerary.

Your father died?

He died, yes.

Not the way Curiel did.

Not a violent death.

So, same itinerary, meaning what?

Egyptian, middle-class background.

Happy childhood. Jesuit education.

Then, exposure to Egypt's poverty...

and the same revolt against rabbis, king, parents....

Is that when he came to France?

He was partisan.

He got arrested.

He spent a year and a half in prison.

And your mother?

She was more a Zionist.

I'm going to go see what's happening with Air Bosnia.

She took the last Cairo-Jerusalem train.

She arrived in Jerusalem in 1948 by train?

And those on the Exodus, by boat?

There's exodus and Exodus.

So you went to school in Israel?

No, we left Israel very early on.

My father loved France.

I went to school in France.

And your military service?

I did it in Israel.

- You went back? - Yes.

- With your mother? - No, alone.

And after your military service?

Strangely, during my service I realized how French I had become.

So I went back to France.

You found work?

Interpreter.

French, Hebrew, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese.

What brings you here?

I'm working for the Literary Encounters.

But also checking up on my niece.

Her mother, my sister, asked me to check on her.

I think they're here.

Are you sure Mr. Darwish is here?

You are in the same hotel.

Mr. Goytisolo wants to see the library.

Speaks French, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese.

Before his talk.

What's it about?

The forest of writings.

Who are those people?

The SFOR.

Germans today. Americans tomorrow.

Next week: Russians, French, Italians.

So, Miss Lerner, ever been stung by a dead bee?

That's enough.

I was wondering...

why aren't revolutions started by the most humane people?

Because humane people don't start revolutions.

They start libraries.

And cemeteries.

When Mr. Goytisolo was here in 1993...

the Serbian front lines were here.

And they shelled from up there?

It was easy.

Killing a man to defend an idea...

isn't defending an idea, it's killing a man.

When it's all over, nothing Is the same.

Violence leaves a deep scar.

A trace of the oblivion always remains.

The trust in the world that terror destroys is irretrievable.

To see your fellow man turn on you...

breeds a feeling of deep-rooted horror.

Violence severs the lifeline.

A survivor is not only changed, he's someone else.

The dream of survival becomes a nightmare for he who Is on the journey.

Each of us can become a danger for others.

The body is a potential weapon.

Knowing where we can be harmed, each of us can harm another.

I know him!

It's Pierre Bergounioux.

We went to school together.

Show him into the manager's.

Yes, Mr. Ambassador.

it's Mr. Bergounioux.

The ambassador wants to see him.

The Israeli journalist is waiting.

They've been waiting for 8,000 years.

And you?

I'm presenting my book:

From Homer to Faulkner.

Tell me.

Do writers know what they're talking about?

Do they really know?

Of course not.

Homer knew nothing about battlefields, slaughters, victories, or glory.

He is blind and bored.

He has to settle for recounting what others did.

Possibly.

There's a contradiction.

Those who act never have the ability...

to say or think adequately about what they do.

Conversely, those who tell stories...

don't know what they're talking about.

Remember Mao Zedong.

The President.

Grivas, the car.

Where's my scarf?

What about me?

A letter from my grandfather. Not for the ambassador, for the man.

I don't understand. Tomorrow, miss.

Which "man"?

Lyons. 1943. The Gestapo.

Come with me.

Let's go.

Why Sarajevo?

Because of Palestine, and because I live in Tel Aviv.

I wanted to see a place where reconciliation seemed possible.

They may hot run my article.

Possibly.

Anyway, it's for myself.

Who's that next to Kafka in your office?

Someone like you, maybe.

Hannah Arendt.

Her friend Sholem said she looked like 12 synagogues.

Under the Ottoman Empire...

the sitting room was rented to what wasn't yet called the Jewish Agency.

When I arrived, they hung her portrait in homage.

You should read the articles she wrote in the 1950s.

They're enlightening.

Your grandfather....

In 1943, when you were a student, you hid another young man...

and his fiancé.

They were wanted by the Vichy police.

My mother was born in your...

in your garret in 1945...

then they emigrated.

Later, you were awarded the title of "The Righteous."

But you turned it down.

You were applying to Normale Sup'...

and you said it was normal.

Possibly.

Now we want to organize a meeting.

Not with the French diplomat, but with a free man...

if you've remained one.

Not a just conversation, just a conversation.

No military or political solutions.

Just basic problems. No military or political solutions.

Just basic problems.

Psychology and ethics, nothing else.

Even if I live in New York most of the time...

I have constant nightmares.

But a friend from Haifa says, when he dreams...

he dreams not about the enemy, but about himself.

Not about Israel, but Palestine.

Can we start there?

With the land...

with the promise...

then the atonement.

Just a conversation.

- Good luck. - To you, too.

In the Resistance, did the Germans inhabit your dreams...

or only France and the French?

And that dead language we brought back to life?

Is it really living?

And your French, which you're slowly losing...

grammatically, anyway.

Then we publish the conversation. Even Haaretz won't run it.

- It's not a bad paper. - They won't run it.

I'm just a stringer. But I know them.

They want to, but they can't.

They dream of Palestine, not Israel.

It's too late.

My grandfather has a rich friend. We can print 100,000 copies, a million...

to hear a simple conversation between two friends.

A dialogue no one has, not even in his heart...

because that heart is alone.