Nisanit

Mired in political rhetoric, this alarming first novel by a Jordanian native tracks a Palestinian terrorist, his girlfriend and his Israeli interrogator. The subject matter--a terrorist's thought processes, his lethal acts (including the murder of nine Israeli settlers), capture, torture and attendant plunge into madness--is potentially gripping, but Faqir repeatedly proffers graceless, simplistic agitprop instead of careful plotting or characterizations. David, the Israeli interrogator, is a tormented Holocaust survivor, a caricature here whose pleasure is watching a ``prisoner's skin change from red-crimson-purple to indigo. When the left side of the body became a mixture of black and purple he would switch to the right. The ultimate was an even colour all over.'' To Faqir, the Palestinians are like nisanit blossoms: able to survive the heat, the desert flower takes so deep a hold in the ground that it can't be rooted out. Shadeed the terrorist ruminates on peace: ``It would never spread over their country until these aggressors stopped polluting their air.'' His relationship with Eman develops at a fairy-tale-fast gallop; her father, a Palestinian, was hanged in a failed coup to overthrow the Democratic State of Ishmael--apparently Jordan--and Eman believes that she is doomed to lose everyone she loves. (May)