I saw a movie recently, Painted Veil, based on a Somerset Maugham novel. Set in early 20th century China, it tells the story of a British couple — a socially clumsy doctor and his restless wife — who enter an arranged marriage for their own reasons and then discover that they have little in common. The bored and lonely wife is drawn to a womanizer in their expatriate orbit in Shanghai and commits adultery. When discovered by her husband, she is promptly spurned by her lover. Rather than divorce and go their separate ways, circumstances force them to live together for a while. The husband, his pride wounded, begins to punish the wife with his acts and words (or lack of them at times), as they poison each other’s daily well being.
We understand their respective points of view, even as we watch them self-destruct in irrational ways. We shake our heads and wonder: will they ever become sensible and whole? Deliverance comes in what seems to me the only way possible: life events lead them to consciously peer within themselves, acknowledge their own imperfections, and realize how badly they were behaving with each other — a precursor to the process of healing that they embark on, and for the first time they also begin to see what is good and valuable in the other.
I have long held that the only way Israelis and Palestinians can achieve durable peace will require a similar reckoning, that it will come only from a transformation of spirit among enough of their people — and not with mere trading of land, overseas accords, or monetary compensation. Too much psychological damage has been done on both sides for them to see each other clearly, without anger and mistrust. This article resonated with me because of the value it rightly places on “soft approaches” — on honest admissions of one’s own wrongdoing, symbolic gestures of appeasement, and acknowledging the pain one has caused the other. This may not happen but I see no other path to lasting peace. This is just the kind of approach that a person like Gandhi would have taken, but then, his kind are rare in the world and the yearning expressed on that wall might remain just that: a yearning.