A Bottle in the Gaza Sea

The motif of numbers, math, and time is present in both Naïm’s and Tal’s descriptions. It often conveys an effort to impose order on chaos and the inevitability of history repeating itself, demonstrating The Impact of Geopolitical Conflict on Individual Lives. Both characters present events and actions as math problems in a global game of death and destruction, as when Tal describes her history lesson on the 20th century or Naïm presents the ongoing conflict as a competition in which people keep score.

The act of assigning numbers, dates, and times to events represents Tal’s wish to make sense of seemingly senseless conflict. She often considers how history might be different if only she had a time machine, or if only events proceeded in a different order. Her recounting of the aftermath of the cafe bombing is a literal count, as she rapidly and mathematically describes events: “Mom had just told me to go to bed for the third time”; “she did four things at once”; “[f]ive, six, seven ambulances” (1-2). When Tal considers how unlikely it should have been for her to be so close to two deadly bombings within a few months but adds that “probabilities and statistics are only any good for math and biology, they’re just numbers written on paper” (97), it highlights her recognition of the futility of trying to use reason to understand the unreasonable.

When Naïm refers to numbers and time, it is more often in ways that emphasize patterns of history and human behavior: “But everything repeats itself. There was a First World War, then a Second. A first intifada, then a second” (75). And while Tal uses numbers to try to understand reality, Naïm suggests that the ability to manipulate numbers is an ability to change reality itself, saying that Israelis who hold up traffic for security checks and other measures are “the masters of time” (89). As with other symbols and motifs in the novel, both characters’ references to the motif of numbers, dates, and times emphasize their worldviews, with Tal hoping math can help her envision a better future, and Naïm employing it to explain the influence of an ever-present past.

The titular bottle is a symbol of hope and personal connection throughout the novel. It is a reminder of the champagne the family used to toast their hopes for a peaceful future while watching the Oslo Accords, and the fact that Tal’s parents have saved it for 10 years demonstrates their unwavering faith in the necessity of hope for peacebuilding and reconciliation. When Tal chooses that bottle to bear her message of hope and connection into Gaza, she is demonstrating her faith in that possibility as well. When Naïm disdains Tal as “Miss Bottle-Full-of-Hope-in-a-Sea-of-Hatred” (21), it highlights his rejection of her worldview. So, when Naïm himself chooses that bottle to signify their reconnection at the end of the novel, proposing that Tal will know him because he has saved the bottle all along, it also serves to emphasize how much he has changed as a result of their interactions.