Meet Me in Gaza Read online

  As the first few days of the tahdiya pass – and hold – Israel allows fuel to trickle back into Gaza, a surge of cars return to the roads and the greasy reek of engine-choked cooking oil begins to lift. On the streets the atmosphere shifts a shade, into a tenuous fragile calm. Both sides are holding their fire.

  When the weekend comes, for once I have nothing planned; as though the tahdiya has given me the luxury of idleness. I wake early as usual, pad into the kitchen in my bare feet to make coffee, drink the first cup out on my shaded balcony and take the second back to bed. Here I read and daydream until sated with rest, then rouse myself with a tepid, salty shower, enjoying the slow beat of having nothing to do. I don’t actually spend a lot of time in my apartment these days. For breakfast I have pomegranates, which are now in season – great thick-skinned fruits the size of boxers’ fists. I slit them open, scooping the juicy ruby seeds out with my fingers into a bowl, and devour them with Israeli yoghurt and spoonfuls of local Gazan honey. My spacious apartment is silent, the surrounding streets ripple with low noises. I wonder how long this peace will last and what real difference it will actually make to life inside these stagnant walls.

  I’m writing my journal when Saida calls.

  ‘Habibti, ta’lli – come to our house for lunch this afternoon.’

  ‘OK, habibti, shukran.’

  I often have lunch with Saida and her family at weekends. We eat mid-afternoon, round the kitchen table, feasting on a steaming mound of mahshi (aubergines stuffed with rice, meat and vegetables), one of Hind’s favourite dishes. When I mention the tahdiya, Hind says Inshallah (God willing), it will last, but only God knows.

  Saida says, ‘We will see, habibti, this is Gaza,’ and she stands to clear away our plates. Her gesture tells me this tahdiya means almost nothing, yet.

  Afterwards, the five of us – Hind, Saida, Maha, their brother Muhammad and I – watch Arabic music videos in the bedroom that Saida and Maha share. When Hind goes to pray, Maha stands up too, yawning that she’s bored of watching TV. Shooing Muhammad out into the hall, she starts to dance from one side of the bedroom to the other. I have never seen her dance before. She’s loose-limbed as a cat, lithe, confident and graceful.

  ‘Come on – dance with me!’ she demands, extending her arms towards Saida and me.

  By now I know some Arabic dance moves, but when I attempt to join in, Maha just rolls her eyes. ‘No – not like that!’ She is a teenager, after all. As she gives me an impromptu dance lesson, Saida watches, her quiet smile growing, until the music lifts her from the cushions too and the three of us shimmy across the room together, as Maha sings aloud to the music. I’ve danced at a lot of mixed parties in Gaza, and quite a few weddings where men and women dance separately – but this is something different. Spontaneity is rare here, where people spend their lives glancing back over their shoulders.

  Saida is laughing, her hair loose round her shoulders. For once she looks carefree. Despite her close-knit family, she has often told me that she pines for her friends back in Ramallah, and for her sister Alla’. She finds Gaza lonely.

  ‘I don’t have many friends here now, habibti, apart from you,’ she has said more than once. ‘I have been away too long, I don’t fit in now.’

  Usually she holds herself in check and just carries on: stoic, respectful, dedicated to her work, her prayers and her family – but not very joyful. I’ve never seen her as carefree as she is right now, arms and fingers outstretched, her whole face smiling, lost in the music.

  Maha ties a scarf round her hips, then mine. As she tries to teach me ‘the shiver’, a shimmering vibration of the hips, Saida cracks up laughing. By now the three of us are raucous and aroused. Suddenly a loud rap at the door, then a fierce push, and Hind stands in the door frame, scowling like an enraged queen.

  ‘Khalas! (Enough!)’ She berates us for making such a racket, especially on a Friday when people should be praying. As a new song kicks in, we three stand still, scolded into silence. But suddenly Maha and Saida get the giggles and they catch their mother’s eye. Hind gives a loud, head-tilting tut, but a smile is breaking across her angry mouth. She glances back over her shoulder and as though having reassured herself no one else is around – for her husband is still at the mosque – she steps lightly over the threshold into the bedroom, clicking the door shut behind her. With a mischievous smile I have not seen before, Hind slowly kicks off one slipper then the other, moves into the centre of the room, spreads her big arms wide open and begins to sway her hips.

  We dance ourselves tired, and laugh ourselves hoarse, and I end up staying the night, sleeping in Maha’s bed while she curls up on a mattress on the floor. In the morning, after splashing our faces with cold water, we breakfast and drink slow cups of thick coffee. Then Saida and her mother fix their hijabs and get ready to visit Hind’s elderly mother and father who live nearby. They ask me along, but I decline the invite and come back to my apartment instead, to potter round and maybe go for a walk later. My quiet apartment looks, and feels, like home by now. I’ve tacked postcards and pictures on the walls and even bought some plants to brighten up the balcony. But instead of pottering at leisure, I wander from room to room, picking things up and putting them down again, unsettled by the pleasure of dancing and maybe the tahdiya too. I want more pleasure today.

  I have just finished watering the wilting balcony plants when my jawaal rings. It’s Wafa’. She is one of Saida’s friends, a TV journalist with taut, catlike features and a faint twang in her voice from her years as a student in the US. We’ve met before, together with Saida. I don’t know her very well, but I like her sly wit. Wafa’ says she’s at home too, bored to death. She wants to go out somewhere this afternoon. Am I free?

  ‘Sure!’ I say. I suggest the al-Deira café. Wafa’ groans. She was there just yesterday. Can’t we think of anywhere else to hang out? We chat for a while, trying to decide how to amuse ourselves. At times like this I realise how small our world inside Gaza is, and how limited our options within it. We can walk – but where to? The beach will be crowded, and the sun blazing hot. If we want to swim, we have to do so fully clothed. There’s a public swimming pool, up near Jabalya camp, but it’s full of gawping shabab – Wafa’ would never go there. Back in the better old days, there actually used to be three cinemas in the city – one even had a bar – but that was almost two decades ago; and after the first intifada they never reopened. Concerts and theatre performances are popular, but rare; and I have often been warned about the gropers lurking in the small, tree-filled city park. For us women, even the cafés are restricted – most of the traditional coffee shops in the old quarter of the city are men-only.

  But suddenly I have an idea: ‘I know – let’s go to the lingerie market at Souq al-Bastat.’

  A slight pause on the other end of the line. Then Wafa’ says, ‘OK – why not?’

  I heard about Souq al-Bastat a while ago, but none of my local women friends have actually been there. Neither have I, or Wafa’. I tell her I’ll pick her up in half an hour.

  I call Lebanon Taxis, and soon a cab arrives. It’s not Muhammad the driver, but an older, grey-haired man called Harb. His name means ‘War’ but he drives through the streets as though meditating. We collect Wafa’ outside her home and head towards the souq.

  Souq al-Bastat lies just down the road from the al-Zawiya vegetable market, in the old quarter of the city. It’s a long covered market with a series of narrow side passages lined with clothes stalls that you have to push past in order to enter the main body of the souq, where I’ve been told the lingerie section is located. The sun-drenched streets around the souq are crowded. Saturday is the busiest shopping day of the week.

  Harb brakes to a gentle stop beside one of the side entrances to Souq al-Bastat.

  ‘What are you shopping for?’ he asks, with an innocent raise of his grey brows.

  Wafa’ and I glance at each other and start to giggle.

  ‘Oh, we’re just looking around,’
I say, feeling suddenly young and a bit naughty.

  ‘Ah, enjoy your afternoon,’ he blesses us with his quiet smile.

  Wafa’ and I push past stalls of black robes and embroidered jilbabs. Waves of women are surging in both directions, and our bodies rub as we squeeze past each other. Suddenly we are surrounded by bright lights and the passage ends, emptying us into aisles of brimming stalls. We’re in the heart of the souq – and as we look around we see that every stall is decked out in lingerie. It is the most decadent sight I’ve seen in Gaza. I turn to face Wafa’, my mouth wide open. She gives a small shudder of anticipated pleasure.

  ‘Habibti – let’s shop!’

  In a slow, happy trance, we wander from one stall to the next, determined not to miss anything. Wafa’ links her arm through mine, seeming just as thrilled to be here – surrounded by these glorious, flimsy fripperies – as I am. We stop to gaze at an entire section of stalls devoted to belly-dancing outfits: ornate sequinned bras with matching hip-hugging skirts, each fringed with layers of jangling silver coins. There are belly-dancing dresses too, with plunging sequinned necklines and thigh-high splits. This would impress Saida, Maha and Hind next time we decide to dance!

  I hold one or two of the outfits against me, Wafa’ laughs her approval and the stallholder – an elderly Bedouin resting on embroidered cushions among her wares – tells me how beautiful I look … and that she will give me a very good price. But for now we’re just browsing, and thanking her we move on. The next temptation is the furlined negligees in transparent pink, orange and baby blue … spread next to stashes of low-cut, silky nightgowns, gossamer black-lace bodices embroidered with red ribbons, and seamed black fishnet stockings with red suspender belts to match. There are sheer camisoles too, and piles of transparent panties with sequins spelling out LOVE ME just above strategically placed holes, sparkling thongs of every shade, ruffled French knickers, balcony bras and lacy boleros, dressing gowns that cling to curves, and bolts of sheer, shining fabrics for women to make their own creations.

  I’m starting to feel a bit drunk. Wafa’ and I are exclaiming and laughing as we rummage and browse, though I see her glance over her shoulder a few times, making sure we are not attracting too much attention. But the whole shebang is rowdy with shoppers and traders, and young boys with smooth brown faces who flit past with bunches of fresh mint and sage to sell, the fresh earthy fragrance wafting in their wake. I catch the eyes of other browsing women and we exchange easy smiles because we’re all sharing the same playful joke.

  Many of these purveyors of lingerie are munaqabas, and those not fully veiled are clad in black from head to toe. We are on the edge of Shaja’iya, the ‘mixed quarter’ that used to lie just outside the ancient city walls, a district where Christians, Muslims and Jews historically lived side by side. These days Shaja’iya is one of the most conservative districts of Gaza City, yet the atmosphere here is nothing but jovial. The stallholders encourage us to pick up fabrics and run them through our fingers, though sometimes there is very little fabric to feel at all.

  I have money to spend, and want a stash of Gazan lingerie. But many of the items I pick up are definitely too petite for me.

  ‘Do you have anything, er, bigger?’ I ask one of the traders, holding up a black lace bodice with crimson roses spread over the décolleté.

  ‘No, I am sorry. That is the only size I have,’ is his solemn reply.

  He is a bearded older gentleman wearing a traditional white lace taqiyah cap. The stallholders are almost all men. Many have beards and are wearing flowing robes to show they are pious; some are scarred with the revered zebiba prayer callus on their foreheads, from years of devout, five-times-a-day prostrations. Yet these middle-aged fathers and grandfathers seem perfectly at ease flogging sexy lingerie in downtown Gaza City. The only female traders I can see are a handful of older women – like the lady selling the belly-dancing outfits – who all look like Bedouin.

  ‘Why are so many men working here?’ I ask Wafa’.

  ‘It’s considered shameful, y’know, for young women to work in a place like this,’ she says. ‘Like it’s shameful for unmarried women to come here. I can come with you because you’re a foreigner – but not with another unmarried woman or alone. No way! That’s why I’ve never been here before.’

  This treasure house of lingerie is not a Gaza secret; but it’s discreet, tucked away inside a souq in the old quarter, where women can shop for pleasure and indulge their senses; especially munaqabas, or veiled women, whose husbands will be the only other witnesses of whatever they select. I’m as fascinated and repelled as most Westerners by the niqab and the accompanying black robes that swallow the woman wearing them. I have met proud munaqabas who told me how they love their veil, the respect and anonymity that it gives them, and how they would never go outside without covering their face. For them the veil is freedom. Others have told me that the veil protects their skin from the sun and the winter cold, so they look younger. My unveiled friends say munaqabas have many different motives, including being pious, being seen as pious, being forced to wear the veil by pious male relatives, indulging in anonymous love affairs – or slipping away unnoticed after pickpocketing or pilfering from market stalls, their veil cloaking their crimes.

  Munaqabas or not, Muslim brides-to-be choose lingerie for their wedding trousseaux in souqs like this all across the Middle East. Under Islamic law, if a husband cannot satisfy his wife sexually – or vice versa – it is considered legitimate grounds for divorce. And, like people everywhere else in the world, Gazans who are not married to each other, straight and gay, find places to meet, dream and make love. Empty apartments on the edge of the city are lent out to friends for afternoons or evenings of pleasure, and I too have found a lover here.

  Wafa’ and I agree that the lingerie here in Souq al-Bastat looks better than it actually feels. The fabrics are not sensual and silky to touch, but synthetic and scratchy. Like most of the clothes in the street stores, they are mass-produced in Egypt, Turkey or China and enter Gaza via the tunnels down at Rafah. I wonder whether the smugglers realise, or care, that some of the sacks they are hauling through the tunnels contain black lace bodices and crotchless panties.

  I pick out several outfits and, with Wafa’’s approval, purchase three sheer negligees with matching thongs, several bras, and a shimmering camisole embroidered with fake pearls. But Wafa’ does not buy anything.

  ‘If I did get something, where would I keep it, habibti?’ she says with the Gaza shrug. ‘I sure can’t take it home with me.’

  Wafa’ is in her mid-twenties, she studied journalism at university in the States and since returning home to Gaza a year ago, has been working freelance and looking for a permanent job in international media. Like most young unmarried women, she lives with her parents. Hers is a religious family, and she too prays with diligence, studies the Qur’an and dresses with utter modesty, her hijab always covering her hair, throat and neck. She never stays out late in the evening. We once had a long, intense discussion about the rise of female Qur’anic scholars and why she passionately believes Islam needs its own Reformation.

  When we are finally ready to leave the souq, Wafa’ turns to me.

  ‘How about going to Café Mazaj for a while? I can smoke in there.’

  She raises one immaculately plucked eyebrow in question (it’s another local gesture I’m practising because I think it looks really cool). Wafa’ never smokes at home, but always keeps a stash of cigarettes in her red patent-leather handbag – and wouldn’t be seen dead without her carefully applied make-up. She is a muhajaba with attitude.

  Café Mazaj is in al-Rimal district, where I live, and is close to Wafa’’s home too. The café looks out over central Umar al-Mukhtar Street, has comfy beige chairs and framed soft-focus photographs of coffee beans and frothy cappuccinos. Wafa’ chooses a table where she can sit with her back to the rest of the café and enjoy a furtive fag with her caramel latte. Though Islam does not prohibit smoki
ng, respectable and, especially, religious women are expected not to indulge.

  ‘Women here live in fear of our reputations being spoilt,’ she says. ‘It’s – you know – the mixture of religion and culture that makes people here so conservative … and our isolation.’

  While we wait for our coffees, she tells me about her time away, studying in the US.

  ‘I really partied in the States,’ she says, glancing round again. ‘I did everything I wanted to; I even took my hijab off. I could be someone else while I was out there.’

  ‘But doesn’t that make it really hard to be back here now?’

  ‘Sometimes. But this is my home. My family is religious and traditional, so I just have to learn to manage my life here as a Gazan. It’s OK because I know it’s not for ever, just maybe for the next few years; then I will make another plan and move on.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. Because I’m sure that she will.

  ‘Y’know, I like hanging out with you, habibti, because you live in the moment.’

  She says this with a small sigh as smoke curls from between her painted lips.

  ‘What else is there here, apart from the moment?’ I reply without even thinking.

  We look each other in the eyes. And both shrug.

  As Wafa’ sips her latte, I look around the busy café and muse on the fact that it wouldn’t be out of place in central London. When I shift my gaze down onto the busy street just below us, two horse-drawn carriages, one with flashing fairy lights draped across the carriage hood, are parked at the opposite side of the street, waiting for passengers. I smile down at them. Gaza is filled with such surprises.

  The waiter comes over with our lattes and glasses of water. He is a small man called Ali, with a big, beaming smile. When he is gone, I look around again, unwrap a new pack of cigarettes and pass one over to Wafa’.