Meet Me in Gaza Page 3

  When the electricity goes off, so does the heat and hot water, so I light candles and crawl underneath a pile of blankets. The candles are cheap and thin, and melt like lard, but the shops have nothing else. The white flames cast trembling shadows across my living-room walls as I huddle on the couch, lonely and haunted. When I move from the living room to the bathroom or bedroom, the freezing draught sometimes kills the candlelight. So I’m learning to feel my way around my apartment in the pitch dark, using the cold walls as my guide as though I were blind.

  I’m not the only one; Gaza is full of families sharing waning supplies of these cheap candles and fumbling around their cold rooms at night, like moles in damp tunnels. Some people can afford to run generators, but Gaza is also rapidly running out of fuel. Israel has just shut the border crossing used for deliveries of industrial fuel to the Gaza power plant. Meanwhile, Palestinian fighters are launching rockets and mortars from Gaza towards southern Israel, dozens of them, every day.

  Down in the moonlit street, I rummage round in my handbag for another cigarette. I’ve been giving up for years, but there’s no hope for me here because every man seems to smoke, many of the women too. Maybe because they spend so much of their lives waiting. Cigarette in hand, I wrestle with my lighter. I don’t really want to go out tonight. I’m dog-tired and it seems the whole city is under darkness. But Saida has already invited me to visit and she says they have electricity over on the east side tonight.

  I’ve just finished my smoke when I hear the rumble of a car, and headlights glide towards me, picking up the gentle rise and fall of the street. The taxi skids slightly as it pulls over. A man leans across and opens the passenger door. Ah, it’s Muhammad the driver.

  ‘Hello, ya Louisa – sorry, very busy tonight.’

  At least half the male population of Gaza is called Muhammad (or Mahmoud or Ahmad, derivatives of the same name), so to avoid getting utterly confused, I give each Muhammad that I meet his own nickname. Muhammad the driver – a gracious, foul-mouthed skinhead – is one of my favourite cabbies. Another is Yasser, who has a sad face and a twin brother called Arafat.

  As he steers slowly down the street to the crossroads, Muhammad and I banter. He turns right onto Martyrs’ Road and heads towards the city centre just a couple of minutes away. At the next right turn, a car with no lights pulls straight out in front of us. Muhammad brakes hard and I hit the dashboard – but only with my outstretched hands. I’m not wearing a seat belt. No one in Gaza does.

  ‘Fuck you, man!’ my driver shouts at the accelerating car.

  ‘Your language is really terrible!’ I berate him, rubbing my squished hands.

  ‘And your Arabic is very bad!’ he retorts.

  We both chortle. It’s our running joke. Muhammad the driver learnt good English, from years of watching American action movies. So he curses like Robert De Niro. And he’s right about my Arabic.

  As we drive through the city centre, thick clouds start to shroud the fat moon. There are no electric lights to be seen, just silhouettes from candles and lamps in upstairs windows. The street lights are dead, the traffic lights too. We pass weary donkeys pulling cargoes of vegetables, and weary vendors selling cigarettes, cakes, fruit, vegetables and kebabs from candlelit, stationary carts. Muhammad and I fall silent.

  A circle of men are huddled by an open fire. On the next street another group of men are sitting outside at a table, playing cards by the light of a small orange lantern. A little further on, a posse of young boys has gathered around what looks like a burning oil drum. There are no women or girls to be seen. We take another corner, the taxi rattling over potholes as we pass several large warehouses and the ragged shadow of a bombed-out shell of a building. This area is desolate, with just the odd shuffling figure or stray dog, and occasionally, another car. I have never seen a power cut across an entire city like this. Gaza looks different tonight. Older and even more haggard. It feels different too – stripped to its bare bones. It is as if Muhammad and I have slipped through a portal and suddenly found ourselves sucked back in time to Liverpool or London during the Blitz.

  ‘I feel like we’re driving back in time, Muhammad.’

  ‘We are, ya Louisa.’

  When we reach the district of al-Tuffah – Apple district – where Saida lives, the power has been cut here too. But even in the moonlight this doesn’t look like al-Rimal, where I live. The streets are narrower and the buildings look dingy and squashed together. I call Saida on her jawaal, or mobile phone. She gives Muhammad directions and says her sister, Maha, will wait for me outside the front gate. This is the first time that I’ve visited her home. When we pull up, Maha is standing beside the gate, sheltering a candle in her cupped hands. She raises the candle to beckon me and I see her serious face. Waving to Muhammad, I follow her through the gate into a small courtyard, where dozens of ceramic pots are laid out in neat rows like pieces of chess. I used to live with a potter and instinctively stoop to examine them. They’re delicately hand-painted, though I can’t make out the motifs in this candlelight, which makes them appear old though I can still smell the varnish.

  Some 4,000 years ago, when Gaza was part of vast ancient Egypt, its local craftsmen were already known for creating fine jewellery and delicate red-and-black ceramics. But the early populations of Gaza shifted like the Mediterranean sands; waves of immigrants arrived along this coastline by land and sea, all wanting to control this strategic crossroads between empires, cultures and continents.

  Some time around 1200 BC the incoming ‘Sea Peoples’ included fleets of vicious warriors from Crete and Cyprus who wore tasselled kilts, built their own chariots and called themselves ‘the Philistines’. The Pharaohs defeated them, but couldn’t oust them – and over time the land became known as Philistia, ‘Land of the Philistines’, the genesis of the word ‘Palestine’. When the Pharaohs established a Pentapolis of five city states within Philistia, Gaza emerged as the most powerful. But foreign invaders came thick and fast, galloping along the ancient Via Maris, or ‘Way of the Sea’, which ran parallel to the Mediterranean. These invaders – Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians and many others – battled, conquered, slaughtered, raped, enslaved, gouged, flayed and impaled each other, and the local populations. And amid these frenzied power struggles, including clashes between the Philistines and the Israelites, ordinary Gazans got on with their lives: the fishermen fished, the potters threw their clay and girls like Maha married young and raised their kids to be proud and tough.9 All these millennia later, a handful of traditional potters still survive in Gaza. I imagine them as men with dull skin and dry hands who spend their lives in cramped workshops with crooked, stained walls inherited from their forefathers – like this one, tucked inside an unlit courtyard in the Apple district of east Gaza City.

  Maha coughs, startling me. ‘Yallah (Let’s go),’ she says, impatiently. I stand up and follow her across the courtyard and through a doorway with no door. As we climb up bare concrete steps, I shiver and realise the big windowpanes set into the walls have no glass and the wind is knifing straight through.

  Saida is standing at the top of the stairs. The first time I met her she was wearing a headscarf, but now her dark hair hangs thick and loose down to her shoulders. She pulls me towards her and embraces me like she has lost and found me again.

  ‘Habibti, welcome! Come inside – my mother is waiting for you!’

  Just a few months ago, Saida was living in Ramallah, on the West Bank, where I first met her through her elder sister, Alla’, whom I worked with. Alla’ and Saida are both from Gaza. Alla’ introduced me to her younger sister because, after nine years in Ramallah, Saida had decided to come back to her family in Gaza, while Alla’ was staying put in Ramallah with her husband and two young kids.

  Saida and I stand in the doorway smiling at each other. I’m touched by the way she’s greeted me, but I only met her a few times in Ramallah, on social occasions, so I don’t quite know what to say now. She introduces me formally to Maha,
who is standing watching us.

  ‘My sister can speak English, but she does not like to,’ says Saida.

  Maha shrugs.

  ‘Habibti!’ A fat woman pads down the corridor. It must be Saida’s mother. She wraps me in a big soft hug, pulling me to her enormous bosom, and calls me Leeza.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ she asks. ‘I have made dinner for you.’

  ‘Khalas! (Enough!) Let her come through the door and meet everyone first,’ Saida scolds her mother with stern affection. ‘And then we’ll eat!’

  Her mother sweeps me into a kitchen with red walls, several pots steaming on the stove. As we scrape chairs around the table, Saida’s father and brother come to greet me too. When her father, Nadim, places his right hand over the left side of his chest, just above his heart, I instinctively step forward with my right hand extended.

  ‘No!’ hisses Saida. ‘My father, he does not shake hands with women!’

  Oh, shit! I blush in the dark. I know some religious men and women don’t shake hands with anyone of the opposite sex outside their immediate family, or even make direct eye contact, to guard against fitnah, or temptation. My cheeks are hot, but Saida, her mother and Maha laugh aloud and Nadim casts me a wry smile as he retreats from the kitchen. I don’t see him again all evening. In fact, I never see very much of him even though Saida and her family become my sanctuary in Gaza. It’s a long time before I find out about Nadim’s former life as one of Palestine’s legendary footballers, who refused to play for any other team, no matter what they offered him. Now retired from professional football, he spends much of his time with his son, Muhammad – who stands in the kitchen doorway, staring, until Saida tells him to come in and greet me too.

  Muhammad beams, giggles and stares at the floor, his stubby fingers clasped together. He’s in his early twenties and has Down’s syndrome. Eyes still cast to the floor, he tells me that he loves Fatah and Yasser Arafat. And then, as though daring himself, throws up a brief, bashful smile.

  Saida, Maha, Muhammad, their mother and I eat together by candlelight in the small cluttered kitchen, our dinner a feast of chicken in rich brown broth served with mounds of maftoul, homemade couscous infused with herbs, olive oil, lemon and fiery fresh chillies. The chopped salad is laced with parsley and drenched in lemon, salt and more olive oil. Saida’s mother – her name is Hind – heaps more onto my plate with her spoon and her meaty hands until I resort to covering my plate with my hands in protest. But I love this food.

  Sated, our hands washed, we move the candles into the family lounge, which is cold as a tomb. We wrap ourselves in blankets and huddle close together, slurping tiny cups of muddy Arabic coffee and nibbling at wedges of a thick semolina cake soaked with syrup.

  Hind sits down with a heavy sigh and turns to me.

  ‘Leeza, how is my daughter Alla’ and her children? I didn’t see them since four years.’ Hind tells me she has seen her grandchildren just once or twice since they were born. ‘My eldest son is outside Gaza too, in Chicago. He’s a journalist.’ She hasn’t seen him for five years either. Though Ramallah, where Alla’ and her family live, is ninety minutes’ drive from Gaza in a fast car, it might as well be Chicago. I tell Hind that I saw Alla’ and the kids just a few weeks ago. They are all doing well, but they miss her. She pulls a tissue out of a box and turns her head away.

  After a moment she says, her voice thick, ‘You like Ramallah, Leeza?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Life is so easy over there – why you came here?’

  ‘Because I have a job here and I want to see Gaza for myself.’

  ‘You think the people in Ramallah like us?’

  ‘Some of them. Not all.’

  The animosity is ingrained. When I took Arabic lessons in Ramallah, from a Gazan university student, some of my liberal West Bank Palestinian friends mocked my ‘village’ accent. I’ve heard West Bankers describe Gazans as primitive villagers and as crazies who cannot be trusted – and heard Gazans complain bitterly about West Bankers despising them and doing nothing to break this choking siege. Israel’s divide-and-rule policy has helped turn Gaza and the West Bank into bitter divorcees, to Israel’s own short-term advantage.10

  Because my Arabic is basic and stilted, Saida translates most of my conversation with her mother. When Hind goes to pray in her bedroom, Saida and I sit and face each other on the couch.

  ‘What is it like, being back here?’ I ask her.

  ‘I am happy to see my family again,’ she says. ‘I was away from Gaza for a long time and I really missed them. I like being close to my mother and my father – you see, they are simple people, but they are good. When I was in the West Bank, I was lonely without my family. I am not like my sister, you know.’

  I can see this already. Her sister, Alla’, never wears the hijab, has untamed curls – and a temper like the sea at high tide. Saida, on the other hand, has almost straight hair, scraped off her face and restrained with a large grip. Her face is brown and serious. She has big, dark eyes and a small scar raked above her left brow. Her voice is even and strong.

  ‘You see our life in Gaza, habibti. We suffer because of the Israelis and there is nothing to do but to work and to hope our situation improves,’ she says. ‘I want to be happy here, but – who can be happy in Gaza? I tell you, things are worse now than before I left nine years ago. We did not have to sit at home like this before, eating our food in the dark. I don’t know if coming back was the right decision for me. But I am here now.’

  She tells me she trained as an economist in the West Bank. Now she’s job hunting, and volunteering at another local human rights organisation, hoping they will offer her paid work. She excuses herself to pray.

  While she’s gone I look round the room, at the crimson couches, embroidered cushions and gold curtain drapes, and rub life back into my cold hands. Saida returns within minutes with a tray of hot sweet tea and a plate of local oranges. We share the cold, sweet segments between us and compare notes on Ramallah, which already feels like a far-away country to both of us. In Ramallah we went to different venues and mixed with very different crowds; our paths rarely crossed. She is serious and sober, with brief flashes of warm humour. I really like her.

  But it is getting late, so I call Lebanon Taxis for a ride home, though I don’t feel like leaving. I am comfortable here and hope they’ll invite me back again soon.

  The taxi beeps from the street. I stand to go and Saida stands up too. She takes my hands and says to me, almost fiercely, ‘This is your home in Gaza – come here whenever you like, you are always welcome.’ She hugs me again and calls her mother and sister.

  ‘Next time I will cook malfuf,’ says Hind, referring to another local favourite of steamed cabbage leaves stuffed with rice and meat. This lady really likes her food.

  Maha escorts me back to the taxi, holding a candle stub above our heads so we don’t stumble down the steps. Outside the moon glows above the still dark and silent streets.

  After that evening, Saida calls me most days, ‘just to know you’re OK, habibti.’ Often we meet up after work, in the al-Deira Hotel café, just down the street from my office. We sit in our coats, drinking thick strawberry juice from the glut of Gaza’s winter strawberry harvest, or sahlab, a hot creamy drink traditionally made from dried wild orchid tubers, sweetened with honey, cinnamon and nuts. Sometimes Saida smokes a narghile water pipe that bubbles and perfumes the air around us with apple-scented smoke. She is as stern with me as she’s protective, but occasionally lets herself go for a moment, throws her hands up into the air and bursts into laughter.

  Outside, just beyond the hotel terrace, the Mediterranean sparkles and rolls. We can see the decrepit, picturesque port, a modern version of the ancient port that stood just north of the city, where pagans once worshipped their god of fertility, Dagon.

  Every day is clear, cold sunshine, only a rare cloud in the sky. No one told me Gaza could be so beautiful.

  When we get fed up sitting around th
e al-Deira, Saida takes me shopping. We stand at the roadside, she flags down an ancient yellow six-door Mercedes and we squeeze inside with the other women on the back seats. It is a public taxi, ferrying people around the city for 2 shekels a ride, about 30 pence.11 This is my first ride in a public taxi, and the only thing that happens is that lots of people smile and say marhaba to me. Ten minutes later we climb out. Saida takes my hand in hers, guiding me like a child amid the crowds in a busy local shopping street and through the mouth of an unlit alley that spits us out into a long, narrow food market.

  ‘This is Souq al-Zawiya, and it is a good place for fresh fruit and vegetables, habibti,’ she says as we step over and around thick wires from small diesel generators roaring all around us, like angry beasts illuminating the souq. We wade through the crowd, Saida still firmly clasping my hand. When she stops to buy vegetables, I browse nearby. The swarthy traders are selling beef tomatoes and strong onions, trays of black olives slicked in oil, aubergines, red and green peppers, sheaves of parsley, dried herbs, herbs in oil – and pyramids of local strawberries so perfectly ripe I can still smell them through the heavy odours of sweat, piss, meat, mint, sage and rotting vegetables.

  I buy a bag of silver-green sage leaves to drink with my tea, and a dollop of fil-fil, a red chilli paste in oil that comes in a little plastic sac. Saida says it will flavour fried vegetables and chicken, ‘but only use a little, habibti,’ she warns me, ‘you are not Gazan and it tastes like fire!’

  When we emerge from the souq, the sudden darkness startles me. It looks so late, I check my mobile for the time. It’s only 6.30 in the evening, but it looks and feels like midnight. Saida and I are on a long street, lined on both sides with small stores selling clothes and scarves, and black, floor-length jilbab coats for women. Again I feel a visceral sense of being sucked back in time. As we start walking, I see these stores are all candlelit, each filled with shadows like those that haunt my living room.