Meet Me in Gaza Read online

  ‘I cannot believe it!’ She shakes her head, pushing her hair out of her eyes. ‘I thought I knew my city so well, but I never saw it like this before, so beautiful …!’

  Travellers, scholars, pilgrims and kings have all been beguiled by Gaza over the centuries. During the Hellenic era that followed Alexander the Great’s conquest of Gaza, the city was rebuilt and repopulated. It became a citadel to protect the ancient ‘Way of the Sea’ towards Egypt and communities of Arabs and Bedouin tribes settled in and around the city. A great library is said to have attracted scholars and scientists from across the region, including the city of Alexandria. Once again, Gaza prospered.

  How I would love to have seen Gaza in these medieval times and wandered its spice-and incense-decked streets, relishing the unwashed, perfumed chaos! Imagine the sites and stories … But now, millennia later, I have an acute sense that I could be looking down on some old-fashioned holiday resort; a rambling, sunny seaside city with a popular beach, arcades, restaurants and bars – the kind of place that families return to faithfully, year after year, like an affectionate old friend.

  I wander over to the other side of the large roof terrace, stepping around a wired-up satellite dish. Now my perspective shifts. I see green fields in the distance, stretching to the northern border with Israel, and the barriers that surround Gaza – barriers with watchtowers, like photographs of the Berlin Wall before it was torn apart. I can’t see them from here, but I know there are also large white spheres suspended over the northern and eastern borders with Israel. They look like big white balloons, but they are actually Israeli listening devices, sucking up every sound we make inside Gaza. And on a day as clear as this, you can sometimes see white unmanned aerial vehicles – drones – circling the sky above us, audibly buzzing as they take constant video and stills images. Gazans call them zananas (mosquitoes). But they make people here flinch, because some carry lethal missiles.23

  Gaza – one of the oldest, most isolated and most closely surveilled cities on earth – has always lived under foreign occupation … never been free to choose its own fate. But every single one of its occupiers has, sooner or later, been ousted by the next.

  Wissam steps out onto the roof terrace. ‘You like my view?’ He takes off his gold-rimmed aviator shades and blinks in the early afternoon sun. He’s beaming, but the skin beneath his eyes is a shade darker, like he hasn’t had much sleep lately. His office is just a few steps below the terrace and he invites us to come back inside and drink coffee.

  As Niveen and I move towards the steps, Wissam says to me, ‘We often film up here, you know. Sometimes we are shooting live footage, panning across the city – and my foreign colleagues are on the phone shouting, “Hey, man, c’mon – where the hell are you?” Because they don’t actually believe this could be Gaza.’

  coffee and cigarettes

  When we leave the TV tower, Niveen and I stand outside on Umar al-Mukhtar Street, not quite sure what to do next, both of us a bit dazed after seeing Gaza from the air. After a few moments she says, ‘Let’s go and drink coffee somewhere and sit for a while. I know a quiet café down by the beach.’

  The café she takes me to is at the southern edge of the city, just beyond the modern port. It’s a truly ugly building, the outside walls pasted in cracked seashells, but it is right next to the beach, with an unbroken view of the Mediterranean. Niveen knows the owner, a portly man also called Muhammad, who greets us both like friends. We choose a corner of the café terrace, a little sun-trap, and he goes off to make the coffee. We seem to be the only customers.

  Niveen and I sit gazing out to sea. We both light up cigarettes and neither of us exchanges a word until Muhammad returns with our coffees, two glasses of water and an ashtray. He leaves us to it and we sit in silence again. But it’s a nice, easy silence and I feel no need to break it. I just rest in the sun, enjoying the view, the salt-tinged air on my face and the strong, cardamom-scented coffee. I suddenly feel very relaxed.

  ‘My husband loved the sea,’ says Niveen.

  I look over at her after a while. She is gazing ahead, with a soft, sad expression on her face. I don’t reply because I am not sure who she’s talking to right now.

  ‘When I was young, I wanted to marry an ex-prisoner and give myself to my country. My husband was eleven years older than me, and when I met him he had just been released after seventeen years in jail in Israel. Sarah, my daughter, was born in 1987, the year after we married – and my son Fadil was born the year after that. Fadil was just a few months old when the Israelis came back for my husband. He was still an activist in the PFLP (the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and they kept him in Israeli administrative detention for six months.24 And for that half a year I did not know if he was dead or alive. Afterwards, they sentenced him to five years, and I visited him in jail every month for those five years. So hard, so humiliating! We women would get up at 2 AM and hope to be at the Israeli jail by 10 AM for the visit. Yes … those years were hard, and the visits were hard, and when he came out of jail it was hard too. I had dedicated myself to working and studying, so that I could provide for our children while he could not. When he was released, I had my own identity and agency as a Gazan woman, and we were both different people.’

  She shakes her head and lights another cigarette, still gazing ahead, and her voice picks up again:

  ‘Other Gazan women, you know, they blamed me for being ambitious and not giving my attention to my husband. When I was accepted to study my Masters in the UK, I took Sarah to live with me, and Fadil stayed here with his father. Afterwards, when we came back to Gaza, my husband treated me very badly. I asked for a divorce, but he threatened to take the children away and eventually I gave in, because I wanted to keep my children. So we stayed married and I learned to manage the situation because I had to – and then he was ashamed. He bought me a small piece of land outside the city and planted yellow roses there for me because I love yellow roses.’

  She sighs. Traffic rumbles along the street behind us. The waves break.

  ‘Four years ago, a university in Wales offered me a place to study my PhD. I took Sarah with me again. My husband understood this time. But while we were in Wales he had a heart attack. He was on our land and he died right there, next to the yellow roses. But we couldn’t reach Gaza in time to bury him because Erez was shut. And that’s why my daughter hates Gaza and why she will never come back here. Because she loved her father, and the Israelis prevented her from burying him.’

  ‘So where is she now?’

  ‘In Cairo. Studying. My dream is to go back to Wales and finish my PhD and take my children with me, so we can live together as a family again.’

  We look at each other. Niveen smiles, but her face looks weary and a little haggard.

  ‘But at least I could visit my husband when he was in jail,’ she says, ‘not like our women now. You know, the Israelis have prevented them from visiting their men in jail since Hamas took over.’

  Every Monday morning, a crowd of some 200 women gather in a courtyard just outside the Gaza City office of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The women clasp photographs of their husbands, sons, brothers and a few daughters, all of them prisoners inside jails in Israel. More than 900 Gazan men, and 4 women, are in Israeli jails, and since the Hamas takeover, Gazan families have been denied all rights to visit them.25 I went to the vigil recently with one of my colleagues, and one of the women there told me she has not laid eyes on her son for six years now. But like the rest of this silent flock, she returns to the courtyard every Monday morning to take her place, clasp the photograph of her son and wait.

  zift

  Early spring arrives, the days get longer and more foreign visitors start arriving; most of them are journalists, aid workers, or foreign delegates on fleeting two-day visits. My landlord, Abu Ali, has a few small apartments in our building that he rents out to the handful of foreign visitors who are free to roam the city like me. The majority
of expats inside Gaza work for the local United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and are confined to their offices and compounds and a few security-vetted venues like the al-Deira Hotel.

  On the streets, people stare at me and I stare back. Women and children stop me on my way to and from work and ask me to take off my sunglasses, just so that they can gaze up at my blue-grey eyes. When I got here, I presumed most Gazans would have dark skin, dark hair and brown eyes. Many do, but others are blond and pale, there are blacks too, a smattering of redheads with blue-green eyes, and I’ve even seen one or two albinos. Gazan people reflect roots extending back to so many different places – the Middle East, Europe and Africa; they are Arabs and Christians, Bedouin, refugees and immigrants. Just a quarter of the local population can trace their families’ origins to within the modern Gaza Strip.

  On my way to work one morning, I bump into a white-haired gentleman on the stairs. He’s a foreigner wearing a faded denim cap studded with a dozen silver badges and his brown face is creased as a paper bag. He looks like an old sea dog. Coming down the stairs just behind him is a young man, a Gazan. We step outside into the sunshine and introduce ourselves. The white-haired guy is an American photographer called Skip. The young man beside him is Mahmoud, his interpreter. Mahmoud has short, tight black curls and a goatee beard and is dressed as though on his way to a business meeting.

  Skip suddenly snaps his fingers; he’s left something in his room. He turns around and trudges back upstairs.

  ‘Do you speak Arabic?’ Mahmoud asks me, in Arabic.

  ‘Yes, I’m learning.’ We converse in Arabic for a few minutes. I tell him about my recent ‘capsize’ triumph with the local posse of shabab and he laughs out loud.

  ‘You should come and talk to the shabab in Jabalya camp, where I live!’ he says. ‘Have you been to Jabalya?’

  ‘Yes, but just for work.’

  ‘Here’s my mobile number. Call me when you are free and come up for lunch.’

  ‘Shukran (Thank you),’ I say. ‘That would be nice.’

  Jabalya, up in northern Gaza, consists of a town and a refugee camp that lie side by side, like a lumpy old married couple. The town is considered the better place to live, though it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. Like everywhere else in Gaza, Jabalya has an epic history of shifting populations who between them have shaped the contours of this land. Jabalya used to be famous for its fertile fields and vast orchards of fruit trees; these days the refugee camp is one of the most densely populated places on earth.

  I call Mahmoud a few days later and we arrange to meet at the gas station next to the main souq in Jabalya camp. When Muhammad the driver and I reach the gas station, the streets surrounding the souq are heaving with traders, pedestrians, taxis and knackered-looking donkeys. The streets are narrower here and the houses smaller; the traffic flows in all directions, and noise ricochets off every surface. People shout, engines backfire and donkeys bray. Muhammad the driver tells me to wait inside the car until Mahmoud arrives. I take my cigarettes out of my bag; whenever I’m waiting for something, or someone, I reach for them now, like a reflex.

  ‘Louisa, don’t smoke here,’ he says. ‘We are not in the city now. The camp is different.’

  ‘Oh, OK.’

  ‘Shit, man, this place is crowded. We Gazans have too many children – like cats!’

  ‘Or rabbits.’

  ‘Yes, but we eat all the rabbits!’ Muhammad quips.

  I have to laugh. Rabbits are popular in Gaza; families keep battery cages of them in their gardens and courtyards, for the pot. A store at the bottom of my street sells them alongside cages of squawking, stinking hens.

  I see Mahmoud approaching and he spots me getting out of the taxi. He’s dressed in sharp black and white again, his hair gleaming and his goatee freshly razored. Most Gazans are well turned out, but there’s something polished about Mahmoud. I wave goodbye to Muhammad and shake hands with Mahmoud.

  ‘You look good,’ I say.

  ‘I am a Jabalya dandy!’ he grins.

  Mahmoud and I walk through the camp towards his house. When we turn off the main street, the wall of noise falls away. Now we’re on a sandy side street, the walls either side daubed in red graffiti. Small dark kids streak ahead of us in bare feet, shouting ‘Hello, hello!’ A few shout, ‘Shalom, shalom!’

  ‘Too many visits from the Israeli soldiers!’ grins Mahmoud. I tell him I get this in the city too sometimes, from kids who think any foreigner in Gaza must be an Israeli. The only foreigners many Gazan children have ever met are Israeli soldiers and settlers.

  Mahmoud lives with his family in the south-eastern stretch of the camp. We enter their building via a small courtyard.

  ‘My family is lucky,’ he says, as we climb the stairs up to their second-floor apartment. ‘We have space in my house. Many families in the camp are sharing one or two rooms between all of them.’

  The living room has thin patterned mattresses to sit on. Mahmoud tells me to make myself comfortable and goes off into the kitchen. I can hear him laughing with someone, and clattering in the kitchen, as the smell of meat and herbs wafts under the door. I would much rather hang out in the kitchen, like I do with Saida and her family, but as a first-time guest here, this is my designated place. It’s different with Saida’s family now. I spend time in the kitchen with her mother, Hind, watching as she makes her soups, her malfouf and maftoul. I love the way that Hind cooks, sniffing the ingredients to make sure they are fresh, flinging them into pots, tasting the dishes with her fingers at every stage, adding more filfil, lemon juice or handfuls of olive oil. She is a sensuous cook and an affectionate matriarch. Sometimes when I arrive at their home, Hind calls me into her bedroom where she often rests and I sprawl next to her, laying my head on her bosom like a young child as she strokes my hair.

  After a while Mahmoud appears, brandishing a large metal dish in both hands.

  ‘Kabsah!’ He lays the dish on the low table with a flourish. Kabsah is not fiery, but a delicacy of rice inlaid with fried almonds, onions, sultanas and herbs, served with seasoned fried meat. We tuck in and as soon as the rice cools a little, we abandon our spoons and just use our fingers, scooping the rice up with warm flatbread, too happy eating to talk.

  Finally, stuffed, we slump against the cushions and grin at each other. A young woman comes into the room to take away our plates, then brings us coffee. Mahmoud thanks her and she smiles at my Arabic as she disappears back into the kitchen.

  ‘Let’s go; we can drink our coffee outside,’ he says.

  We carry our cups down to the courtyard, now lying in half-shade, and settle ourselves on white plastic chairs. Out on the streets I hear rasping car engines, people shouting to each other and an ambulance siren wailing like a lost child. Mahmoud has a narghile water pipe and starts filling it with the molasses-coated, apple-flavoured tobacco I smell wafting from café doorways across the city.

  ‘Are there many dandies in Jabalya?’ I ask him.

  He looks up from his tobacco stuffing, throws back his head and laughs.

  ‘We have dandies and dancers here in our zift refugee camp, habibti!’

  Mahmoud is 24 years old. He used to work with the Palestinian Authority (PA) Presidential Guards, aligned with the Fatah movement, Hamas’s political opponent and enemy. After its takeover of Gaza, Hamas sacked all Gazan policemen and security personnel in the pay of the PA. Like thousands of other PA employees, Mahmoud still receives his salary, but cannot go back to his old job. The PA still pays thousands of salaries in Gaza; it wants to keep its redundant staff on side, fears them drifting towards the arms of Hamas, especially in the camps, where the movement is strongest. But Gazans are, by necessity, innovators and these days Mahmoud has several different jobs. He works as an interpreter and also at a local youth centre; he makes short films about life for young people inside Gaza; and he helps out with a local dance troupe based at the youth centre.

  ‘The work at the youth
centre is the best,’ he says. ‘We make sure all the boys and girls spend time together, and they dance together too. You know, we always remind them that there is nothing wrong with boys and girls mixing for fun. The day Hamas stops us working like this, then I will leave the centre for good.’ He exhales a thick ribbon of white smoke, wipes the mouth of his pipe with a tissue, then offers me the pipe. ‘I can’t always speak my mind about these things here in the camp because I have to live here too,’ he says, his voice dropping. ‘But I want to tell you something, and I want to ask you something. OK?’

  ‘OK.’ I coil the narghile pipe on my lap, like a striped serpent.

  ‘We get a lot of foreign visitors here, especially delegations who come to Gaza just for one or two days. Often they come to Jabalya camp – because it has a very bad reputation, so of course they want to see it. And I meet with them because I live here and I speak English. But they always want to see the worst things here. They are like this’ – he mimes someone shooting photos, one after the other, his index finger pressing an imaginary shutter button – ‘“Look! Look! See over there: something terrible or broken or ugly. Snap, Snap, Snap, Snap!” So tell me, Louisa, why do these foreigners always concentrate on what is zift? They always want me to tell them how zift things are here. And if they send me an email after they leave, they just want to know about the zift situation. Only what is zift. What about us and our dreams?’

  ‘What are your dreams?’ I raise the striped pipe to my lips and inhale.

  ‘My dreams? To be free to walk along the beach with my girlfriend and hold her hand without people watching and talking; and to get married for love, and live in a house with soft lights from lamps – not these strips of bright white lights we all have in our houses, like prison lights. I dream of living in a place where I can really relax and not always have to talk or even think about the fucking zift situation.’