Meet Me in Gaza (24 page)

I don’t want to go to Brussels tonight.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asks me. ‘Do you have other plans for this evening?’

I do have other plans for this evening: Sakhar has assured me that he is free tonight. But I give the director a wide smile and tell him I’d be delighted to go.

Sakhar is not the only reason I am so reluctant to go to Brussels tonight. I don’t want to leave Gaza because it involves crossing Erez, and I can already feel the knot in my guts pinching at the thought of the X-ray machine, the cameras, the security checks and questions, and the nagging anxiety that on my return I will not be allowed back inside the Strip. But no one else from the Centre can attend this conference; I’m the only one who
can
leave for Tel Aviv airport this afternoon.

When I leave the director’s office, Shadi is standing outside in the corridor.

‘Six thousand, six hundred and sixty-six
mabrouk
!’ he cries out. ‘You are so lucky!’

He gives me a hug and I wish with all my heart that it was him going to Brussels tonight. Shadi is still spending much of his time helping the Free Gaza crew, some of whom have decided to stay here for quite a while. Being a human rights activist is not only Shadi’s job, it dominates most of his life. I promise to bring him back a bottle of decent whisky and a box of his beloved red Gauloises.

As I finish off bits and pieces, so that I can leave early, Joumana and a dozen other colleagues all pop into my office to tell me how lucky I am and how pleased they are for me.

‘Put me in your luggage,
habibti
!’ says one of the Centre fieldworkers, a young woman with a radiant, smiling face and a neat three-month pregnancy bump.

By the time I leave the Centre, I am clasping a long list of duty-free perfumes, cigarettes and drinks to bring back from the world my colleagues cannot reach.

I walk home and start packing. I am nervous and smoke while I’m packing. I’ve already tried to ring Sakhar but his work number is engaged. I call Saida to tell her I will be away for the next week or so.

‘
Mabrouk, habibti
!’ she says, like everyone else. She asks if I can visit her sister, Alla’, in the West Bank while I’m outside. I am their go-between, bringing gifts, hugs and kisses from one arm of the family to the other. But I have to tell Saida that I don’t think I can visit Alla’ this time; I will be coming straight back to Gaza from Brussels. Even speaking these words aloud sounds strange now. I ask Saida if she wants anything from outside.

‘Just come back soon,
habibti
, and come back happy. We need you to be happy for us,’ she says, in that calm, restrained voice that I know so well.

I call Sakhar’s mobile. But that number is busy too. He calls me when I’m in the taxi en route to the Erez crossing. It’s mid-afternoon, a good hour before the crossing closes, but Erez is never predictable.

‘You’re leaving me!’ He croons down the phone and even though I know something has changed between us, I feel myself flush. I can’t say much because I am sitting next to Harb, the taxi driver. I tell Sakhar I will call him from the airport.

Harb and I have to stop at the Hamas checkpoint close to the Palestinian side of no-man’s-land. A bearded Hamas officer (most of them have beards) writes my name down with great care and asks politely whether I am coming back to Gaza. I tell him I expect to return in about a week – and we are done.

When we reach the edge of no-man’s-land, I ask Harb if he would like something from outside. Muhammad the driver has a new job with an international organisation, so I take a lot of taxis with Harb these days and have become very fond of him. Harb shakes his grey head and tells me that he doesn’t need anything.

‘Belgium,’ he says slowly, rolling the word around his mouth. ‘I cannot imagine Belgium.’

He turns his taxi round, to drive back into Gaza. I wave, then walk over to the portacabin, to hand in my passport and wait for coordination to cross no-man’s-land. It is strange and unnerving how relatively easy it is for me to leave Gaza. And this afternoon I don’t even have to wait very long to cross. After just twenty minutes or so, I am told that I can proceed.

When I step out of the portacabin, I see Debby and a few of the other Free Gaza crew sitting on a bench. They must have just arrived while I was in the portacabin.

‘Where are you going?’ they want to know.

‘To Brussels.’

‘Wow!’ they chorus.

‘When are
you
leaving Gaza?’ I ask Debby.

‘We can’t leave. We can’t get permits to cross Erez; and we tried to get out at Rafah, but the Egyptians turned us back,’ she says. ‘We are Palestinians now.’

‘No you’re not!’ I snap at her. ‘Someone will get you out – you’ll be able to leave Gaza soon. Because you’re
not
Palestinians.’

Apart from the Free Gaza posse on the bench, the crossing is very quiet today. The only other people around are a few taxi drivers waiting for arrivals, and the local porters who ferry people’s luggage to the gates of the Israeli side of the crossing. The porters are all Hanounis; they earn tips for carrying luggage and bicker bitterly among themselves about whose turn it is to take my suitcase this afternoon.

A skinny man with a small head wins the job, hoicks my case onto his narrow shoulders and we set off across no-man’s-land, towards the mouth of the tunnel that leads into the main Erez crossing terminal. Though it is mid-November, the sun still feels like it’s roasting the earth. I have the strangest feeling about this trip; in fact, I have an almost violent urge to turn round and run straight back into Gaza. I don’t know what’s up with me today; maybe I am just nervy about the bloody crossing. I walk on beside the porter. There is no path for me and him to follow; we weave our way around rocks and rubble. To my right, I can see the Swailams’ row of white cottages and a thick splash of green where their vegetables are ripening. To my left, the shattered remains of some other buildings, reduced to tottering wooden frames and piles of stone. Just a few hours from now, I will be in another universe; sitting at a hotel bar drinking cold beer from a frosted glass shaped like a vase. I’m aware that I have barely said a word to the porter. I have nothing to say to anyone right now. As we approach the tunnel, I’m just possessed by the thought that everyone has heard of Gaza and most people will never see inside this Strip for themselves.

We reach the tunnel. Inside, the air is cooler. The roof, high as a cathedral, is covered with a ripped red tarp that flaps like a bird’s torn wing. The uneven floor is made of stone. I’m thirsty. At the end of the tunnel is a gate of metal bars that opens onto the walkway leading into the main building. When the porter pulls the gate, it swings open with a whine like human nails scraping a board.

This porter can go no further. I thank and tip him, and with a brief nod he is gone. As I step onto the walkway, a second porter appears like a magician’s assistant. They each have their pitches. Taking my bags, he escorts me along the walkway to a series of metal doors embedded in a wall. He presses a buzzer. One of the doors clicks open. We step into a wide passage, where two tables lie side by side, in front of another barred gate. The porter lifts my bag onto one of the tables, opens it and waves towards a camera tilted towards us. I wonder how he does this every day, ferrying travellers’ bags almost to the border, then going back for the next job lot, without any hope of crossing himself. But this is no place for small talk. A light above the gate flicks green. I offer the porter a tip. He looks aghast. I think it’s generous and refuse to give him any more. I step through the gate; he retreats back inside the Gaza wall.

I’m inside the main terminal building. The walls are straight and hard-edged. I enter the security area, where my bags are lifted onto an airport-style conveyor belt and opened. I lay the contents of my handbag out on a tray like a meal. The security guard and I acknowledge each other briefly.

My luggage moves away. I step through a glass door, then another, and enter a transparent tube, where I place my feet over the footprints painted on the floor and raise my arms. The doors shut and rotate with a swoosh as I am X-rayed. When the door opens in front of me, I step forward. A disembodied voice says in English, ‘No. Go back inside, please.’

I reverse back inside and am X-rayed again and again. After the third X-ray I know something is up. The voice instructs me to go through the door on my right and wait. Fuck, fuck, fuck! This is the door that Gazans and foreigners crack morbid jokes about – the door that leads to the interrogation rooms. As I open it, I remember the reports from earlier this year of women being subjected to humiliating strip searches by the private security firm inside Erez. I feel as disembodied as the voice giving me instructions. I step into a narrow corridor, with a door at either end.

‘Walk to the door straight ahead of you, open the door and go inside,’ says the voice. I do so and the door clicks shut behind me. Now I am standing on a grid floor, and between the bars I can see the ground, maybe 10 metres below me. I feel wobbly, brace myself. Because I know this room.

In August 2008 a prominent NGO (Physicians for Human Rights) – Israel published an exposé of Gazan patients being subject to extortion by the Israeli security services at the Erez crossing.
⁴⁵
During the first half of this year, 35 per cent of Gaza patients who required treatment outside the Strip were refused exit permits by the Israeli authorities. Some of the 100 patients interviewed for this report, who included individuals with terminal diagnoses, said that they had been interrogated in underground rooms, or rooms with a grid floor, by Israeli officers who spoke to them from behind bulletproof glass. While undergoing interrogation, patients were asked to become informants for the Israeli security services in return for being allowed to proceed across Erez and receive their medical treatment in Israel, the West Bank or a third country. According to patients’ testimonies, if their responses did not satisfy the Israeli General Security Services (GSS) interrogators, they were sent back to Gaza. One Gazan patient was told by an Israeli security officer: ‘If you want to go to the hospital, take my private cellphone number, talk to me and give me information about people.’ Patients who were refused permission to cross into Israel after such interrogation included a man diagnosed with cancer of the lymph glands and a man with a degenerative eye disease who was going blind. These patients’ testimonies were gathered by the Centre where I work, and I have read them, including the testimony of a Gazan patient who was brought into a room with a grid ‘iron floor’ where he could see the ground several metres below.

An Israeli officer is standing in front of me, behind what looks like bulletproof glass. She speaks into a microphone.

‘Take your clothes off,’ she says.

To my own surprise, I stand tall and stare straight at her.

‘Why?’ I ask.

She repeats the instruction.

‘Why?’ I say again, louder.

I am thinking of the patients who have been brought into this room, stood on this grid floor and refused to collaborate. I am thinking of the men and women who haunt our Centre, month after month, desperate for permits to cross into Israel or the West Bank for treatment for themselves or their children. One man I know from his frequent visits to our Centre has had throat cancer for six years and cannot receive the treatment he needs inside Gaza. Another man is trying to secure a permit to visit a Jerusalem hospital to visit his baby son, whom he has never seen and whose little twin brother has already died. I am thinking of the deliberate cruelties of this military occupation and of the cold decisions made here inside Erez about who will be allowed to cross, and who will be pushed back into Gaza as punishment for refusing to betray themselves.

Until this very moment I have been really frightened of Erez, and of the Israelis working here, because of the absolute power they wield over everyone who crosses. But though the knot in my guts is taut as wire, I am calm. I have nothing that the Israeli security services want. They cannot harm me. Right now, standing on this drop-away iron floor inside one of the most fortified borders in the world, the resident fear inside me has just cracked.

When the Israeli woman repeats her instruction for the third time, I pull my blouse over my head and stand before her, legs splayed, in my bra and jeans. She points to an X-ray machine on my right and tells me to place my blouse inside it, which I do. The machine clunks and my blouse is X-rayed.

When she says, ‘That’s fine. You can put your clothes on now and proceed back to the passport control,’ I do not look at her.

I collect my suitcase, which is meticulously searched in front of me by an Israeli officer, and proceed to passport control. Three other people, Gazans, are waiting to go through into Israel, but the passport control booths are empty. I know we will be kept waiting for a long while; this too is part of the procedure.

I need the toilet, but there is no toilet on this Palestinian side of passport control.

Above the chairs where we are sitting is a long glass corridor, where Israelis walk the length of the crossing and watch us from above, like scientists observing lab rats. Erez, I think to myself, is not a milking station; it is a bell jar.

I will make the plane to Brussels tonight, but I won’t be coming back here for a while. I can already feel it in my guts.