Meet Me in Gaza (28 page)

Walking along Jaffa Street, I soon reach the red gate that marks the courtyard where Saida and her family live, behind a local pottery workshop. The courtyard smells of paint and varnish, but the workshop lights are out. I enter Saida’s building, climb the dark stairs and knock on the front door of her home. Maha comes to the door.

‘
Marhaba
. My sister is not here; she is downstairs, visiting Muhammad.’

‘Ah – do you think it would be OK if I went downstairs to say hello to him?’

I have never actually met her cousin Muhammad. Maha shrugs her narrow shoulders.

‘
Leeysh-la
? (Why not?)’

I go back down one flight of stairs and knock on the door to my left. The girl who opens it resembles Maha – after all, they’re cousins. This is the home of Saida’s father’s brother and his family, including Muhammad, the young man whose legs were sliced off during the war.

‘Is Saida here?’ I ask.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Come inside.’

She leads me through the dim apartment to a back bedroom, where Saida is sitting with her cousin. He is lying in bed, a blanket pulled up to his waist, concealing the stumps of his legs. On the wall above the bed is a large poster of Hamas. Saida is sitting on the other side of the narrow room.

‘
Habibti
!’ She stands to greet me and we kiss each other. I have not seen her so much these last few weeks, we have both been so distracted by work. I’ve missed her, and am looking forward to spending the evening with her and Hind and Maha. I don’t have much time left, and want to spend as much of it with them as I can.

‘This is my cousin Muhammad,’ she introduces me to the young man lying in bed. I step forward to shake his hand, but he shakes his head, placing his hand over his heart. Ah, he is one of the pious young men who don’t shake hands with women.

‘I’m so sorry about what happened to you,’ I say, sitting down beside Saida.

Muhammad looks at me; he is a slender young man, 19 years old, with a thin face and an indoor complexion. He surprises me with an almost bashful smile.

‘
Shukran
.
Inshallah
, the doctors will be able to help me.’

God willing, I think to myself. Thousands of Gazans have been maimed and injured in this war and the chances of them receiving the specialist medical treatment they need are minimal. Israel continues to restrict patients’ access to hospitals outside Gaza.

‘Muhammad was studying in university before the war,’ says Saida.

When she first told me what had happened to her cousin, she cried, but now she’s dry-eyed though her voice is flat with dismay. We always think these tragedies are going to happen to someone else.

‘What were you studying?’ I ask Muhammad.

‘Physical education. I was training to be a sports teacher.’

There is a small pause, and then the three of us, all at the same moment, begin to laugh.

Across the Strip, especially in the north and in Gaza City, where the war was at its most brutal, people are stoically rebuilding their homes and their lives. Visiting all these different communities makes me appreciate more keenly how people on the edges of Gaza, the farmers and the Bedouin – and those in the cramped refugee camps – live so apart from the rest. I feel like I’m peeling through layers of small different worlds that co-exist inside Gaza, while still musing on the past and its imprints on the present. Most of the people I meet through my work are just trying to survive day by day; my amateur inquiries into Gaza’s ancient history are of little interest to them, especially now. I need to leave Gaza very soon, but before I go, I want to talk to someone who
is
passionate about history and find out what it means to them.

And this is how I come to be sitting with Jawdat al-Khoudari, the owner of the only
mathaf
(museum) in Gaza, one afternoon in early spring, trying to gauge his opinion on history. But this meeting is not going to plan at all.

‘Why am I interested in history?’ Jawdat looks at me and blinks slowly like an ox. ‘Why are you wearing green and white today? It is about personal preferences, nothing more.’

‘But you’ve spent years excavating and restoring Gaza artifacts – why
is
history such a passion for you?’ I ask.

Another pause, then: ‘You know, I decided a while ago that I was not going to talk to any more foreigners. You ask too many questions.’

‘So why did you agree to meet me today?’

‘I made a mistake,’ he says politely.

Jawdat is slow and ponderous, with a Gazan accent as thick as his waistline. He is an engineer with his own construction company, and the best-known historian-cum-archaeologist in the Strip. He’s been preserving local history here since the mid-1980s, when he began collecting stones from old buildings which were being demolished to make space for new ones. He began excavating artifacts too and buying them from other construction crews. Over the years he has unearthed hordes of ancient treasures – pottery from 3,500
BC
, Roman columns, Egyptian masks, Hellenistic wine jars and early Islamic tiles. Eventually he built this
mathaf
, overlooking the sea just north of Gaza City, to house some of his best finds.
⁵³
The
mathaf
opened in the autumn of last year, complete with an outdoor café where a stream trickles between the wooden tables – and an indoor restaurant, where sections of wooden sleepers from the old Gaza railway track have been recycled into columns and beams.

Jawdat and I are sitting in the
mathaf
restaurant now, drinking cappuccinos. It is a big, elegant space filled with plants and natural light. After weeks of visiting smashed-up homes and grieving families, it feels restful, and totally surreal. I’m trying to talk to Jawdat about his work and his love of history – but having invited me here today, he doesn’t really seem to want to tell me anything.

‘Are you still excavating Gazan artifacts?’ I ask him, lighting another cigarette. He gives me another long, searching look … and says nothing. I try again:

‘Look – why is Gaza’s history so important? Why does it matter so much anyway?’

I am trying to provoke a reaction from him, but I’m asking myself this same question. Gaza is one of the oldest stories in the world. But its histories have been neglected and destroyed, treated as though they are almost worthless. So are these remains only meaningful for academics, collectors and curious writers?

But now Jawdat is staring at me like I have just sworn filthily at him.

‘Are you trying to make me nervous? Look at us, our situation – what’s the basis of our conflict with Israel?’

‘The history of who this land belongs to …?’

He leans forward, his big hands extended towards me.

‘The whole story of Gaza is history – and history matters because Israel has claimed history as its own, to prove its case. Our history is evidence of our roots here on this land. Just look around you. I am telling you now: if you don’t know the history, then you don’t know anything of this place.’

This is the most that he has said since we sat down. Now I fall silent because I want him to continue speaking. Jawdat is taking his time. I can hear him thinking.

‘Yes, the Jews have claimed the history of this land as theirs,’ he says without looking at me. ‘But listen to me … they are just the new occupiers. I ask you something: in 200 years, how will the history books record Israel’s occupation of us?’ He holds a thick thumb and index finger just a few centimetres apart. ‘It will take up this much space in the history books. One sentence. Like nothing.’

‘Because all Gaza’s history has been occupation?’

‘Exactly. And our history is the evidence of the great civilisation of Gaza. I have found coins, you know, dating from 450 to 430
BC
. We were minting our own silver coins back then.
⁵⁴
And I tell you now, if Israel wants to settle this conflict by bringing archaeologists to find out who this land belongs to historically, then I will say to them, “‘
Itfadalouh
– Please, come and see for yourselves!”’

Zionists claim that Jews have always been present in historic Palestine. But for successive centuries there was no Jewish population in Gaza. The only direct Israelite rule of Gaza in antiquity was the Hasmonean dynasty, in 145
BC
, which lasted for just over a century (even then, the Gaza Jews were probably a minority of the local population). A Jewish community did settle in Rafah in the ninth and tenth centuries, and again in the twelfth century – when a community of Samaritans was also based in Rafah. Most of the Jews, however, left Gaza after Napoleon’s brief 1799 conquest of the Strip, which also ignited European interest in the region. Zionist Jews began to immigrate to Palestine from the late nineteenth century, often fleeing persecution. By the start of the British Mandate in 1918, however, Jews made up just 5 per cent of the population of Palestine.

‘Do you think Gazans really know their own history?’ I ask Jawdat.

‘Listen to me,’ he says, more vehemently this time. ‘The people here, they said this December 2008 war was the most terrible ever in Gaza. But’ – he looks me straight in the eye – ‘this was
nothing
! You think about all the wars before – like the First World War and the thousands of people who died here then and the mass destruction of buildings. This war was nothing.’

I know what he means – compared to previous Gaza wars, this one was bloody and quick. But still shattering.

Almost three months after I returned to Gaza, some people tell me they believe it is time to move on from the war, while others say Gaza will never get over what the war ripped out of them. I am also a different person from the woman who arrived here almost a year and a half ago. Life has been so full-on, so vivid and intense, and though I feel exhausted, I wouldn’t have it any other way. But my time here is nearly over, for now. My interviews are complete and I have just finished my report for the Centre. The director has made it clear that I’m welcome to stay and continue working with them. I have lots of friends here, and though I don’t have a lover any more, I would find another. But then I remember Wafa’, the lovely
muhajaba
with attitude, saying to me over a coffee one afternoon, ‘Louisa, you told me you wanted to leave Gaza while you still love it, so I think you should go now.’

I know that she’s dead right. I know I will come back here again, but for a while I need to be outside this siege.

At the Centre, it is a ritual to hold a tea party when a member of staff leaves. This being Gaza, there will be goodbye speeches and I will be expected to say something too. I spend the morning of the tea party fretting about what I’ll say and pestering Shadi about how to pronounce this and that in Arabic, so that I can get it just right. After a while he looks at me and shakes his grey head.

‘
Habibti
, why are you worrying so much? Just say the words you want to – you know we will all understand what you mean.’

That afternoon, when my colleagues have all gathered around the conference table in the upstairs library and we’ve drunk our tea and coffee and eaten slices of creamy, lurid, pink-and-yellow gateaux, the deputy director clears his throat. Everyone falls quiet as he speaks in his grave, precise English. He thanks me for my work at the Centre and makes a joke about my passion for spending as much time as possible outside the office. My colleagues’ laughter ripples across the room. When he has finished, there is a brief silence, then I clear my throat and start to speak. I forget everything I prepared in advance and just say how much I’ve enjoyed working with such great people. But my Arabic is suddenly choked because tears are streaking down my face, and when I look around, Noor and Joumana and several other colleagues are crying too. I laugh and cry at the same time, realising that it really doesn’t matter what I say right now. And suddenly I find the words to crack a few bad jokes about how the best thing that’s happened to me has been working and smoking with Shadi and everyone starts laughing as Joumana hands me tissues for my wet cheeks and neck.

‘
Aye
, Louisa, we will miss you!’ she says as we sit there amid the tea and coffee dregs and creamy cake crusts, laughing and crying. And I think that if
Ustaz
Mounir was here today, he would be just a little bit proud of me.

For fifteen months my life has been mainly confined to 25 by 6 miles, but I still haven’t seen all of Gaza, not at all. There is one more place in particular I really need to visit before I leave, to help me unravel another layer of the Gaza story. I ask Saida if she can come with me, but she’s busy at work. I also know that she’s keeping her distance because I am extracting myself from Gaza and she has to stay here. So I take a taxi alone to a place called Zuweida, in the middle area of the Strip, a few miles south of Gaza City.

I ask the driver to take the sea road, past the wide open beaches where huddles of fishermen tend to their boats and mend their nets, singing softly as they work. They sing of the sea, I drink in the sea. From the open window of the car, the salty air is warm, waves laced in foam splashing up the beach, the Mediterranean shimmering, a vast diaphanous blue. I will miss this beautiful place so much.

The driver turns left and heads inland, veering off the main road and onto a narrow lane streaked with sand. We’re in a quiet place, an area set well back from the sea, not far from Salah al-Din Road. There are just a few old white houses with flaking paint shaded by gnarled olive groves. A place you could easily miss, even if you were looking for it.

The driver pulls over in front of a white gate and I clamber out of the car. The air is quiet. I can hear birds clearly, even distinguish between their songs. Traffic is still buzzing, but the city feels far away. The white gate is latched, but opens easily, and I step through it onto a fresh green lawn. It’s perfectly mown, wrapped like felt around well-tended acacia trees, with plants and flowers perfectly spaced apart. It smells and tastes different here, the dusty salt air of Gaza softened by the moist greenery all around me. I can hear bees buzzing. It feels almost familiar: there is nothing to distinguish this from a well-tended English park garden, except for the long, straight rows of white gravestones.