Meet Me in Gaza (32 page)

Amid the sadness washing around me, I’m also seeing Gaza with new eyes, now that I know something of its history. I hone in on fragments and details that I was completely blind to when I first arrived here, almost three years ago. A small example: one morning I am in the old quarter of the city, just about to enter Souq al-Zawiya to buy fruit and veg (then over to neighbouring Souq al-Bastat, for a new stash of glittering, see-through lingerie). Waiting to cross the busy street into al-Zawiya, I glance up, admiring the buildings opposite – they are some of the oldest still standing in Gaza. The building directly across the street from me has ‘The Municipality of Gaza’ engraved in English, high across its façade. I’ve walked along this street so many times, but never even noticed these words before. I cross the street and stand gazing up at it. A Hamas policeman slouched on a chair at the entrance to the building is texting on his
jawaal
. And watching me …

‘It’s in English,’ I say to him, pointing upwards and stating the bleeding obvious.

‘Yes – from when you British occupiers were here,’ he retorts, going back to his text.

After buying my fruit and vegetables, and before browsing for lingerie, I go in search of another fragment of local history. There used to be a train station here in the old quarter, and someone has told me you can still see a few metres’ remnants of the original track. I wander round and ask a few locals if they know where the old train track is. But no one seems to know. After an hour, I am parched with thirst but none the wiser.

The track remnant I’m looking for was part of a line laid by Egyptian and British forces in early 1917 to transport weapons, supplies and men between north-eastern Egypt and Gaza, bolstering their campaign against the Ottoman Turkish forces in Palestine. The Ottomans were holding the Palestinian border against the British and Egyptians advancing north – and had been relying on camel caravans to transport military supplies from Constantinople. So Jamal Pasha, one of the three Young Turk rulers of the Ottoman Empire (and known among local Arabs as
al-Safah
, the Blood-Shedder), enlisted a German engineer to construct a rail track linking the existing northern Jerusalem– Jaffa railway – the first in Palestine – to the southern Negev desert. Heinrich August Meissner obliged as the Germans and the Ottoman Turks were allies. The new railway had two branch lines: one reached Beersheba in the Negev, the other extended to Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza.

British rule in Palestine started immediately after their victory in the third battle for Gaza. But the League of Nations did not formally mandate the British to replace the Ottomans as the ‘peacetime administrator of Gaza’ until April 1920. By then, the British had extended their railway line for deliveries of post-war supplies into southern Palestine – accompanied by fresh water piped all the way from the River Nile to Gaza. By the spring of 1920, Palestine Railways was offering passengers: ‘Rapid and comfortable travelling facilities to all parts of Palestine […] equipped with modern Passenger Coaches, Sleeping and Dining Cars, Day and Night Saloons, Luxurious Tourist Trains specially arranged.’ You could catch the train from Haifa in northern Palestine to El-Qantara (‘the Bridge’) on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal, from there take a ferry across the canal and hop aboard a train bound for Cairo. By 1942, you could take the train from Cairo to Gaza, continue northwards to Haifa, then make your way via the city of Acre to Beirut, then Aleppo in Syria, and on to the Baghdad Railway that terminated at Basra.

This train journey between Gaza and Cairo intrigues me because it is unimaginable now – even though it used to be part of the local scenery. Trains are one of life’s great pleasures; but this journey has been extinguished as Gaza slowly spins backwards in time. I want to meet somebody who caught the train from Gaza to Cairo, so I ask my friends if they know anyone who used to hop aboard.

Gaza is littered with stumbling blocks, but finding ordinary people with extraordinary stories is not one of them. Two days later, I am sitting in a pale drawing-room on the southern edge of Gaza City. The windows are open wide, the sea air cooling and freshening the room a little. I’m in the company of an elderly Bedouin, Sheikh Al-Whaidi. He sits upright in his armchair, his loose-skinned left hand resting on a smooth walking cane and his thin voice wavering slightly as he recalls the old days, when he used to catch the train to Cairo every month.

Imagine that it is early springtime in 1963. Sheikh Al-Whaidi (almost fifty years younger and known then as Abu Nidal) is the financial director of the
Palestine News
. He lives in Gaza City with his family, but has regular business in Cairo. Abu Nidal always takes the train and always travels first class. A first-class ticket costs 3 Egyptian pounds and 60 piastres (then the equivalent of US$10) compared to just 1 Egyptian pound for a second-class ticket. But the first-class carriages are air-conditioned, with big black leather seats and smooth wood panelling. In second class you just get wooden seats, no air conditioning – and a face full of sand from the open windows.

There is one train a day from Gaza to Cairo, says Abu Nidal. It leaves at 6
AM
from the station at al-Tuffah, on the eastern side of the city. This is the only station big enough for trains to turn around, so it has become the main Gaza rail hub, handling both freight and passenger trains. The other Gaza City station, at Shaja’iya, in the old quarter, the one that I was looking for, is just for passengers.

It is a long journey to Cairo, more than 340 miles, about twelve hours by train. It’s much quicker by car, but this road is notorious for accidents as drivers pelt across the eastern Sinai. The train is slower but safer.

Abu Nidal arrives at aI-Tuffah station early, buys his first-class ticket and puts his overnight bag on the top rack above his comfy leather seat. The train sets off just after six in the morning. The guards and staff are all Egyptian. They wear uniforms and peaked caps. There is a small canteen serving drinks and snacks on the train and plenty of passengers on board: businessmen like Abu Nidal in dark suits, Gazan families visiting friends or relatives in Egypt, or just taking a day trip. Gazan students, too, on their way back to Alexandria University – the young men in trousers and open-neck shirts, the women in blouses and loose trousers or knee-length skirts, their dark hair pinned up or flowing loose around their shoulders. Oh yes, women dress like this in Gaza in 1963. It is another of those precious times when everything feels possible.

The train trundles south, following the route of Salah al-Din Road, occasionally curving from one side of the road to the other. It stops to pick up passengers at Deir al-Balah in the middle area of Gaza, then in Khan Younis. All the way to Rafah, the track is lined with groves of orange and lemon trees and Abu Nidal enjoys the sight of ripening vines, too, like the
dunams
of rich, dark grape vines that grow behind his house in Al-Sheikh Ejleen, on the southern edge of Gaza City.

The train picks up passengers in Rafah, too. But the moment it crosses the border and leaves Gaza, the land is transformed into an arid desertscape of sand dunes, camels, black Bedouin tents and scrubby, buckled-by-the-wind trees with deep, thirsty roots.

Because it is 1963, and Egypt is still ‘administering’ Gaza (what a benign word for a military occupation!), there is no passport check until the train reaches El-Qantara. Gazans travel on Palestinian documents issued by the Egyptian government; a privilege from their serial invader. Now the track skirts a shallow desert lake known as ‘al-Bedawiya’ because so many Bedouin camp here between Gaza and al-Arish, with their scrawny goats and barefoot, tangle-haired children. Abu Nidal is from the al-Tarabin Bedouin tribe, but he is a wealthy, urban Bedouin and didn’t grow up in the traditional woollen black Bedouin tent, or
beit shar
.

A few miles past the lake, Abu Nidal looks up from his newspaper. He can feel the train braking and knows that he will soon catch a glimpse of blue, bright as lapis lazuli, as the track dips towards the Mediterranean coastline at al-Arish. This local resort is popular with both Egyptians and Gazans because of its beautiful long sweep of beach, decked with seaside chalets and restaurants. After picking up passengers at al-Arish, the train curves inland again, then snakes southwards through the Sinai. Here, away from the sea, the land is dry and cruel and the people who live here are literally dirt poor. The Gazans pity them.

The city of El-Qantara sprawls across the east bank of the 164-kilometre-long Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean and Red Seas (when the canal opened in 1869, there was no bridge). The train grinds to a halt at El-Qantara and Egyptian officials clamber aboard to check that the passengers’ papers and travel documents are in order. But even for the Gazans, this is a mere formality. The passengers gather up their bags, and children, then disembark en masse, crowding onto a ferry that chugs them over the murky canal waters to the west bank. This is where the journey often gets delayed, waiting for the ferry, or for the train that is supposed to meet the passengers on the west bank. But today Abu Nidal and his fellow travellers are lucky. When the ferry docks, their connecting train is waiting.

Once on board the second train, Abu Nidal stretches out in his seat, newspaper crumpled in his lap, and dozes off to the steady rhythm of the carriage.

It is another four or five hours before the train finally pulls into Bab el-Hadid (Iron Gate) station in central Cairo. When they arrive, dusk is descending but the early springtime air is still warm. As Abu Nidal and the others clamber down onto the platform, they are hit by the stench of body odour, hot food, rotting leftovers, piss, rancid fumes and stale air.

Bab el-Hadid is a seething ant colony; there are passengers, guards, deft pickpockets, touts, tourists, black Sudanese, some blotchy white Europeans, even Russians (President Nasser is courting the Soviets), Egyptian merchants, shouting pedlars, local prostitutes, wily beggars, infested street children, Arab women adorned in gold, bearded imams and Christian Copts. Abu Nidal threads his weary way through this overwhelming crush. He has to be at the office early tomorrow morning.

‘Did you always enjoy the journey?’ I ask.

‘
Taba’n
(Absolutely)! You know, we always arrived with our coats covered in dust and sand, even in first class! I enjoyed the train, and Cairo too. But home is home. After a few days or a week, I was always ready to come straight back to Gaza.’

I know what he means. Every morning now I feel the magnetic pull north, towards the place I call home.

I’ve been sitting with Abu Nidal for a couple of hours now. Suddenly I need the bathroom. He points me in the general direction and I wander along the hallway, trying to find it. But this a big house with a lot of rooms. I come upon another, smaller, lounge, where a woman is lying on a couch, her eyes closed, breathing steadily. She must be Abu Nidal’s wife. I turn to leave her in peace, but she senses my presence in the doorway, gives a little shudder and springs upright, her eyes startled open.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t want to wake you – I’m just looking for the bathroom.’

‘You are the writer who has come to talk with my husband?’

‘Yes, he’s been telling me about the train …’

‘Ahhhh, that train … did he tell you that I took it too, a long time ago?’

‘I thought maybe you had taken it together.’

‘Oh no! I took the train to Cairo alone. In 1959.’

‘Really? What were you doing in Egypt?’

‘I was studying English at Alexandria University. Afterwards I completed my teacher training. At first I was an English teacher here in Gaza, then a headmistress for many years. But I’m afraid that, after all this time, I have forgotten my command of English somewhat.’

Her unhurried English is fluid and fluent. I haven’t heard anyone say ‘somewhat’ for years. She pats the couch. I perch on the arm.

‘What was it like, going to Cairo on the train?’

Her small dark eyes light up as though suddenly switched on full beam.

‘It was really wonderful! In those days if you wanted, or indeed needed, to travel to Cairo, you just packed a small bag, walked to the station, bought your ticket and left. Even after my studies, when I was back home in Gaza, I would just say to my family, “let’s go to Cairo tomorrow” … and we could! Can you imagine?’

The Haifa–Cairo railway survived the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbours. Israel reoccupied Gaza and used the train line for almost another decade, to transport military goods and personnel to the Sinai, and Gazan labourers to work in Haifa and Tel Aviv. But the tracks suffered chronic neglect and were gradually abandoned. By the mid-1970s the railway line was a skeleton of its former self, a relic of another time, like Gaza itself these days. Who could have foreseen that eventually some of the wooden sleepers under the tracks would end up in Jawdat al-Khoudari’s
mathaf
, or that only elderly people like Abu Nidal and his wife, Umm Nidal, would be able to tell the story of catching the train in Gaza? How do we ever know what’s going to befall our country, our community or us?

Umm Nidal shows me the bathroom, then she comes to the drawing room with me afterwards. She and Abu Nidal have been married a very long time. Their children have grown up and left home, and they are enjoying their retirement as quietly as you can in Gaza. I sit listening to their memories of Gaza because it’s a lovely way to spend a long, hot afternoon. None of us know that, in just a few weeks, Abu Nidal will die here quietly, at the grand age of 82. In my mind, he is still there, sitting upright, his left hand resting on his walking cane and his voice somewhat hoarse after all this talking, insisting that I come back on Saturday for a good Bedouin lunch.

I criss-cross Gaza, not by train, but by public taxi, spending hours gazing out of smeared car windows. I watch how the land and trees change across the Strip. In the far north, where the Swailams used to farm, the soil is rich and dense, and the fields lush and green. From the edge of Beit Hanoun until the beginning of Gaza City is mostly sprawling, ugly, concrete jungle, but threaded in between are the strawberry fields of Beit Lahiya, the ever-present glitter of the sea, and the quiet palm- and bougainvillea-lined streets of al-Rimal district where I am staying. South of Gaza City, the middle area of the Strip is also fertile, and wide avenues of palm trees – now laden with clumps of shining red
rutab
dates – lend an air of weathered calm to the towns of Nuseirat and Deir al-Balah.