Vox Humana Literary Journal

By Dana Bryx

Its difficult to know what to put down, in which order, or with what emphasis when writing about Gaza. Its all too easy to fall into that trap that shows only snapshots of horrific destruction with no context of the everyday lives that continue despite the madness, of the beauty that persists, of the laughter and culture that refuses to disappear. But without that context, maybe its hard to see what the loss really means, how wasteful the destruction really is. Gaza is not a wretchedly hopeless overpopulated prison, devoid of life and destined to violence and misery. Its bustling with life, its gripping to whats left of normality, its students in exam time, its young people laughing at the beach, its rap shows, its colourful markets, its shady tree-lined avenues, its brimming urban farms.. And its also fear, anger, incomprehensible destruction, arbitrary violence & death, poverty, powerfully calculated restrictions on freedom and economy. Perhaps Gaza is slowly falling to its knees, but its not there yet, and the struggle to stay standing is everywhere.

Here are some stories…

We start talking amidst the chaos of 40 people being assigned to a dozen or so young Gazan’s for homestay over the coming days. “Hi” “Hi” “I like your style, i hope you’re with me” she says, smiling. I’m flattered, thinking my fezza hair – self-chopped in the bathroom mirror a few days ago – would be ridiculous by Gazan standards. But its only the start of preconceptions slowly shifting into seeing pieces of Gaza’s reality. We are in luck, and a few minutes later my 17-yr-old emo-punk host is impatiently shouting arguments at our groups Hamas security entourage holding us up at the hotel gates. Stunned, gaping jaw, i look on. She rolls her eyes and says they’re really dumb, I laugh amazed, a few minutes later she gets her way and we’re off.

In the taxi she tells us, kind of ashamed, that they have a problem with the electricity at her house – its been cut since the attacks and they rely on a generator which doesn’t always work. We reassure her that its fine, taken aback that she is explaining this out of concern for us. As we arrive at her apartment building she points to the empty block on the other side of the (dirt)rd, “it was destroyed in the last war”. Peering in the dark i notice the concrete remnants. Her house is nice, normal, if it had a yard and wasn’t on the 8th floor it could well be the inside of small suburban home. Except that all the windows on one side of the house are missing, shattered in the attacks and now patched up with plastic.

Her family are unbelievably lovely, almost like in the brady bunch. The siblings – a funny one, a shy one, a smart one, and a helpful one. Her mum smiles, jokes with the funny one and laughs at our miscommunications. She won’t hear of us going without second dinners. Her father – perhaps a little shocked that we actually showed up – is warm, friendly and clearly excited to have foreigners to talk his perfect english to. First he explains the windows – they have the money to fix them but theres no glass in Gaza to do it with. The economic blockade enforced by Israel, with Egypt’s complicity, means no building supplies get in, no glass, no concrete, no bricks. He is a surgeon, used to work in Jerusalem, but originally from Gaza. Their family has land here – grape vines, olive trees, chickens, tomatoes, he says he’ll bring eggs for us tomorrow. I double-take realising, and commenting that these will be the first free-range eggs i eat in the middle east. I smile, he says they always taste better than eggs from a cage. “Happy chickens” i say, he laughs.

Then, naively, the question i need to confirm – can they leave? “mm, if you get permission from Egypt or Israel, have the right papers and a passport, a medical certificate and evidence of the appointment, maybe you can go” As if the question of leaving Gaza for any reason other than medical necessity is irrelevant, it doesn’t enter the realm of possibility. “What about to visit family in the West Bank?” “No way! No way. Look – my wife had an appointment with an egyptian doctor, a specialist, she tried for 4 days to leave, everyday she went, and eventually she succeeded, she got through but it took 4 tries and she was lucky”.

In the morning i look out the window over the stunning Gazan coast line, yellow sand and blue sea, scattered with apartment blocks amidst amazingly productive urban farms – rows of olives, vegetables, orchards, shade-houses. It gives me so much hope. And thats something i never expected to wake up to in Gaza. This city-sprawl has so much potential.

We visit Northern Gaza – the areas most devastated by the attacks. A faint smell of burning rubber, later explained as explosives residue, a donkey and its calf taking cover in the rubble of a flattened international school, a mangled plastic slide, english and math exercises blowing in the wind, wrought iron and electricity wires dangle loose from smashed up concrete, barely recognisable as the remains of walls. I think – maybe i sat next to the guy who flew the plane and pulled the trigger on my way to work in January, drank beer next to the officer who ordered it, ate hummus with the intelligence guy that made the decision to destroy it. A flood of memories from life in Tel Aviv during the attacks comes back, flashing against the reality before me, the sunny afternoons at streetside cafes, drinking fresh-squeezed orange juice, evenings tipsy by the beach, the jam-packed trains carrying soldiers to and fro. And i see this street how it was then, dust blowing, plane screaming, people running, nowhere to go, earth shaking, building falling.

I snap back and approach the group crowding around the school’s principle “.. absolute lie that the school was ever used for rockets, its completely ridiculous. We teach openness, free expression, the American curriculum the same as you, absolutely unbelievable that it was targeted. I think the reason is that the Israelis want to maintain the image of Palestinians as the militant holding a machine-gun. We have students who study at Harvard, at other US universities. This doesn’t please the Israelis, they want to maintain that image and fear of Palestinians… We haven’t yet received a single dollar, not from the government in Gaza, not from the government in Ramallah, not from USAID… It was intentional not a mistake. The Israeli’s didn’t deny that they bombed it – they said it was targeted because weapons were stored there and rockets launched from there. The $10 million question is why they bombed the school. Its completely insane. This question you should ask the Israelis.”

A family living in the bombed out ruins of their former home offer us tea off their 44 gallon drum fire. It feels ridiculous taking anything from these people who have lost everything. Even the tent city that rose out of the rubble here has succumb to the 3-month continuation of the blockade, now just remnants – wisps of material, barely standing, slowly drowning in the sands of Gaza. And yet, still, nothing has been rebuilt.

We visit a Palestinian Medical Relief Society rehabilitation centre. A father talks with us, his 2 sons on either side, one holds crutches. The father tells that he lost his house and 2 of his four sons in the attacks, the two by his side were badly injured. The boy holding the crutches, about 12, gets up – only then do i notice that he’s missing a leg. His brother, maybe 8, rolls up his pants and shows a shrapnel wound gouging a deep hole in his upper thigh. The wounds are healing. But the kids faces tell otherwise.

Our group is invited to Parliament House to be addressed by Gaza’s Hamas Government. Parliament house is completely bombed out, its possible to climb the stairs and enter the lobby, but the main hall is a pile of plaster and concrete rubble. Instead we are greeted in the makeshift parliament – a large white aid tent in the courtyard of former parliament house. I don’t know why but I expected the leaders of a resistance movement to be different from other politicians. Whatever their politic – less evasive, more genuine, something like that. Well thats not true. He may as well have been Tzipi Livni or Bill Clinton. An expert in saying whatever he wanted to say and not answering any questions. The point he sought to get across was that Hamas were democratically elected, and therefor the legitimate government of Gaza. Nothing more and nothing less. A series of questions, quite unrelated to this topic, were greeted with repetitions of this line. He’d probably be a great candidate for Kadima if he wasn’t Palestinian. But I was heartened to feel that familiar level of disenchantment with government from many people I spoke to – politicians are liars, they make trouble, people are good and can make peace.

I look out the window at night with my host mother as the sound of gunshots echoes from the sea. Lights line the horizon – at least 50. Israeli navy ships. They fire randomly at fisherman, arbitrarily. Sometimes when they are 100m from shore, sometimes at 1 km, sometimes at 3km. Apparently they have been waging this campaign of fear against the fisherman for years but recently its escalated. The 1994 Oslo accords gave the fisherman 12 miles legally, but the navy recently stated 3 miles only no-shoot zone. Unfortunately they don’t even respect that. We watch as one navy ship comes in close to shore – maybe 200m out. It shines a bright spotlight across the waters, searching for fisherman. I am told 14 fisherman have been killed since January and many more kidnapped for several days at a time. This brutal harassment has meant that those remaining in the industry are forced to over-fish the spawning grounds close to shore – these days the fish are getting smaller and less plentiful.

I ask my host mother if its okay to take a photo. Reluctantly she agrees but no flash. “They are watching, they see everything at night”. She looks nervous as i get my camera out and fiddle around. She starts explaining that during the last attacks her relative, a photographer, was doing exactly this – he was taking photos out his apartment window and was targeted by a sniper, killing him and his mother-in-law. Shocked, I gasp and cover my mouth. My camera goes back in its bag.

A plane screams overhead, my host sister shrieks, she covers her ears and cowers into a ball on the couch trying to make herself small. Her mother tells her to stop it and be strong. The apparent domestic normality of the scene is disconcerting.

A friend is organising a hip hop show with live video link-up to Ramallah – 15 palestinian hiphop artists will rap 1 song each and 2 breakdancing crews will compete for the gig. We arrive as 2 laydees are on-screen rapping live from Ramallah. They’re awesome, along with the rest of the shows, i wished i understood the lyrics! The crowd’s pumped and as Gaza takes over, city-pride erupts in chants with the MC at the lead. The shows kick-off on stage with a 4-man crew, arms go up, applauds, whistles. Some technical difficulties interrupt the second show, and half-way through the third people start exiting in droves. A photographer pretends to take a photo of the rapper up close and then swiftly shifts his camera to the crowd, taking quick snaps of those in attendance. Noone around me really knows whats going on, the rapper keeps rhyming, people keep leaving, quickly, quietly, eventually only our side of the stage is still seated. Before the rapper can finish the sound is cut, video out, we get up and move out. 9 people have been killed in the last few days from infighting in the West Bank and we’re not sure if its about to start here, or if the show is somehow politically aligned or what. My 12 year old host sister is scared. We stand out front waiting for the taxi, Hamas men on the edges, watching. A uni student who’s friends with my host family tells us in hushed voice that Hamas don’t like rap shows, they regularly shut them down. I tell my host sister not to worry, its fine, theres no problem, we’re just going to go home now. She smiles, unconvinced. My heart is racing. We make it home.

The next night we go to visit Black Unit Band – one of the crews that rapped along with Ayman who hosted, he’s a member of PR – the most famous of the Gazan hiphop artists. We talk politics for several hours. They explain how they’ve been invited to rap overseas but can’t get out, how one of them was arrested and badly beaten after a show, accused of touching a girl’s shirt. How the blockade means that PR make songs now via the internet – 1 member in the US unable to get in, 2 stuck in Gaza unable to get out, and another in Egypt. How Ayman lost his father in the last attacks, despite being well-known Fatah supporters their apartment was specifically targeted and completely burned out. But how despite all this, even if he had the choice he wouldn’t live anywhere but Gaza. Asked why Hamas don’t like hiphop he replies “because they see it as an intrusion of American culture, they don’t understand. But we don’t rap about ‘bitches’, we rap about our country and whats happening here. I bet if i could sit down and explain it to them, then they’d probably like it.” And Khaled from Black Unit, less certain that they would come around, tells me “words can destroy more than bullets or rockets, words are our nuclear weapon”.

I wake up late. As i walk into the kitchen sleepy-eyed, i see my host father on the phone worried, trying to get information while the family stand around tense – listening in and watching nervously. They tell me their sister’s father-in-law was shot while working his land close to the border. The father rushes off to hospital. When he gets back a few hours later he explains how lucky he was – the exit wound was millimeters from the spine. He says the hospital is terrible – lack of nursing care, no pillows, no aircon in Gaza’s 35 degree sticky summer-heat. He dressed the wounds himself. Israel dropped flyers a few weeks back stating that anyone within 300m of the border was within firing range. That 300m zone comprises about half of Gaza’s most arable farmland. Now farmers and landless laborers working for as little as $5 a day are forced to chose – abandon your livelihood and relinquish your land or risk being shot. A group of internationals doing farmer accompaniment work tell us 3 farmers have been killed and 15 injured just since the “ceasefire”.

The sound of live drumming and melodic traditional flute emanates from the street below, mixing with cheer and laughter. Another wedding, perhaps the 5th i’ve heard but not seen in Gaza just in the last week. The festivities continue late into the night.

The time comes for me to leave despite ongoing protests from my host mother convinced i should marry and stay in Gaza : ) Its funny, until a couple of months ago i never imagined i would ever go to Gaza, and now i’m definite that i’ll come back. With that in mind goodbyes aren’t so hard. But i still have to get out and thats not as easy as i naively thought. I arrive at the border at 12.30pm after a Gazan friend who does youth peace organising arranged my crossing from the Palestinian side. There are 2 French people also trying to exit. Our passports are stamped immediately and we sit on the surprisingly plush couches in the Palestinian terminal with 5 Hamas security for several hours waiting for the other side. They keep assuring us that the Egyptians have agreed that we can cross, they just told us to wait. The clock ticks over. One security guy begins telling us how he thinks many people misunderstand Islam, so he explains in a somewhat perverse tone about how having boyfriends or girlfriends is not permitted, “you know what i’m talking about” over and over with much eyebrow-raising, “they should be killed if there are enough witnesses, but here in Gaza we just put them in prison”. I think he’s on the wrong path to alleviating misconceptions. More hours pass. He keeps reassuring me personally not to worry, asking if i’m ok, telling me i look nervous. yes he is making me a little nervous. he wants my email address, i refuse. more nervous, very relieved by the presence of the Frenchies. Its very strange, there is no phone calling happening, they all just sit around and (thankfully) give us tea for hours. At 6 they get out some phn numbers and tell us to call them – some Egyptian bureaucrats, too late for them to help. 6.30pm the borders will not open, our exit-stamps are canceled, we return to Gaza city hungry, frustrated and enraged by the Egyptian’s abuse of power & process. Perhaps a very minute taste of what its like for a Gazan. My host mother laughs and tells me again that i shouldn’t leave. She says she did the same for 4 days before she could go to Egypt to see a specialist, forced to wait for the entire day at the terminal with no guarantee of passage, no food, while the Egyptians know in advance full-well who you are and whether they will let you pass.

The next day i have more luck. The French embassy in egypt applies pressure, we all pass in less than 3 hours despite a cpl of hiccups by way of my non-French presence. The Australian embassy does nothing despite my repeated requests – “the process for us to intervene generally takes 2 weeks… don’t hold your breath”. They report me to the embassy in Israel who call after i’m through and tell me i shouldn’t have gone to Gaza, never to go back “because, because, [thinking of PC reason] because you might get stuck there for a very long time. And I suggest you read the Australian government travel guidelines”. thanks mate.

Finally I get back home to Jaffa, exhausted from the circular journey that took a day and half to travel 60km as the crow flies. I work up the courage to call my family, tell them i’m back and explain where I was for the last week. This is the hardest part. Harder than listening and seeing whats going on over there, its explaining it to people here. And people I want to maintain relationships with. I visit for dinner, my aunt tells me “next time you go there instead of building playgrounds you should ask them to apologise for the cracks in my wall from the qassams”. I’m horrified. I don’t know what to say, where to begin, whether I should just walk out. Stunned, I do nothing. She senses my disgust and quickly changes the subject. I think to myself – maybe with time, maybe they’ll agree to look at my photos, maybe they’ll see my Gazan friends through facebook, maybe they’ll feel – even for a moment – their humanity.

I chat with a friend from Gaza that night and tell him about what my family said, he replies – “tell them we wanna say sorry because 1450 killed, and 4 700 injured, and for all houses that were destroyed, we need more than sorry.”