A Month by the Sea Read online

  After the bulletin, as Abdallah put on a rollicking Arab tape, I wished we could converse. (Later I learned that that tape was an anti-Mubarak ballad.) We were now surrounded by wide mango orchards, vivid fields of leafy vegetables, colonies of plastic tunnels, wayside spurts of bougainvillaea and groves of date palms. Momentarily I was puzzled by an optical illusion: motor vehicles seemed to be flying through the air. In fact they were crossing a very long bridge spanning a delta on high stilts. Beyond that flourish of hi-tech engineering we escaped from the Port Said traffic and were down on the desert where Bedouin homes – windowless concrete cubes no bigger than bus shelters – huddle amidst untidy vegetable patches. Most men were wearing galabiyas, all women were enshrouded and many carried head loads. For the rest of the way donkey-carts far outnumbered motor vehicles; the donkey was first domesticated hereabouts, some 3,000 years ago. Thrice we passed mothers with small children, trudging through heat and dust to distant towns, but Abdallah wouldn’t stop. (Insurance? Or contempt for Bedouin? Or both?) When all cultivated areas had been left behind we were on the coast road along which General Moshe Dayan’s victorious troops advanced into Egypt on 7 June 1967.

  That chanced to be the date of my return from Ethiopia and I remembered staring down at the Sinai desert as our pilot reassured us that the war was confined to ground level, that the Egyptian airforce had been destroyed by the Israelis. Beside me sat a young Englishman who had been tutoring two of the Emperor Haile Selassie’s grandchildren. Excitedly he suggested that the third world war might soon begin – if Israel invaded Syria and the USSR decided to protect its precious protégé. Everyone then believed that Israel had attacked Egypt only because Egypt was about to attack Israel. In fact Zionist expansionism prompted the Six Day War, which owed its brevity to some fifteen years of meticulous preparation.

  Along the roadside, among many rusting relics of past conflicts, there loomed ambiguous tanks which might or might not be usable. Army checkpoints were numerous but uninterested in an aged foreign taxi passenger. As we passed, Abdallah waved cheerfully at the young soldiers who grinned cheerfully in response. Thinking back to the West Bank’s checkpoints, I couldn’t recall even one exchange of smiles.

  Nothing was stirring in el-Arish, the Sinai’s tourist capital – an agreeable enough place, as mass developments go. In the old, paint-thirsty town Abdallah pointed to traces of the British army’s occupation in December 1916 when Sir Archibald Murray’s troops were preparing for their attack on Gaza three months later. Twice they failed to take the Strip from Turkish troops under German commanders, then General Allenby assumed command. Those three battles devastated many of Gaza’s ancient monuments and in 1926 an earthquake destroyed most of what remained.

  Half an hour after el-Arish, Rafah Gate’s formidable superstructure rose above the desert’s bleached flatness. Having been thwarted for so long, it suddenly seemed incredible that I was about to enter Gaza. Our journey time pleased Abdallah: four and a half hours including a twenty-minute P&T stop.

  I had expected a crowded scene but at 11.45 no vehicles were queuing. A pole-barrier stopped us some 150 yards from the Gate; only VIPs could drive through, we must park behind the three empty buses. My documents were merely glanced at before a policeman waved us on saying laconically, ‘Today is problems.’

  As we followed the wide unpaved road, its verges merging into the rock-strewn Sinai, an excited young man rushed towards us. He was small, slim and designer-dressed with a gold Rolex and an engaging smile. Seizing my hand he said, ‘Welcome to Gaza! You are from where? From Ireland – then more welcomes to Gaza! In Ireland is Gerry Adams and many, many good friends for Palestine! I want to show you my country. After nine years in Cairo today I go home – now a doctor! You have paper for my name and number? Atef the name. Give me a number and tomorrow we make plans, I want to talk English to go to America for work.’ As he scribbled his details, and mine, I noted Abdallah’s disapproval.

  Atef raced ahead of us to overtake his luggage, loaded on a donkey-cart. For him a side-gate was opened at once and he had vanished by the time we joined an angry crowd of 100 or so, all shouting and jostling around the iron double gate – high, wide and heavy, embedded in concrete fortifications. Everyone knew there was a problem, most likely Egypt-generated and evidently complicated but never to be clearly defined. The benign afterglow of Egypt’s revolution had, one sensed, faded in relation to the Palestinians. Who and where were the decision-makers? There was no obvious individual in charge. Many rough young men in civvies were on power trips, seeming to make decisions and ordering people around in a frenetic way – until uniformed characters appeared briefly, to worsen the tension and distress by cancelling their orders. I was clutching my essential documents (passport, letter of invitation from a Gazan resident, exit chit from an Egyptian government department) but could see no office or kiosk at which to present them. Occasionally the side-gate opened – just wide enough to admit one person. Why was there no crowd within agitating to get out? (I had a lot to learn about Rafah and one day I’d learn it all the hard way.)

  When I turned to Abdallah and urged him not to wait, to get home before dark, he refused to move until I was safely through. At that point the Gate was opened to admit twenty, summoned by an obese bureaucrat reading names from a long list. Hastily Abdallah took my passport, grabbed a passing policeman and thrust it into his hand with an impassioned plea. The policeman looked bemused, then gave it to the bureaucrat who scowled at me and snapped in English, ‘Two hours’ wait.’ Uneasily I watched him sauntering away, shoving my passport into his shirt pocket.

  While Abdallah was seeking sustenance in a lean-to café (Rafah’s only ‘facility’) I sat on my luggage and counted my blessings – all two of them. Were I required to produce a different sort of permit, Abdallah’s touching loyalty would help. And the weather was tolerable, a strong breeze coming off the invisible Mediterranean to temper the midday sun. Distant dust clouds indicated the arrival of two more buses. The passengers’ heavy luggage was immediately heaved onto home-made carts drawn by dainty white donkeys driven by fully veiled women, only their eyes visible. They unloaded beside me, seeming young and strong, able to lift heavy trunks, crates, sacks and unwieldy cardboard cartons. None of the luggage owners, or the many youths idling nearby, thought it necessary to help them. Returning to the barrier, those well-fed donkeys trotted faster, on their spindly legs, than I’ve ever before seen donkeys moving.

  The newcomers were Gulf State workers; some had not seen their families since the Second Intifada (2000–5) and they thanked Allah for Rafah’s reopening. (Did they blame Allah a month later when many found it impossible to get exit chits in time to return to precious jobs?) At Cairo airport, police had conducted them to ‘prison buses’ (their phrase) which they were forbidden to leave, without a police escort, until arriving at Rafah. Now they pressed against the Gate, some silently tense, some angrily shouting at the Egyptians strolling from office to office on the far side. Mourid Barghouti was not exaggerating when he wrote: ‘The Rafah crossing point on the Gaza–Egypt border is the ugliest embodiment of the ruthlessness of Egyptian official policy and the cruelty with which the regime treats the ordinary Palestinian citizen.’

  I withdrew from this unhappy throng to sit with Abdallah under the café’s awning, assembled from shreds of UN-blue tenting. Two other foreigners, hitherto unobserved, were slumped in a far corner. The lanky blond American, severely sunburnt, wanted to settle in Gaza for a year while learning Arabic and was being querulous in an old-mannish way because no one had told him he needed an Egyptian chit. Hearing of the Gate’s reopening, he had assumed anyone could walk through unhindered. His companion in distress was an ersatz foreigner, a Canadian passport-holder born in Gaza whose grandmother was dying. He had been told he must show a permit from the Hamas representative in Cairo – a document furiously spurned by Rafah’s Egyptians. According to the Canadian Consul in Cairo, it would take at least a month to obtain the acceptabl
e permit, and granny was dying fast. He rang his uncle in Toronto, the sponsor for his Canadian citizenship, and was advised to tunnel in. But he couldn’t afford to; no one would take him through for less than US$800. He didn’t know any Hamas operators – ‘My family is Fatah by orientation.’

  As I tried to think of some comforting comment Abdallah, who had ambled back to the Gate, suddenly yelled and beckoned. I sprinted to join him. He was laughing and clapping and repeating ‘OK! OK!’ Hastily we shook hands before I made to step through the main Gate, being held slightly open for me by a man waving my passport. But then someone slammed the heavy mass of iron against my breasts (very painful) and I was locked out – by my old enemy, he who first said ‘No!’, the senior officer with the white uniform, lavishly gold-braided. I pointed out that the blue-uniformed man, holding my passport, had invited me in. Whereupon his senior snatched the passport and gave it to a man in civvies who drove out of sight in a shiny new limousine. He wasn’t seen again for one hour and forty minutes, during which time I’d no idea whether or not I’d get in. Was this a bribing situation? If so, I didn’t feel like giving a present to any of these uncommonly nasty men. Now more busloads were arriving and all was in such flux one felt officials were making it up as they went along. Later we heard that high-level confusion had prevailed throughout the day as Egyptians and Israelis quarrelled over how best to deal with Naksa Day border demos, should they happen. Then some policy shift or softening of bureaucratic hearts allowed a dozen Gazans to trickle through. When Gulf State returnees pushed smallish bags under the side-gate these were quickly appropriated and loaded onto porters’ trolleys by un-uniformed louts who rushed them into a nearby building – and perhaps held them to ransom.

  Meanwhile one-person dramas – like my own – were being played out on the edges of the throng. For hours I had been aware of an anxious young man – shabbily dressed, his holdall held together with string – who clung doggedly to the Gate and diffidently attempted to argue his case whenever an official came within earshot. Now his wife appeared on the other side, holding a toddler son who squealed joyously on recognising father. Moments later a junior policeman strode towards them with bad news. Father’s application to enter had been decisively rejected and mother had no right to be in this space near the Gate. Again the young man kissed his son through Rafah’s iron bars, then sobbed goodbye to his weeping wife who quickly walked away – the toddler looking over her shoulder, his arms outstretched towards his father. As the young man picked up his holdall and turned back to the pole-barrier, tears were flowing and I wanted to hug him. But such bodily contact with a female (however octogenarian) would have been inappropriate.

  Back at the café, craving a strong drink, I had to choose between Coca-Cola and Nescafé made with dodgy water. The American was again being querulous, this time about his sunburn; he seemed to think the sun itself, as a hostile entity, was to blame. He planned to return to Cairo with Abdallah. The Canadian citizen had gone, having met someone offering a cut-price tunnel walk. Everyone was hungry, the café was foodless. Abdallah remained smiley and optimistic; all my documents were in order, eventually they’d let me in. But I couldn’t persuade him to go home before they did so.

  I pondered the true significance of those documents. Only my passport seemed of interest; the Egyptian exit permit, in theory so important, was being perversely ignored. As was the formal letter of invitation from Nabil al-Helou. Nabil and Nermeen were an elderly couple whose youngest son (a Cork University student) I had met in May at a Dublin pro-Palestine rally. Hearing of my plan to rent a room in Gaza, as I had done in Balata, he promoted his family’s spare flat and promptly made all necessary arrangements by email. Abdallah had tried to ring Nabil soon after our arrival at the Gate, hoping a foreigner’s Gazan host might be able to cut Rafah’s Gordian knot, but his cell phone wouldn’t talk to a Gaza phone.

  At 3.15 a youth came running towards us waving his arms and making strange sounds which might have been ‘Dervla Murphy’ in Arabic. This time we didn’t allow ourselves to become over-excited – yet it was true, I really could enter through the side-gate. Having given Abdallah a grateful embrace and a very large tip I passed between two brown-uniformed men and was in Gaza – or so I thought.

  With difficulty I evaded three competing trolley louts and hurried across a wide empty plaza between grassy borders, stubby palms and lines of whitewashed one-storey offices. The Gaza City bus stop must surely be close … Then the plaza narrowed and I swore and ground my few remaining teeth. A sprawling edifice, guarded by Egyptian soldiers and labelled TRAVEL HOUSE in high yellow letters, completely blocked the way ahead. I was still in Egypt, now at the mercy of immigration officers, policemen, currency clerks, customs inspectors, exit fee collectors and truculent army officers. (Those last because of Naksa Day.)

  In ‘Passport Control’, a vast concourse, scores of travellers sat on a phalanx of metal chairs in the centre of the floor – from where they could watch their luggage, piled against the walls. I saw some familiar faces and several Gulf Staters were lamenting ‘lost’ bags. Small children slept in corners; their older siblings romped tirelessly and were the only jolly people in sight. Of course being inside made this a different sort of ordeal, exhausting yet free of suspense. Here everything was organised – moving very, very slowly but one could discern a pattern. The Immigration Officers processed passports in bulk, a bus-load at a time. Then names were shouted, owners went to the counter, handed over a stamp costing two Egyptian pounds (about 50 US cents) and watched it being stuck to the relevant page. I stood alone at the 20-foot-long counter and slid my passport under high brass bars, smiling ingratiatingly at an officer with a bulbous skull, a sharply pointed chin and rotten teeth. As a solo traveller, perhaps I could have my passport stamped without delay. But alas! my being a brazen lone woman obviously irritated this officer. Glancing at me spitefully, he placed the foreign passport under a pile of 44 Gulf-State travel documents. It was then 3.50. Ten minutes later another clerk neatly stacked all those IDs on a wire tray and took them upstairs. At 4.40 they reappeared and a third clerk spread them on a desk in a far corner and carefully copied all details into a massive Victorian-era ledger.

  Meanwhile I’d been having a currency crisis. The stamp-seller (a policeman wearing a distinctive arm-band) rejected a US one-dollar bill. He could accept only Egyptian money – I must change – but not here because the currency clerk had just gone off duty. I stared at him in silent dismay, foreseeing a long night on the Travel House floor. Suddenly he relented, gave me my stamp and sent a trolley boy to wherever irregular currency changes happen. I didn’t even register that the Egyptian state now owed me fifty US cents. It was quite a moving experience to be handed two Egyptian pounds, half an hour later, by the trolley boy.

  Reunited with my passport, I hurried through a long wide corridor where in the old days luggage was x-rayed. Free at last? No, not quite – at the far end, barring the exit, three men in civvies sat on a wooden bench beside a new-looking notice saying DEPARTURE FEE. No amount was specified; those officers demanded what they estimated they could get – EP 120 in my case. Another currency crisis, another youth sent off to – wherever … Now at last I could see The Border, an enormous wooden gate where a soldier glanced at IDs before passengers boarded a luxury coach, with laden trailer attached. This takes one a few miles to the EUBAM building. It surprised me that nobody cheered as we passed beneath a colourful archway saying ‘Welcome to Palestine!’ and flying the Palestinian flag.

  Here all was simple and swift. A tall, polite, English-speaking PA official, his precise status unclear, took charge of the one foreign arrival, led me past the customs queue, paused for two minutes to register my passport on a computer, rang Nabil and requested a communal taxi (a serveece) driver to leave me on the al-Helou doorstep. My fellow-passengers spoke no English, seemed ill at ease with the lone woman and ignored me. I sat in the back between two fortyish clean-shaven men who argued incessantly with the s
hort-bearded driver and his young friend in the front seat – long-bearded and long-robed, his turban untidy and his gesticulations uncontrolled. He was not a typical Gazan.

  What little I could see of the Strip from a speeding taxi was as expected: depressing. Time has been unkind to the region. In 1500 BC, according to a Karnak inscription, Gaza was flourishing, renowned for its rich soil and deep-water harbour. Thereafter the usual suspects came and went: Egyptians, Philistines, Canaanites, Israelites, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, Mamluks, Ottomans, British. Ironically, now-isolated Gaza ranked for centuries among the Near East’s most cosmopolitan cities, where travellers met en route to or from Egypt, Central Asia, East Africa, Arabia. Always there was much fighting, trading and building; not until the twentieth century did the Strip lose its cultural and commercial significance. In the spring of 1917 the Royal Flying Corps sent SE5s to help Allenby’s troops by dropping so many 250-pound bombs that most Gazans fled. (One forgets that until 1940 Britain’s cavalry and airforce coexisted.)

  The Strip’s population was less than 35,000 in 1948; after partition it rose, within months, to 170,000. In 1996 Gaza City, towards which we were now travelling, became the PA’s administrative centre, sometimes wrongly described as its ‘seat of government’. (The 1993–5 Oslo Accords did not allow Palestinians to govern themselves.) Now ‘Gaza’ has become synonymous with ‘blockade-as-punishment’ and by 2011 more than 75 per cent of families were wholly or partly dependent on food aid.