Where the carnations still grow
Returning to Palestine almost a year
after the Al-Aqsa Intifada
began, Randa Shaath finds horror, hope
and daily heroism
1 August: It
was an uncomfortable seven-hour drive
from Cairo
to the border. It was hot, and I was
nervous.
This was my first trip to my homeland since
the Intifada
started 11 months ago. When it started I
tried twice
to go, only to find the borders closed by
the Israeli
army. An Israeli female soldier welcomed
me by rudely
ordering me to put my suitcases
through the
x-ray machine. I thought I had gone into
the wrong
section and went back outside, only to
discover
that the Rafah border on the Palestinian
side is now
occupied by Israeli soldiers and that I
had to deal
with them.
So here I
was in the promised land again. As all this
was new to
me, I was making lots of mistakes, like
going to the
wrong window, not submitting my
passport for
the fifth time, not showing my face
properly to
the Israeli security personnel sitting
behind a
one-way mirror... The soldiers were angry.
They kept
shouting at me to tell me what I was
supposed to
do, which unfortunately had the effect
of amusing
me.
The main
road from Rafah to Gaza City is also
occupied.
All of us Palestinians were transferred to a
narrow side
road congested with traffic. The land
looked
unfamiliar and barren. No, my memory had
not failed
me; the Israelis have destroyed all the olive
and orange
trees for kilometres, creating a new
desert full
of garbage where no one is allowed to
touch the
land. No joke: they shoot. The ride from
the border
into Gaza City, which used to take 30
minutes,
took two hours.
When I
arrived at my father's house, I learned they
had killed
eight Palestinians in Nablus the previous
day. My
father was very tense. I finally went to sleep
at 3.00am,
listening to the waves of the
Mediterranean competing for attention with the
Israeli
planes droning above us. The searchlights of
military
ships offshore drowned out the moonlight.
2 August: In
the morning, hundreds of
demonstrators congregated in Palestine Square in
downtown
Gaza City to protest the killing of
Palestinians
in Nablus. Everyone was angry, even the
children.
They carried flags, marched through the
streets, and
raised banners condemning the killings.
Shortly
after, they joined the military funeral of a
Palestinian
soldier killed during clashes in Gaza the
previous
day. It was the first time I had ever
photographed a dead person. I was not
really able to see the body, which was wrapped
in a Palestinian flag as mourners
carried it through the streets to the burial site. I
just
aimed my lens, closed my eyes, and
released the trigger.
3 August: Friday morning. I am still in
Gaza. For the third time now the Israeli army has
rejected my application for a permit to
go to the West Bank. I hate to be a prisoner like
this, but Gazans have been living in
this big prison for years on end, and in merciless
solitary confinement for 11 months now.
All exit permits out of Gaza, as well as those to
visit the West Bank, have been
cancelled. Gaza seems quiet but it is a frightening
calm.
One feels a disaster is imminent.
In the afternoon I photographed a
totally deserted amusement park. I had taken photos
there two years ago when it was full of
children and their parents and there was a sense
of hope that peace was coming soon. Now
no one has the heart or the money to have
fun. Before I went back home, I bought
a bunch of Gaza's famous carnations for my
family. They still grow on this sad
land.
4 August: I woke up at 7.00am. I had
planned to go to the southern areas of Khan
Younes and Rafah to see the demolished
homes and to visit the people who have been
living in tents since November 2000. We
had to pass the Israeli checkpoint near Deir
Al-Balah. Since the Intifada started,
the Israelis have occupied the main road splitting the
Gaza Strip into three parts. Crossing
the checkpoint can take up to four hours, and some
Palestinians do this twice at day,
every day, on their way to and from work. We passed
quickly this time. We went all the way
to Rafah near the Egyptian border, to an area
where 18 houses had been bulldozed,
razed to the ground. The furniture lay smashed
and twisted among the rubble. The walls
and ceilings of neighbouring houses were
pockmarked with bullet holes. A young
woman told me no one could sleep: Israeli
soldiers shoot at them all night. I
approached a little girl with my camera, and she
started
screaming in fear. Next door, a new
house was being built for a soon-to-be-married
couple.
I then went to Qarara in Khan Younes,
where I met two families who lost their homes
last November and have been living in
UN tents since. They have suffered through a
rainy winter, soaked for days at a
time. Now they have to endure the simmering heat of
summer. The governorate has provided
them with clean water but not with electricity.
Neighbours invite them over to watch
TV. The woman started crying and thanking God
for the safety of her children. "Losing
your house is not like losing your son,
Al-Hamdulillah." The sun was beating
down now.
I wanted to see another area where
homes had been demolished, so we went towards
Deir Al-Balah, only to be thwarted by
soldiers in an Israeli control tower who prohibited
me from taking pictures.
I decided to go back to the city. On
the way back, many children were flying kites. I
saw a big one painted in the colours of
the Palestinian flag, bright against the blue sky. I
stopped and shot the last frame on my
film. Once I got home I learned that tanks
bombarded one of the locations I had
just photographed 20 minutes after I had left. One
more Palestinian had been killed.
5 August: In the morning, I found out
that the Israelis had refused to give me a travel
permit for the fourth time. There was
shooting near the Deir Al-Balah checkpoint, so it
was not a good idea to visit Hilal
Hospital in Khan Younes, which has set up a
rehabilitation programme for those
injured in the Intifada. I went to my father's office
and
helped type an article he had written.
In the afternoon I sat on the terrace
overlooking the sea. The house is not big but
comfortable. When he came back to
Palestine, my father wanted to build his first house,
by the sea -- the house he had always
dreamed of. The view is soothing, the front
garden is green and full of flowers,
and olive, lemon, and fig trees grow behind the
house. You could be in Greece or Italy,
or any other Mediterranean country -- if you
could delete those ugly Israeli
military ships just offshore, and never watch the
news, and
never speak to people because they tend
to be depressed and discuss the news anyway.
I wished I could wake up and find that
the nightmare of occupation had come to an end.
6 August: Around 6.00 in the afternoon
I learned that they had given me a one-day
permit to Ramallah, ending at 7.00pm.
This meant I did not have time to reach there that
day. This also meant that I would need
to apply for another permit from there, to be
allowed back into Gaza. Still, I
thought it was worth it.
7 August: I left Gaza at 7.00am. I
wanted to get there as early as possible. I had to
cross the Erez checkpoint on foot
carrying my suitcases. The taxi I had ordered from
Jerusalem was waiting for me on the
other side. Cars from Gaza are not allowed to
move out of the besieged Strip. The
Israeli soldiers checked my bags and permit
carefully. We drove along green fields,
passing the monastery of Latrun. I passed the
Qalandia checkpoint between Jerusalem
and Ramallah in an hour.
I found the key where my friend had
left it for me,
under the potted basil plant, and
waited in the house.
My two friends got stuck at the
Qalandia checkpoint
on their way back from work. The
Israelis placed
two tanks near the refugee camp at the
beginning of
the Intifada, and enjoy humiliating
Palestinians. It has
nothing to do with security: they let
pedestrians pass,
and cars too, but very slowly, creating
a horrible
traffic jam. It took my friends four
full hours to cover
a distance that could be crossed in
seven minutes.
They called me from their mobile phones
every now
and then: "We have moved 10
centimetres;" "We
have not moved an inch in 45 minutes;"
"A whole
group going to a wedding party are
crossing on foot:
the bride is carrying her wedding dress
in a
dry-cleaning bag, but it must be very
dirty by now..."
I could not leave the house as I was
hoping they
would arrive at any minute. I
entertained myself by
cooking dinner for the three of us:
pasta and
mushrooms with white sauce.
When they finally arrived, they had
come up with
great ideas for things to do at the
checkpoint:
"Portable toilets would be the first
thing, as I was
dying to use one;" "A moving Internet
café: we could
have checked our e-mail while waiting;"
"Scooters
that could take you to run an errand
and bring you
back to your car." They announced they
had bought
me a gift from a street vendor at the
check point: a
cheap plastic duck sticking its tongue
out in
mockery.
8 August: Although my friends took two
days off
work to spend some time with me during
my short
stay, I left them early to visit the
Abu Raya
Rehabilitation Centre, where most of
the people
injured in the Intifada are treated.
Some of them
refused to be photographed. Rami, aged
18, was
paralysed from the waist down. He was
shot in
Nablus nine months ago and has been in
hospital
since then. He has turned his tiny
corner of a room
crowded with other wounded young men
into his
home. There were flags, framed Qur'an
verses,
photos of his favourite pop singers and
dried flowers
hung on the wall.
Emad had a face of solitude. He was on
a
physiotherapy machine that exercised
his left hand.
His arm was wrapped in bandages, and he
was just
pushing the machine back and forth. He
answered all
my questions politely. He was shot in
Jenin. He is
34. He has been in the hospital for
three months. I
asked him if his other hand was OK. He
said yes. I
then asked him if I could shake his
hand. His whole
face lit up. He shook my hand
forcefully. He started
telling me how much he missed his
children and his
hometown.
Later that evening we were joined by
more friends.
They all insisted on showing me the
latest
café-restaurant, Vache, to have opened
in Ramallah.
The place is built high on a hill
overlooking a valley,
trees and an Israeli settlement. On our
way there, a
Palestinian policeman stopped the car
in front of us,
checking the papers of all three young
men in it. I
asked why. "Oh, no big deal, it is
because the
Israelis usually bombard this area." As
they saw I
was getting nervous, they reassured me:
"Don't
worry; when we see the planes, we all
go home."
9 August: My stepmother asked me to buy
a few
food items that can no longer be found
in Gaza. A
friend of mine who lives in Jerusalem
decided to visit
me while I was shopping. He informed me
that he
had broken it off with his fiancée.
"She lives in Gaza
and I live in Jerusalem. For 11 months
now we have
not been able to see each other."
We were about to have lunch when I
started getting
phone calls from my family, friends,
and friends'
parents, all telling me about the
bombing of the
restaurant in Jerusalem and instructing
me to leave at
once to Gaza before the Israelis closed
the
checkpoint completely. I called the
same taxi to
come pick me up. The driver called me
back after a short while to inform me that the
Israeli tanks had closed the Qalandia
checkpoint and that he would not be able to reach
me. That meant somebody had to drive me
from Ramallah to the checkpoint and that I
would then have to try to cross it on
foot to reach the taxi on the other side of the
barrier. Everyone was worried that I
would not be able to cross.
To avoid the increasingly dense traffic
before the checkpoint, my friend drove through
the narrow serpentine streets of the
refugee camp. Without previous planning, five
residents of the camp came out
immediately to direct the traffic. They led cars
through
the camp and warned those of us heading
towards Jerusalem about the two extra Israeli
tanks blocking the road and checking
permits right around the corner. We passed the
two Israeli tanks, and the 10 soldiers
who stopped our car. I made it to the taxi and
started my journey back to Gaza.
10 August: My father's colleague who
was to accompany me to Cairo driving a
Palestinian-plated car for a medical
checkup there called me at 7.00 in the morning. He
told me that the Israeli army had
cancelled all travel arrangements for Palestinians,
and
refused to issue him with a travel
permit for his car. He told me they could soon seal
the
border with Egypt, and suggested I
leave without him as soon as possible. I was ready in
10 minutes. I knocked at my father's
bedroom door, said good-bye and wished them
well.
We drove quickly all the way to Deir
Al-Balah. There was a line of cars four kilometres
long parked on the side of the road.
"They are not letting any cars through," neighbouring
drivers informed us. The driver decided
to overtake the line. I was embarrassed and
tried to apologise: "I am leaving to
Cairo now and they might close the borders," I
explained to all and sundry. So we were
in the first batch of cars waiting to cross the
checkpoint. The Israeli soldiers
started allowing cars through, but only two at a time.
It
took 20 minutes to get our car right in
front, by the army tanks. A soldier started
shooting into the air, the bullets
whizzing past 30 centimetres away. I turned around to
look what he was aiming at, and the
driver pulled me back, ordering me to look forward
and roll my window all the way down.
"The car has tinted windows and they hate not
seeing who is inside," he warned me. We
both opened our windows, and finally got past.
He drove as fast as he could, to make
it to the border before it closed.
***
The Israelis closed the borders with
Egypt two days after I got back. I am in Cairo now,
"safe" in my little apartment. I am not
relieved, though. My heart and mind are still in
Palestine. Under constant siege, in the
middle of fear and destruction, I felt part of the
determination to live, to resist and to
hope. I feel home is back there, where the
carnations still grow and thrive, in
the burning land of Palestine.
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