The first sign of our unusual destination was the lack of a sign. As we sped down route 6, then route 40, even as we drew steadily closer to the snip of land, a tiny buffer between southern Israel and the sea, there was nothing to explain we were headed to Gaza. You wouldn't know of its existence, I thought, as I looked out of the window onto rich arable land flanking the motorway. Citrus and vines flourished alongside fields of neatly stacked straw bales, a colourful patchwork beneath heavy grey clouds.
I'd been awake most of the night gearing up for my trip, then at 3 am the burglar alarm went off. By 5am the Lozenge was in our bed whispering loudly in my ear:' Mummy, I want to go to Gatha!' (Mistaking it for Plaza, or should I say, Platha, the supermarket the dwarfs loved visiting in Amman). I listened to the rain slash against the windows and the Lozenge went back to sleep. J and I had breakfast before I left - the morning of our 8th wedding anniversary. The card he gave me read in Farsi: 'Every day, a spring wind.' We mulled over all the places the spring wind had blown us since we met. I put on my necklace from the Glammy which has my name written in golden Arabic letters. I find it helps with first impressions. A visual bridge between two cultures.
The first sign spelling out four of the most dreaded letters in Israel: G. A. Z. A. appeared in the form of a little sticker pointing towards a door, hastily slapped onto a plastic wall in the huge Israeli hangar on the border.
The hangar is big enough to house thousands, though who can go there? Very difficult for West Bankers to go in. Even harder for Gazans to come out. The only others we saw were two French journalists and some Norwegian NGO workers. I was with two Palestinians from a Jerusalem hospital - one from the West Bank, one from Jerusalem. The West Banker, Ahmad was closely shaved with a shiny, white face, glasses and a black velveteen jacket and black suede shoes which made him look rather like a mole. Hani was moustached and less polished. Neither of them had visited Gaza since their childhood and Ahmad's only memory of it was looking at ducks on the beach. We had a pile of medical kit from the hospital in Jerusalem which no one had cleared. Rubber gloves. Sterile wipes. Medical scrubs.The Gazans have no way of bringing anything in since the tunnels have been smashed in this summer's operation Protective Edge. The Rafah crossing in the south, bordering with Egypt has been shut since the Muslim Brotherhood were toppled there in the summer of 2013. The strip is more cut off than it has ever been. Every sterile wipe and rubber glove is urgently needed and carefully used. We waited while customs official after customs official came and asked us about the contents of the boxes.
'How long tip we can cross?'
'Wait. Just wait.'
Palestinians have had to become very good at waiting. It's become a national sport.
A couple of the customs officers were Israeli Arabs - Arabs whose parents accepted Israeli nationality between 1949 and 1967, and passed it onto their children and their children's children forming a bit of a human border area between Israel and Palestine. I wondered where the border area lay between identity papers and human souls. Both Hani and Ahmad took a subservient attitude, verbally bowing and scraping to the officials, as they attempted to negotiate the boxes through.
'Wait. Just wait.'
'For how many hours?'
'Just. Wait.'
My Palestinian travel companions were well searched. 'Have you got any money here for Hamas? Are you sure? Have you had many more casualties at the hospital during and since the war?' I wondered about the purpose of this final question. Was it simply to rub in some salt?
After three hours we were allowed to have our passports stamped, though I made sure they stamped mine on a piece of paper. An Israeli departure stamp in a passport would mean no entry to Arab countries. We struggled through the first revolving gate with our kit, passing each medical box through individually, after which we wheeled the fold up trolley through a kilometre of wired tunnel with corrugated iron roof, past ditches of fetid water, scattered broken cement drainage pipes and barbed wire. The no mans land seemed a greedy amount of space compared to the little snip of land it buffers. Gaza has a population of 1.8 million, clustered tightly over a surface area of 360km squared. I imagined what could be grown on this buffer's fertile soil.
We looked back at the looming watch towers and the huge wall - everything created from the same, grey cement matching the brooding clouds. The very same grey cement that is used in such a beautiful way in Israel's architecture, including Yad Vashem. No such aesthetic attention paid here on the border. And hardly a human to be seen but for the little trickle of people in the wire tunnel, us on foot, and a golf buggy of Palestinians headed in the other direction. As we approached the first checkpoint on the other side, hailstones pelted us from the sky and everyone waiting ran for cover, dragging their bags and an elderly man in a wheelchair through the muddy puddles.
A clutch of people assembled at the second check point where this time, Hamas customs officials were looking through bags. A group of Chilean surgeons had travelled across the world to help out in a Gazan hospital. Chile has the largest Palestinian population outside of the West Bank. They spoke very little English and no Arabic. I found myself with an unusual translation task as the bearded customs man waved bottles of Bethlehem wine at a Chilean surgeon, asking him in Arabic if he had any more bottles of alcohol on his person. Alcohol is forbidden here under Hamas' strict Islamic leadership. The confused looking Chilean pulled out some miniature whisky bottles from his combat trousers and handed them over.
A young man in immaculate jeans and shoes, somehow clean despite the puddles, a neat scarf and smart red glasses framing his bright, brown eyes approached and introduced himself. He was Sami, my fixer for the two days. He took my tripod and one heavy bag of kit from me and placed it carefully in the boot and encouraged me to take off my headscarf: 'We're not in Afghanistan, you know!' he laughed. We drew away from the border area through more puddles and pot holes towards Gaza City. A couple of wiry young boys on a horse drawn cart raced our Skoda up the muddy slope.
I'd been awake most of the night gearing up for my trip, then at 3 am the burglar alarm went off. By 5am the Lozenge was in our bed whispering loudly in my ear:' Mummy, I want to go to Gatha!' (Mistaking it for Plaza, or should I say, Platha, the supermarket the dwarfs loved visiting in Amman). I listened to the rain slash against the windows and the Lozenge went back to sleep. J and I had breakfast before I left - the morning of our 8th wedding anniversary. The card he gave me read in Farsi: 'Every day, a spring wind.' We mulled over all the places the spring wind had blown us since we met. I put on my necklace from the Glammy which has my name written in golden Arabic letters. I find it helps with first impressions. A visual bridge between two cultures.
The first sign spelling out four of the most dreaded letters in Israel: G. A. Z. A. appeared in the form of a little sticker pointing towards a door, hastily slapped onto a plastic wall in the huge Israeli hangar on the border.
The hangar is big enough to house thousands, though who can go there? Very difficult for West Bankers to go in. Even harder for Gazans to come out. The only others we saw were two French journalists and some Norwegian NGO workers. I was with two Palestinians from a Jerusalem hospital - one from the West Bank, one from Jerusalem. The West Banker, Ahmad was closely shaved with a shiny, white face, glasses and a black velveteen jacket and black suede shoes which made him look rather like a mole. Hani was moustached and less polished. Neither of them had visited Gaza since their childhood and Ahmad's only memory of it was looking at ducks on the beach. We had a pile of medical kit from the hospital in Jerusalem which no one had cleared. Rubber gloves. Sterile wipes. Medical scrubs.The Gazans have no way of bringing anything in since the tunnels have been smashed in this summer's operation Protective Edge. The Rafah crossing in the south, bordering with Egypt has been shut since the Muslim Brotherhood were toppled there in the summer of 2013. The strip is more cut off than it has ever been. Every sterile wipe and rubber glove is urgently needed and carefully used. We waited while customs official after customs official came and asked us about the contents of the boxes.
'How long tip we can cross?'
'Wait. Just wait.'
Palestinians have had to become very good at waiting. It's become a national sport.
A couple of the customs officers were Israeli Arabs - Arabs whose parents accepted Israeli nationality between 1949 and 1967, and passed it onto their children and their children's children forming a bit of a human border area between Israel and Palestine. I wondered where the border area lay between identity papers and human souls. Both Hani and Ahmad took a subservient attitude, verbally bowing and scraping to the officials, as they attempted to negotiate the boxes through.
'Wait. Just wait.'
'For how many hours?'
'Just. Wait.'
My Palestinian travel companions were well searched. 'Have you got any money here for Hamas? Are you sure? Have you had many more casualties at the hospital during and since the war?' I wondered about the purpose of this final question. Was it simply to rub in some salt?
After three hours we were allowed to have our passports stamped, though I made sure they stamped mine on a piece of paper. An Israeli departure stamp in a passport would mean no entry to Arab countries. We struggled through the first revolving gate with our kit, passing each medical box through individually, after which we wheeled the fold up trolley through a kilometre of wired tunnel with corrugated iron roof, past ditches of fetid water, scattered broken cement drainage pipes and barbed wire. The no mans land seemed a greedy amount of space compared to the little snip of land it buffers. Gaza has a population of 1.8 million, clustered tightly over a surface area of 360km squared. I imagined what could be grown on this buffer's fertile soil.
We looked back at the looming watch towers and the huge wall - everything created from the same, grey cement matching the brooding clouds. The very same grey cement that is used in such a beautiful way in Israel's architecture, including Yad Vashem. No such aesthetic attention paid here on the border. And hardly a human to be seen but for the little trickle of people in the wire tunnel, us on foot, and a golf buggy of Palestinians headed in the other direction. As we approached the first checkpoint on the other side, hailstones pelted us from the sky and everyone waiting ran for cover, dragging their bags and an elderly man in a wheelchair through the muddy puddles.
A clutch of people assembled at the second check point where this time, Hamas customs officials were looking through bags. A group of Chilean surgeons had travelled across the world to help out in a Gazan hospital. Chile has the largest Palestinian population outside of the West Bank. They spoke very little English and no Arabic. I found myself with an unusual translation task as the bearded customs man waved bottles of Bethlehem wine at a Chilean surgeon, asking him in Arabic if he had any more bottles of alcohol on his person. Alcohol is forbidden here under Hamas' strict Islamic leadership. The confused looking Chilean pulled out some miniature whisky bottles from his combat trousers and handed them over.
A young man in immaculate jeans and shoes, somehow clean despite the puddles, a neat scarf and smart red glasses framing his bright, brown eyes approached and introduced himself. He was Sami, my fixer for the two days. He took my tripod and one heavy bag of kit from me and placed it carefully in the boot and encouraged me to take off my headscarf: 'We're not in Afghanistan, you know!' he laughed. We drew away from the border area through more puddles and pot holes towards Gaza City. A couple of wiry young boys on a horse drawn cart raced our Skoda up the muddy slope.
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