Visiting a Palestinian home

Sunday, October 23, 2011

One of the great things about travelling as a trainer (aside from somebody else paying the airfare) is that you get to see countries in a way that tourists usually don’t. You get to know people well enough that they go out of their way to help you see the real place. That’s what happened today.

It started as a tourist outing. One of the trainees had told me about an archeological site a little south of Gaza City and offered to go there with me. So my translator, my trainee and I hopped in an ancient Mercedes taxi and took the coastal highway. I should explain about the taxis here. Most of them are ancient, some so battered that the wheels barely stay on. Blame it on the blockade. Cars come through the tunnels at Rafa, but they’re too expensive for any taxi driver to make a living.

It’s a shared taxi system. You indicate what direction you’re headed and if that’s where he’s going too, you jump in and pay your share (usually 1 shekel). Along the way, other people headed that general direction will flag him down and get in the car too. As I said, the taxi we were sharing was an old Mercedes with an extra-deep back seat. They took advantage of that by cramming in makeshift row of seating  between the front and back.

The archeological site turned out to be the remains of the St. Helarion Monastery, built in 329. It’s rare; almost all of Gaza’s ancient sites have been destroyed, mostly through war. The monastery is just foundations and a few recovered stone columns, but there are several mosaic floors still largely intact.

I figured that was the end of the tour, but instead we found ourselves driving into the heart of one of the larger refugee camps a couple of kilometers south of Gaza City. I didn’t really know where we were headed, but I was happy to wait and see what would happen. The camp is old enough that the main street has been largely rebuilt. Some buildings have been upgraded and there are trees growing out of the sidewalk. But there’s no doubt that this is a low-rent neighbourhood.

We turned down a very narrow alley and stopped at a solid metal door. It turned out to be the house of my trainee’s cousin on his mother’s side, and I was there as a guest of honour. The house reminded me of places I’d seen in Afghanistan. The concrete walls had been painted but faded long ago. The furniture consisted of long cushions placed on the floor along the walls. We went into the cousin’s room. There was a bed in one corner, a cheap desk with a computer on it and clothes and other things stacked in plastic bags in another corner. A tangle of wires ran along one wall.

It turns out the cousin is a currency trader. But like many jobs here, it doesn’t pay enough to cover much more than the basics. The prospect of moving out of the camp is pretty remote at the moment because of lack of money. He isn’t married either, and as they say here, you have to decide which you can afford: getting married or buying a house.

As we chatted, other people drifted into the house. One was another cousin, this time on the trainee’s father’s side. Then another cousin, this one an indeterminate number of times removed, showed up, followed by the brother of the currency trader, followed by a friend from the neighbourhood. Several children joined the mob. Nobody seemed to knock, they just wandered in, sat down and started drinking tea and talking.

That’s what it’s like in Gaza. Family is everything. Everyone knows at least the first few layers of cousins and in-laws well. They’re at least occasionally in touch with still more distant relations. I asked my trainee how big he considered his family to be. He thought for a moment. “About 300,” he said. When you ask where someone is from, they don't mean what part of Gaza they're living in now. They mean what village did your family originally come from.

But all of the people in that room have also known fear and deprivation. Some of them  told me about what the living quarters were like when they were children. When the rains came every winter, the roof leaked and people had to scrounge plastic to try to keep things dry. As plain and worn as the building looked to me, it had actually been renovated and was better than it used to be.

But the real horror was under Israeli bombardments. The family all gathered together in the house, just hoping theirs would not be one of the houses hit. One missile took out a house only 100 metres away. The worst was for the children. Parents could only hold them and try to keep them calm. Some told them the noise was just fireworks. Some parents said they slept with their children in their arms. At least that way, they knew where they were if something bad happened.

Things got even worse with the blockade of Gaza. Nothing got in or out, and supplies soon disappeared. Some of the few cars that still got around resorted to burning old vegetable oil instead of diesel fuel. Cooking was a problem without any cooking gas. The economy ground to a halt. Even moving about was hard because Gaza was split into three zones, separated by military checkpoints. Families were split and couldn’t get to each other.

It’s still a desperate place with high unemployment and no freedom to leave. But with supplies coming through the Rafa tunnels, there’s building going on everywhere. There’s a determination here to make things work in the face of long odds.

And as my translator said, if he were given the chance to live in another Arab country or live here, he would choose Gaza. “It’s my home,” he said. There were nods of agreement all around the room.

A few Gaza notes: Palestinians like a little tea in their sugar. You fill a small cup with a half-inch or more of sugar then add a teabag and water. Most places they’ll serve it to you with a sprig of fresh mint.

When it comes to competing for space on the roads, pedestrians seem to have the upper hand. No one seems to use the sidewalks here, even when they aren’t cluttered with hawkers and construction material. And they don’t just hug the edge of the road. People think nothing of strolling unconcerned well into the lane. If cars want to get through, they just have to pull around. Crossing the street is done with a studied nonchalance. You walk at your own pace amid the racing cars, confident they will avoid hitting you. If they seem to be getting to close, you hold your arm down and slightly out from your side and stretch out a couple of fingers as a kind of friendly warning. I haven’t seen anyone hit yet.