Meet Me in Gaza (20 page)

He says he is out at sea almost every day, and many nights. He has to support his family, maintain his boat and pay his crew.

The crew have dropped anchor again. But the second haul is also disappointing. Suboh rubs his hands over his face, closes his eyes and shakes his head. He tells his crew that we will stay within the 6-mile limit, but change direction. We are going to sail north, towards Israel.

We leave the other vessels behind and sail north alone. The atmosphere on board is sombre. We need to catch fish. But the crew are pessimistic.

‘They will come for us today,’ says another of the crew, with a grim laugh. This is Imad, who is 23 and saving all his money to get married. ‘I’m giving up on fishing,’ he says, ‘it is too difficult and dangerous now. I want to leave Gaza, reach Dubai and find work over there.’

The carrot-haired young cabin boy – the men nickname him Gingee – is Suboh’s 12-year-old nephew. Gingee wants to carry on fishing.

‘School’s boring,’ he says with a freckled grin. He is easily the most relaxed of all of us on board.

When Suboh slows down the boat, we are more than a mile from the border with Israel, and the crew say we are still 6 miles out at sea. They begin preparing to lower the nets.

Debby and I are at opposite ends of the boat, on lookout. Debby calls out, ‘Israelis,’ and we see a streamlined grey gunboat speeding towards us.

Suboh hands me the two-way radio.

‘Speak to them,’ he says. ‘Tell them you are a foreigner and we are within the limit.’

As he tunes me to the Israeli frequency, his face looks as though he’s in physical pain. My throat is dry. I have no idea what to say. I cough, and force myself to speak into the radio.

‘Hello … this is, er, we’re two foreigners on board this, er, fishing boat and … look, can you just stop pursuing us? We are within Gazan territorial waters … You have no legal right to harass or attack us …’ I think of Vittorio roaring at the Israelis and raise my voice: ‘These men just want to fish.
Leave us alone
!
Please
!’

The only response is the stutter of the frequency.

Suboh tells Debby to stand at the stern, and me to stand at the bow. He wants us both on deck, in full view of the Israeli navy.

‘They have to see you,’ he says, ‘then maybe they will not attack us.’

Without a word, Debby walks to the stern and stands out on deck.

I hesitate, because now I’m really scared.

‘
Please
,’ he says to me, gesturing towards the deck. ‘They have to see you.’

I stand out on the bare deck, blinking and biting my lip as the Israeli gunboat cuts through the sea. It is so fast, for a moment it looks like it might plough straight through our vessel. But instead, it begins to circle us at high speed, creating a violent wake that pitches our boat almost ninety degrees either side. I grasp at the narrow railing on the side of the deck, terrified of being flung overboard and drowning. I feel sick. The gunboat continues circling, like a predator closing in on its prey, as we are knocked one way, then the other, by the wake; then it retreats a little, positioning itself close enough for me to see the figures on board quite clearly. One of them turns a heavy piece of equipment and aims it directly at our vessel. It is not water that flies towards us, but bullets, which crack right over my head. I duck and leap towards the small cabin where Suboh is standing at the wheel.

‘Please stay out there!’ he shouts at me. ‘They need to see you are not afraid!’

‘I
am
afraid!’ I scream.

Suboh looks me straight in the eye, the way a good friend or a lover does, and suddenly I see who he really is: he is a man trying to make a living to provide for his family. A man who chain-smokes because he’s violently bullied almost every day of his life. A young man whose shoulders are stooped from stress, whose face is warped with anxiety, and who still somehow finds the guts to sail 6 miles out to sea, knowing exactly what he and his crew will face. His boat is scarred with bullet holes. He has nowhere else to go.

I step back onto the deck, stand tall and stare down the Israeli navy. They can see I am a foreigner. No Gazan woman would be out on a fishing vessel. They will not want to shoot me or Debby.

‘Come on, Louisa,’ I say to myself, ‘let’s have a bit of class here. Six nautical miles out to sea and being shot at – at least it’s not another day at the office!’

My heart is hammering with such violence, it feels as though it could burst out of my heaving chest. But I am not moving from here. I stare over at the Israeli gunboat, where the machine gun is still trained on us. One of their officers on board has binoculars glued to his eyes, and I’ve no doubt they are so powerful, he can see my lingerie. I’m so exposed right now, it is almost comic. Almost. So I do the only thing that I can think of doing right now. I raise my right hand in a slow arc and wave to the Israeli navy.

We retreat from the Israeli gunboat. Once we are at a safer distance, a good way back from the 6-mile limit, the crew lay the nets once more, and this time they yield: 240 kilograms of fish – a decent catch. Our captain smiles, and we all exhale and relax. We sail back towards Gaza port for a hour. Then Suboh kills the engine and Abu Mahmoud and Gingee cook lunch as we drift in the Mediterranean. When the food is ready, we sit out on deck together and share a big pot of fish simmered with rice – simple fishermen’s fare, plain, fresh and delicious. We are all starving. The sea is shining. These men have just fought for their lunch.

When the food is done, most of the crew sit back and smoke. Debby makes more notes, then begins an impromptu Arabic lesson with Imad. I sit beside Suboh and we smoke and talk about fish. He tells me it is the sardine season now, and after that they will be fishing for crabs.

‘Come to my home and we will prepare fresh crab for you,’ he says. I’ve never lived in a place where people invite you to dinner so much.

He lives in Beach Camp, just down the street from the al-Deira Hotel, where most of the Gaza City fishing families live. These days, Beach Camp is a sprawling concrete jungle. Suboh, his wife and their three sons share two rooms between them. His neighbours include the Gazan prime minister, Ismael Haniyeh, who still lives in his family home in Beach Camp, though Haniyeh’s place is cordoned off to casual visitors these days. Suboh tells me about the ugly tensions between Hamas and Fatah supporters, how neighbours refuse to speak to each other because of political allegiances that are now splitting the close-knit camp into factions.

As the sun begins its slow, molten descent towards the sea, the crew kick back. Suboh and I fall silent too. We sit back and watch the light shift; the Mediterranean is calm, infused with streaks of silver, then burnished pink, orange and gold. The sky is ablaze, the soft air almost cool by now. It has been a long, stressful day and we still have a couple of hours’ sailing back to Gaza port. But the men have made their money and they’ll be back out at sea tomorrow at dawn.

I offer Suboh a cigarette. He accepts it with a small nod of thanks.

‘You know, this is the first time I have ever been fishing,’ I say.

He makes a small noise from the back of his throat; it sounds like a dry chuckle.

‘This is my life,’ he says, watching the waves.

While the fishermen fight their corner out at sea, Gazans on dry land have invaded the beaches. On these long midsummer evenings, the only breeze to be found is a ruffle of warm air down at the seashore. Makeshift cafés have sprung up along the main stretch of Gaza City beach, serving coffees and fresh juices from early afternoon until late at night. Every table is busy with families. Many other families just bring their own chairs which they set down at the lapping sea edge, to watch their children swim, and catch the lights winking from Gazan fishing vessels in the late evenings, like stars suspended just above the waves. There are camel and donkey rides for hire, and at one end of the beach two ancient carousels creak as men spin them slowly round by hand and the small children sitting in the carved wooden seats squeal and shriek with high-pitched joy. Half a dozen makeshift lifeguard towers with look-out balconies are stationed along the beach too, where young men pose in the afternoons and play cards and smoke all night.

Other men have set up stalls selling fresh corn-on-the-cob – boiled or grilled – and hot wedges of fluffy sweet potato they bake in small portable tin stoves, then wrap in twists of paper, selling each wedge for a shekel. But the most delightful sights of all are the donkey carts that trundle along the sand, laden with buckets, spades and such an abundance of brightly coloured balloons that the whole spectacle looks as though it might just rise into the warm air thermals, donkey and all, and drift away across the shining sea. I spend many evenings down on the beach with my friends and their families, though Saida’s family tend to stay at home even on these long, sticky evenings. But one evening she calls to invite me to a beach picnic at the weekend.

‘
Habibti
, you remember Mata’m Haifa (Haifa Restaurant) – outside the city? We are going there for our picnic. It is more quiet than the city beach.
Ummi
(my mother) and Maha are coming too, and some friends. We will have fun, maybe even swim.’

Mata’m Haifa is perched above the sea, two or three miles outside Gaza City, on the southern coastal road. At Saturday lunchtime, a posse of twenty-five of us descend on the clear stretch of beach below the restaurant. I know many, but not all the women, who have brought their children with them, but not their husbands.

The women quickly shed their
jilbabs
, but leave the rest of their clothes, including
hijabs
, in place. After a splendid picnic, we lie around smoking narghile under palm-leaf umbrellas until the sun begins to cool a little. Then, in the late afternoon, most of us run into the sea fully clothed, and as we hit the waves it feels like a vast, warm bath. Saida holds my hand at first, frowning and nervous. Like most Gazan women, she cannot swim. But her sister Maha just flings herself backwards into the water, shrieking with delight. I take a swim, then float on my back for a while as the tide washes me gently back and forth. We spend hours playing in the sea with the kids, splashing and laughing. Even Hind takes a paddle.

Afterwards, most of us loll around in the still-warm shallows, weary, salty and happy. I lounge between Saida and Hind. Saida scoops up handfuls of wet sand and gazes out to sea. She’s wearing soaked cut-off jeans and a baseball cap instead of her
hijab
. I watch her, wondering where she is right now. She catches my eye and smiles.

‘How is your friend?’ She says it in English, so that her mother won’t understand.

I smile back. ‘He’s fine.’

‘What about his wife?’ She holds my gaze.

‘He says the marriage is over, his wife lives in the States now …’

‘You believe him?’

‘I think so.’

She nods, then touches the inside of my arm.

‘Be careful,
habibti
.’

I nod back, still smiling. He is a foreigner I met a couple of months ago, an older man with a silver-washed mane of thick hair. I call him Sakhar, after the grizzled male lion in the bare-boned Gaza zoo.

Hind nudges me, wanting to be included in our conversation. She pats her big belly. ‘Leeza, I am fat,’ she says.

There’s no denying she is a big lady. I give a sympathetic nod and Hind pats my belly.

‘You were quite fat when you first came here, Leeza,’ she says cheerfully. ‘You look much better now. What exercise have you been doing?’

She looks so innocent, I am suddenly convinced that she has understood everything we’ve just said. Saida begins to giggle. I start laughing, then Hind, and the three of us lie back in the shallows until we’re all gasping for breath. I love them both so much.

As the sun begins to set, Hind leaves us to prepare herself for the Maghrib prayers, which are recited between sunset and dusk. In just a couple of weeks it will be September, and Ramadan will begin.

‘
Habibti
, you remember last time you and I came here together?’ says Saida.

‘Those sonic booms?’ I nod.

She nods too, then shakes her head.

Saida and I came to Mata’m Haifa for lunch a couple of months ago, just before the
tahdiya
. But we had to eat our meal in a rush and leave because the Israelis started detonating sonic booms that threatened to blow out the restaurant windows.
⁴²

I don’t know what to say because I don’t want to spoil our wonderful day. We sit in silence, watching the sea, drinking in its rippling vastness. I know why people loiter on the beaches in Gaza – it is because this is the only view without some kind of barrier, the only wide open space to be savoured, the only tangible sense of freedom that there is here.

Behind us, the other women are making mint tea and I can smell apple-flavoured smoke from the shisha pipes.

I hear Saida sigh, a gentle sound of evening contentment.

‘You know today is special,
habibti
,’ she says. ‘Because today I love Gaza.’