The money arrived in his mother’s bank account promptly until Abed was twenty years old, then shortly after his birthday it stopped. His mother was philosophical about it, supposing Abed’s father had died and that there was nothing they could do about it anyway. That part of their lives, the more comfortable times, was over. She had always seen it as a bonus and now they would live like everyone else in the camp: almost solely dependent on help from the United Nations.
Abed remained curious about his father and asked her many questions about him: where he lived in England; if he had ever written to her; and if he was still alive the reasons why he might have stopped sending money. Abed’s mother showed no interest in discussing the subject. Then one day he pushed her too far and demanded he had a right to know about his father. She lashed out at him with a venom he had never seen before and yelled that it pained her too much to talk about it and she didn’t want him to mention his father ever again.
He did not.
Abed left university that same week and found work with a nearby metalsmith where he earned enough money to subsidise the UN rations, without which everyone in the camps might starve.
If he ever suspected his mother’s stories about his father were lies, it never prepared him for the day he learned the dark and terrible truth, the same day he was smuggled out of Gaza, a truth that was like a cut across his heart he would always feel.
Abed had been asked many times to join the ranks of the local freedom fighters such as Fatah, Hamas, or factions like the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. He always respectfully declined. His family was Christian Orthodox, a tiny minority among the Muslims, although it was not strange to find a Christian fighting for the Jihad, only unusual because of their small number. Abed was Palestinian and shared the torment inflicted upon his race that did not distinguish between Muslim and Christian, but his heart did not allow him to join the fight. It had not been wounded enough, not yet.
Abed showed above-average intelligence and athleticism in college and it was noticed by those who watched how patient he was. He was a listener more than a talker and did not display the characteristic hysteria that most Palestinians expressed after an Israeli raid and during the funeral that immediately followed a death, or when the futility of it all became overwhelming. There was something interesting about him, though most could not say with precision what it was. He was not a follower, and even though as a boy he rarely joined in the ritualistic, almost daily, stoning of the occupying army, which for some meant paying the ultimate price, he was never taunted for being a coward. It was obvious to everyone he was not, even though he had never done anything brave. Patience is a revered virtue for the Arab, especially among those who live in the camps. The men who watched were confident he would turn one day. Some men will always offer the other cheek and others never.And some, and they expected Abed to be of this type, might offer it once or twice before something pushed them over the edge. This could be relied upon in Gaza because there was no shortage of pushing by the enemy, and much was expected of Abed when that day came.
What changed Abed’s mind about joining the Jihad, what pushed him over the top to take an active role in the struggle, was relatively sudden, although it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Some picked up arms out of despair, sometimes strapping explosives to their bodies and blowing themselves up along with as many of the enemy as possible. Others joined out of sheer anger, frustration and hatred.Abed best fitted this latter category, though he didn’t discuss his innermost feelings with anyone, not even his mother. It was not a desperate act and he would certainly never throw his life away on a suicide bomb attack.
The event that wrenched open his heart and ignited the embers happened during the week he turned twenty-six years old, the same week he opened a metal shop of his own. The peace for him ended late one Sunday night during an Israeli incursion into the Rafah refugee camp.
These attacks were not unusual by any means and happened nearly every night somewhere in Gaza; raids by tanks, armoured personnel carriers, and Apache helicopter gunships, deep into the towns from any one of the numerous military outposts that surrounded the Strip. After the 1967 war, the Israelis decided they wanted Gaza for themselves and gradually carved chunks out of it by building settlement fortresses for their own people to occupy. By the time Abed reached his twenties, almost 50 per cent of Gaza had been confiscated to house only a few thousand Israelis. The explanation for the nightly incursions was to protect the settlements and discourage the Palestinians from attempting to expel them.
The first clue that danger was in the wind that night for the people living in Rafah camp was a cessation in the sporadic bursts of machine gun fire in no-man’s-land along the border a street away.There was always a burst every ten minutes or so. A saying in the camp was that one slept with the gunfire and was woken by the silence.
Abed sat up in his bed, his ears searching to confirm the sounds he was as familiar with as the wind whistling through the date trees and the waves crashing on to the beach. When he was sure the distant creak and rumble was that of tanks and APCs, he put on his jeans and trainers and went to the front door, opening it just enough to peer carefully into the dark street. As the metallic clatter grew louder, there was the unmistakable crunch of a nearby building being crashed through. It appeared that Abed’s neighbourhood was the night’s target. That was not new, of course. Rafah had been attacked dozens upon dozens of times in the past few years, but there had not been an incursion into Abed’s immediate neighbourhood for several months.
He was tempted to make his way down to the corner of the block to the main street that led to the marketplace to take a look and confirm what by now was obvious, but the snipers would most likely already be on the prowl, and if he was seen he would be shot. They were not the only unseen danger; the Apache gunships would also be hovering high above, their engines cloaked by noise suppressors, watching through night vision aides for anything living to show itself in the battered streets below. Many residents, regardless of age or gender, had died with a bullet to the chest or brain because they had been too curious and had not fought the urge to look out of their window during such times.
There was another loud crash from the opposite direction, followed by the guttural revving of a massive engine: another tank. They were penetrating from several directions. Whatever their area of focus was, Abed decided his home must be close to it, if not directly in it.
Suddenly the house at the end of the street crumpled and a tank brushed aside the front of it as if it were made of sugar blocks. A burst of machine gun fire followed as the tank continued past Abed’s block and on to the next.
There was another long rattle of machine gun fire from behind the house which was very close. Then came the sound of someone running down the street towards him. The next burst of fire was different, lighter. Abed knew it was not the enemy. It was erratic and had the desperate characteristics of the hunted, not the hunter.
Abed could make out two men in his street carrying AK47 assault rifles, an easily recognisable weapon since they were often on display in Gaza City during the daytime when the Israelis rarely attacked. Israeli soldiers carried mostly American M16s or Canadian versions of the same model. They never used AK47s.