Stop. Lift up your shirt so we can see your chest.
I shall obey the voice calling out from a loudspeaker hidden somewhere above me in this vast, terrifying emptiness.
Turn around. Take one step forward. Go to room 2. It will push me through the metal bars into a twisting metal corridor from which I will emerge a broken man. Then I will rush to gather myself up again — but I will not regain my old shape and size until I come out of this cage again on my return to London.
After more than fifteen minutes, the end appears. I reach it by walking toward a plaza that spills onto a shapeless stretch of bare land.
I present my passport to one of the officers in the Palestinian Liaison office, and he seems to forget who I am. He records my name in the big ‘Gaza Arrivals’ register, then he hands it back to me.
I hear someone calling my name, ‘Abu Fadi!’ I turn to see who it is, and there is a lanky young man waving at me. He puts on his prescription glasses. Next to him are two others who are younger. The young man exclaims: ‘So glad you got here safely, cousin! I’m Abdelfettah!’
I give the young man a big warm hug — I am genuinely happy to see him. He introduces me to his two brothers, Salah and Nasser, and I hug them in turn. Then the four of us pile into his car.
10
The car we ride in is a colourless old Fiat. The ride is bumpy, the asphalt is pockmarked, pitted, and littered with stones, wood and metal debris.
Salah, who sits directly behind me, tells me that the wasteland to the left used to be huge olive orchards until two years ago, when Israeli bulldozers ripped them out. There used to be tens of thousands of trees here. ‘And part of that land used to be an orchard with the best citrus in all of Gaza.’ We turn our heads and look when he says: ‘The land on the right is what’s left of the industrial park. That building, the one covered in soot whose name you can see — that’s the Abu Galyun Tile Factory. That pile of rubble where you see the truck that’s tipped over — that’s what’s left of the Falluji Soft Drink Company.’ Salah tells us about how the entire industrial park was destroyed over six weeks during May and June 2003.
We veer to the right and climb a dirt berm covered with ruts and holes. As soon as we reach the level asphalt road on top, Beit Lahia looms at us like a hill rising from the centre of the earth.
Most of the buildings and homes on the edge of the city were destroyed. Abdelfettah tells me that Israeli tanks had advanced as far as that line before they had had their fill of shelling the neighbourhood. The Israelis had stopped not less than fifty metres from their building, which sits right on the Beit Lahia — Jabalia line.
As soon as we settle onto the main road, my eyes behold the strangest sight. I can finally recognize Beit Lahia and Jabalia now. Long ago, these twin townships were shapeless, colourless piles of stone and wood and metal — the flotsam of a hurricane that opened up one night long ago and showered the land with shacks and tents. Like falling stars, these structures came crashing into the soil. Hurled down and thrown together — that was how these homes were formed, without recognizable shape or hue, without clear lines, lanes or streets, without any describable features at all. Yet there, amidst this massive pile of homes, grew a beautiful line of houses with a classical Arab style — arched windows like the old mansions of Damascus, like small mouths smiling down from the centre of the town’s destruction. I could not understand how these homes had been spared the carnage. It looked like this housing development was somehow parachuted into Gaza from heaven itself.
‘What is that?’ I have to ask.
They tell me that this beauty smiling at us from the rubble is Sheikh Zayed City, built with aid from the United Arab Emirates. Apartments in the development were given to people who had been injured by the Israelis, or to the families of victims, and to those who had lost their homes during any of Israel’s many incursions into the area. As our car drives by, I stare at these remarkable structures. I go on staring until my eyes fall upon an image of the nice sheikh himself.
We continue along, veering left then right. We come upon a vast stretch of rubble. Abdelfettah says that the houses that used to be there were bulldozed during the Israeli assault of September 2004.
We arrive at a side alley. Abdelfettah stops the car next to a huge poster affixed to the corner of the building directly in front of us. ‘Abu Fadi, this is a memorial for your cousin Falah, God rest his soul.’
My eyes well up at the image of a young man who even in death, maintains a brave, warm smile. He looks like his father Nasreddine when he was that age — the same swarthy skin, the same dark hawk eyes, the same black hair. Falah was the exact image of his father, except for the fact that the occupation had torn it/him in half.
Abdelfettah drives, turns right and slips into another side alley. He pulls over and parks the car in front of a four-storey apartment house with a large iron door. I recognize it immediately: the Nasrite Building.
‘Your mother’s waiting for you upstairs,’ Abdelfettah tells me. ‘Be tough, Abu Fadi. It’ll be fine.’
When I get to the last bachelor pad on the fourth floor, I find the door wide open, inviting me to set foot inside. Abdelfettah tells me to go in by myself while he and his brothers wait behind. ‘Your mother insisted on being alone with you when you arrived. What she said was, “I want to get my fill of him before I have to share.”’
Slightly afraid and hesitant, I step inside. I look around for the mother that the occupation took from me thirty-eight years earlier. I take a few steps into a foyer that seems to open onto a sitting room on the right. Then my eyes catch sight of the fringe of a thatch mat on the floor and the edges of rugs strewn about the hallway. I realize immediately where the sitting room is, and that my mother is somewhere inside.
Abdelfettah whispers something from where he is standing, reminding me to take off my shoes. I take a couple of last steps inside, turn to the right and my mother shrieks: ‘Walid, my son! Welcome home, my beautiful son! I’m so glad you made it! I’m so glad to see you, my lovely, lovely son!’
My mother is sitting hunched over herself on a cotton mattress on the ground. She tries as best she can to get up, even if only to her knees — but I do not give her much of a chance. I bend down and bury my face in her shoulder, hugging her like the child I used to be. I kiss her and she begins to kiss me in return — once for every year I’ve been away. Then we sit and weep. We go on crying, saying nothing. The others outside let us bawl and bawl until our sniffles and snorts come to an end. Silently, they file into the room with looks of astonishment on their faces.
I sit right next to my mother. My hand clasps hers, just like it used to do when I was a child and she would drag me behind her on errands or visits to people’s homes. And I would go running along after her, sometimes clutching her hand, sometimes gripping her dress.
‘Abu Fadi’s here, Aunt!’ Nasser cries.
‘The brightness of your presence has lit up all Gaza, my son! This is the happiest day in my life — I’ve lived to see my boy after all these years! Welcome home, Walid! I’ll say it a hundred times — welcome, welcome, welcome!’ My mother begins to wipe her tears with the end of her headscarf, but the tears refuse to stop pouring. And I, the whole time, watch her face, looking for traces of the mother I knew.
After a while my cousin Nasreddine shuffles into the room, hauling all the years of his life on a cane. All his life, this man has made fun of the dark brown complexion of his skin. And now this man, whose arms were once made of steel, whose body was once that of a titan, is little more than an old man leaning over a walking stick.