Little Wing

Yasmin sat on the warm sand, watching her father's calloused feet push gently against the webbing of the fishing net, as his gnarled fingers danced a slow and rhythmic stitch. Beside him sat the eldest of her three younger brothers. He was uncurling the net in readiness for his father. The older man's eyes focused in concentration as he untangled and discarded the dried weeds and debris of the sea bed. It was early; the air still with a gentle quietness that the roar of the city behind could not quite drown. The sun was low, but rising fast, flashing shards of brilliance off the sea’s tiny wavelets. A dozen or more open wooden boats lay swaying gently at anchor. Beyond them, the cold metallic silhouette of a frigate cleaved a white foaming line through the ocean to tell them there would be no fishing that day. 

“Sister,” said her brother without looking up, “I’m thirsty. Pass me water.” 

She reached into the chipped enamel bowl for the plastic water container wrapped in damp hessian. She poured some into the tin mug sitting in the sand and, without a sound, passed it to him. He took it, drank and passed the cup back to her. She filled it again and held it out.

“Father rest a moment and drink.” 

His fingers stilled as his hands dropped into his lap. His big toes still stuck out through the netting and curled slightly as he smiled and reached for the mug. His face was a deep, sun-baked brown, as hard and cracked as soil in summer; a lined, weather beaten history of his life. Behind the leathery binding his eyes sparkled like the sea he loved, betraying a youthfulness that the world had not yet sucked out of him. Despite everything that had conspired to keep him poor, he nurtured a stubborn optimism that he tried to instill into his children. His wife mocked his sense of hope and called him a child. But the children loved the child in him and he loved them back.

Hearing the slap of the heavy rotors all three of them looked up at the same time, their eyes sweeping the sky like beacons. The shiny helicopter came menacingly into view. As it flew over the beach they saw a helmeted soldier sitting in the open door with a heavy gun resting across his lap. It flew over the beach to hover somewhere above the city. She watched it briefly, knowing all too well what it meant. It was why there would be no fishing. There was no need to speak of it. 

Yasmin’s black scarf slipped as she craned her neck to follow the helicopter. It lay across her shoulders in the crook of her neck, revealing her thick black hair. She pulled the scarf up across her shoulders to stop it falling into the sand. There were few on the beach to notice, or to care, and she only wore it out of deference to her mother. Her father nodded to Lutfi and her brother bent to his work in response. She stayed awhile, watching the men work and relishing the calm of their shared understanding. The beach was filling up with children splashing in the water while idle young men sat in groups smoking cigarettes. 

She stood up, brushed the sand off her and then bent to pick up her plastic sandals, turning her back to the men and their task, and to the boats rocking on their moorings. She hadn’t been able to tell her father what she had so determinedly set off to tell him earlier in the morning. It had been too peaceful and she hadn’t had the courage to spoil the intimacy of those shared moments by the water’s edge. Adjusting her scarf and pulling it back up over her hair; she gazed at the traffic along the road and then beyond at the concrete squalor of Gaza and its forest of TV aerials. The helicopter was still there in the distance but it was hard to make out exactly where in town it was. Somewhere it was watching, directing and warning, just like the great steel ship cleaving back and forth across the water defining their boundaries with its menace. Maybe a rocket would go screaming into a car or an apartment or maybe it would just intimidate and humiliate. 

Yasmin stopped at the main road, put on her sandals and waited for a gap in the traffic. She crossed the heavily rutted road and went into the refugee camp. It had always been called, ‘The Beach’. It was on the beach, everyone knew that, so it wasn’t a very imaginative name. But even the United Nations called it that, and it was perhaps the most densely populated spot on earth. Yasmin and her family shared the square kilometre of the camp with over 75,000 other stateless prisoners of other peoples’ politics. She hated the raw stench of waste in the fetid, open drains that criss-crossed the camp. As she came to a small patch of open sandy ground used as a public lavatory she pulled her scarf across her nose and mouth as she passed it. Turning into another alleyway, she was shaded by the over hanging first floors of the buildings. Poles leant crazily out into space holding lines of wire with multi-coloured washing drying on them in small gaps in the sky. The alley bustled with people and donkeys and she moved seamlessly through the noisy, intimate crush thinking about how much she would miss it all when she left. It had been the backdrop to her whole life. 

All her neighbours were families from the same village south of Jaffa. Many of them had been simple fishermen like her father and grandfather, and others had been farmers. And that is what they still tried to be, when they could, when they were allowed. For now they lived crammed into buildings made of unrendered bricks and homemade cement blocks. Walls were rarely straight and those who lived on the upper floors of the three and four storey buildings boiled under their tin roofs in summer. Yasmin’s family lived on the ground floor of a four storey brick building. They were tenants, as were most in their street, of a rich Gazan who lived in the city centre on the frugal offerings of over three hundred tenants scattered throughout the camp. 

Yasmin trod carefully as she picked her way down the garbage strewn alley. She felt nervous of what her mother would say. She knew her mother dreamed of a different future for at least one of her children. She lived for that, she struggled for that and bore every adversity as a challenge to her will. Yasmin had lost count of the number of times she’d been told; “habibti, this is no life for us. This is no life for you; you are so clever and so beautiful, I cannot let you wither and die here. I have been trapped here for so long, staring into this little alleyway that sometimes I feel I am already dead. I feel myself old when I am not.” It was a tireless and constant lament. Her mother’s eyes held none of the sparkle she treasured so much in her father. Yasmin couldn’t remember her any other way. Her sense of hopelessness was only matched by her determination to save one of her children. And so, slowly but surely her mother’s dream of another life grew within Yasmin until it clothed her and became her. She wore it as an integral part of the way she saw her own future. It meant there would be no marriage within the camp to a boy whose roots were joined to hers in a shared heritage. Nor would there be a joining of families to reinforce their suffering, a suffering from which there seemed no escape. No, Yasmin’s mother wanted her daughter to live in the future, not die mired in the past, asphyxiated by a collective longing for what could never come again. 

Khadijah, Yasmin’s mother, was a formidable figure dressed in black. She ran a small shop from the front room of the three they lived in on the ground floor of their building. She’d got the money together by founding a neighbourhood credit union with eight friends when Yasmin had been born. When she received her first payout of 1,000 shekels she converted the sitting room window into a small shop front and bought in cigarettes, biscuits, sugar, salt, flour, dried beans, tea and a whole host of basic goods that everyone needed. 

It wasn’t long before the shop had taken over their sitting room, leaving them with two bedrooms and a rudimentary kitchen in the stairwell. The shop had been through good times and bad depending on how things were going with the Israelis. Intifada always meant bad times, but when the crossing was open and the men were able to get work, Khadijah turned over about 200 shekels a day, and even more when Mohammed brought in fresh fish to sell. They were among the wealthy poor. 

Yasmin entered her home with slow, measured steps, turning nervously into the sitting room cum shop and store room, pulling her scarf off as she called out a greeting. 

Khadijah was sitting in the far corner. She was on a low stool by the opening in the wall where she passed her days talking to her neighbours. From her vantage point she could see down the alley and reach for goods that people wanted to buy without moving. Dropping her scarf onto an unopened box of biscuits, Yasmin went to her mother and bent to kiss her. 

“Home so early?” Her voice was anxiously inquisitive as she asked, “You told your father, didn’t you?”

“No mother,” she looked away for a moment and then sheepishly added, “I just couldn’t. Not then, in that place. I’m sorry.” 

She saw her mother’s hands clench in the folds of her dress. It was clear that Khadijah was cross, but she tried not to show it. Yasmin went on, “It was so peaceful with father and Lutfi. If father had been angry then perhaps I could have told him. Now that the time has come, I can’t leave you. This is my home,” she knelt before her mother and took her hands. “They cannot fish today, so you are the only one working today. Keep me here, with you. Who will there be to help you, mother?” 

Khadijah reached out, taking her daughter’s head in her strong hands and looked into her eyes. With a fierce and steady gaze she said, “The bulldozers came again today. Two more houses were destroyed and eight more families have no home because a young boy hid some guns,” She spat it out it dismissively as if only an idiot would do such a thing. Yasmin shrugged and looked down at her hands gripping the cloth of her dress. Her mother began to stroke her hair, saying quietly, “one boy is foolish and tries to be a man and so we are treated like dogs to be kicked until we learn to spy on our own sons and husbands and betray them to those who stole our land. No, my child, there is a better world and you must find it. You cannot stay here to perish in the rubble of our lost hope. Your father cannot fish today because he has been robbed of his freedom. This is a prison and prisoners must escape when they can.”

She’d heard it all before. “I know, but I’m frightened mother.” 

“So am I, child, but we must all be strong. I have educated you for this. You have studied hard, you read books and you know life can be better in other places. You can make us proud by being a part of another world, one where you can choose your own future. You speak some English, you can go anywhere. You are clever, you are beautiful, you are my daughter and you can take our light into a world that is free. You should be more afraid of staying than of going,” she smiled, softening her voice, “I will talk to your father tonight.” 

She paused, picking up one of Yasmin’s hands and caressing it. 

“No,” she said after a few moments, “we will all talk together. It will be better that way. Now....” She let go of her hand and reached over to pull some papers out from under a small pyramid of tinned tomato puree. “Here are the lists for today and I have written here how much each owes. See?” She pointed to the scraps of paper with shopping lists and prices written out. It was the daily ritual, as if they’d never spoken, as if the plans they had made together were a momentary dream. Yasmin nodded meekly. She stood up and took the papers and started putting the meagre orders into plastic bags to deliver later in the day. 

The next three days were tense. Yasmin’s mother took control while Yasmin hid her feelings by being as helpful as possible, keeping herself busy doing chores for her mother. She lingered over her deliveries spending time with friends before going back to the house. Each day she waited until she knew her father and Lutfi were home from the beach or from their fishing. Then home would be normal, or nearly so. She dreaded being there alone with her mother, with the person who had nurtured and grown the dream inside her. In those last days she craved her father’s presence as the beacon of everything that was safe and normal. 

One dark evening, after Yasmin had just finished a delivery, she found herself walking quietly and deep in thought as she approached her house. As she was about to pass the shop window, she heard the raised voices of her family arguing. She froze, knowing they would be arguing about her. She pressed herself back against the wall and listened. 

“You know Mohamed how many times we’ve said it. We’ve nothing to offer our children.”

She imagined her father nodding in weary resignation. He called it 'her tired old argument' but Khadijah went on. “It may be God’s will but that is the way it is. Our child will have to make her own future because we can’t make one for her.” It hurt hearing her being discussed like that as if she was the only one whose opinion didn’t count. 

“I’m happy here with father.” It was Lutfi. “Why can’t Yasmin be happy helping you?” He sounded frustrated but resigned. She could tell it in the slight tremor and low, slow cadence of his voice, as if the anger had been sucked out of it. 

“My wife, you are a hard woman,” said Mohamed. “I would like to forbid this thing, this secret plot. But inside me I know that if I did, I would always wonder if my child would not have been better off somewhere else.” 

Yasmin could almost hear her mother’s sigh of relief. 

Her father spoke again; more it seemed to himself than to his family. Yasmin strained to hear him. “I think you’re making a mistake,” he muttered. “But I admit there is a small chance that I may be wrong and that you may be right,” quietly he added, “It saddens me greatly.”

Yasmin would have rushed in to hug him but for the fear of being reprimanded for eavesdropping, so she stayed rooted to the spot in the dark passage. Even though he’d spoken for her it was now too late, and until the time when she'd heard it said out loud, she had always kept a small flame of hope alive. She felt the breeze that had just blown it out. 

* 

The bus station was loud. People pushed and jostled. Piles of cardboard boxes bound with rope, painted tin trunks, battered suitcases and cloth bundles were strewn haphazardly about. Vendors of sweets, cigarettes and fruit moved through the crowds. Bus boys yelled for customers and honking taxis and donkey carts pushed through the swirling mass. The crowd was oblivious to its own chaos, intent only on imposing individual order. With quiet indifference to it all, a few scattered groups of men in jelabiyahs smoked water pipes, drank tea and played dominoes in front of makeshift tea shops. The fragrance of their fruit flavoured tobacco sweetened the acrid smell of exhaust fumes and sweat. 

Lutfi finally emerged from the ticket queue for Rafah, which in reality had been no queue at all but a scrum of waving arms searching for the small window from which tickets were issued. The moment was decisive. Lutfi passed the ticket to her and looked down at his feet. Mohamed thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his jelabiyah and Yasmin watched as her fathers shoulders hunched in sharp dismay. Khadijah moved forward and enveloped her daughter in black cloth and tears. Yasmin could feel her mother shuddering as she wailed in grief. They remained locked together in the dramatic passion of their parting until Mohamed put his hands gently on his wife’s shoulders. Lutfi passed Yasmin’s suitcase up to the bus boy on the roof busily strapping everyone’s luggage down. 

With Mohamed’s hands resting on her shoulders, Khadijah relaxed and let her arms fall loose. She looked briefly at him and then turned to hug her daughter again, afraid of the dream that was sending her child away, afraid of the breach Yasmin’s parting would make in the fabric of their lives. She kissed Yasmin on both cheeks and then let her husband come between them. Mohamed wiped a tear away from one of his daughter’s eyes and brought his hand to his mouth to kiss the tear on his finger. He took her hands in his and stepped back a little so that she filled his vision. 

“Be strong my child. We will survive here but you,” his voice urging, encouraging, “you must prosper and be proud.”

“Father, it will be so hard.” Her voice was meek and soft, full of her submission to the inevitable. “I will be so far away. I will miss you all so much.” She threw her arms around him and buried her head in his chest breathing him in and willing him to take her home. He put his head down and whispered to her, stroking the back of her head.

“Whenever you go to the seashore you can send me messages through the fish,” his eyes were closed and he spoke to her softly from deep within himself. “When I cast my net into the sea and bring fish onto the boat I will know which one heard you and I will thank God for our family,” he brought her head up off his chest and looked into her eyes. He smiled his biggest smile. “We will see each other again. Be brave carrying the light of our little family into the world. We are always with you, never forget that, so write often, let us have your news.” 

Lutfi stood, tears filling his eyes. He was unable to move now that the time to say goodbye had finally come. Yasmin went to him and hugged him briefly.

“Bye little brother. Look after everyone. I love you.” 

It was brief and sharp, the final parting. She turned and climbed into the cramped bus. She moved down the aisle which was filling up with boxes and bundles, and found a seat by the window where she could watch her family. She put her basket on the floor between her knees and looked down at her parents and brother, appearing small and lost as they stood tearfully in the ebb and flow of the crowds around them. Then she too started to cry as she touched the glass of the window that divided her from her family. 

The bus was filling up. A man, older than her father and dressed in western clothes sat down beside her, but she scacely noticed him. The horn sounded, she waved frantically, tearfully and in hopeless desperation as the last of the passengers climbed aboard blocking any hope of escape. The bus jerked and swayed into life. She craned her neck for a last look at her family before resting her forehead on the top of the seat in front of her, burying her face in her hands.

They drove out through the afternoon traffic. The bus stopped at a set of lights and Yasmin found herself staring at a giant portrait on the side of a building. It was garishly bright street art, designed to dominate. It was the portrait of a smiling young man with swept back hair and a bookish, intelligent look. He had blown himself up on a bus in Jerusalem some time ago. Yasmin knew that he was a hero to most of her generation; a hero for his defiance and for his martyrdom. She thought only of the sadness of the family he left behind. She never understood them. The bombers blew holes in the lives of their own families that were every bit as big as the torn bus roofs and the uncomprehending grief of the victims’ families. There was so much loss and now she too, in her own small way, was adding to the ever mounting pile of useless grief. She started to weep again. She thought no one could see or hear her but the man next to her spoke in a voice of quiet concern. 

“Is he a hero to you? Did you know him?” 

She turned, flustered. She shook her head and wiped her eyes quickly, keen not to let him see her or to catch his eye. 

“No. I don’t even know his name, only what they say he did,” she turned toward him, looking through him, past him to a small boy across the aisle. “I know he’s supposed to be a hero but I don’t understand it.” Then she let herself look at him, taking him in. He was clean shaven with a calm and tranquil air. His looks were kindly, his concern seemed genuine. “It won’t get our land back will it?” 

He smiled and looked briefly around the bus checking who might be in ear shot.

“No. I don’t even think Hamas is stupid enough to think it will.”

“So many more to be buried.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding his agreement, “that’s true. Probably the only real truth. Tell me, can I ask where you’re going? It’s not my business, I know but you seem so sad.” 

She told him she was visiting friends of her family in Rafah and then going on to Cairo to work in a hotel. He smiled the calm and tranquil smile of someone who is used to hearing stories. She thought he didn’t believe her and considered her a shallow girl telling tales. It didn’t matter, she liked talking to him. He was drawing her slowly out of herself. She would have enough time to weep in the long lonely nights ahead of her. But instead he said nothing. He just looked ahead, lost in his thoughts although she had no idea what he might be thinking. 

Then he asked,“Do you have papers from the Jews to leave our little Palestine?”

“No.”

He made a gesture with his hand, mimicking the action of a diver who surfaced quickly after his dive. 

She nodded.

“I had a pupil once who blew himself up in a shopping centre in Tel Aviv," he continued. "He was a hero in Rafah. I’ll show you his picture when we get there if you like. The bus goes right past it.”

“You’re a teacher,” she said. 

He nodded and carried on. “Yes. The boy was in one of my classes. He was very bright and we all knew he would get a place at University on a United Nations scholarship. His family were educated. They have two restaurants and a grocery store in Rafah. In the end he got a good degree from Al-Azhar, mechanical engineering I think it was. Somehow, despite the difficulty of finding a job we thought he’d make it and do well but two years later,” and his hands came together in a mock clap, “he blew himself up and a lot of other people too.” 

Yasmin shook her head. It was the first time she’d spoken to anyone who’d actually met a martyr. She realised that this new species had infiltrated into the consciousness of everyone and it didn’t matter whether one had an opinion or not; they were the living, dying face of bloody minded, obstinate resistance. 

“When he was fifteen his older brother was shot with a rubber bullet during a street fight. The bullet struck his liver. It might as well have been a real one. After his brother died there was something a little separate about him. It was as if the boy felt it should have been him. Only it wasn’t and he was just another school boy who’d suddenly become the little brother of a hero. 

We noticed him becoming more withdrawn as time went on but as it only seemed to make him study harder, we didn’t take much notice of the quiet changes in him. In fact we were proud of him,” he paused, a reflective look on his face. “Little did we know,” he said shaking his head gently from side to side. “What we missed others saw with their preying eyes and chants of salvation. Strange and sad what goes on right under our noses.”

“What about his family?” 

His eyes shone and a wry grin spread across his face as he looked at her. 

“I think you know the answer. You’ve already seen through those violent slogans of martyrdom and struggle to the pain beyond,” he shrugged. “It’s always the same. The strong disdain the weak. Oh yes, the family gets money but I think it only makes them suffer more,” he looked down briefly before turning back to her, his smile softer, “you have a real heart you know. Not one that can be bought and sold like the trinkets of modish fashion and ideology,” he paused. “Yes,” he said, “we’re sometimes very careless with God’s gift of life. Don’t you think?” 

She smiled. She liked him but the sudden praise made her uncomfortable. The forced intimacy of the bus was something unexpected. The image of her family shrinking into the crowds in Gaza as the bus had pulled away flashed back into her mind. She looked at the man next to her and reached down into her basket. 

“I have some food here. Are you hungry?” she offered him a tomato sandwich in flat bread. He took one and they ate quietly as the bus drove along the sea shore. They had meandered out of Gaza, staying south of the Israeli military outpost at Nazarim before stopping at the camps of Al Burayj and Nusayrat where the bus let people off and took on more passengers. After Al Burayj the aisles were crowded and the air heavy with the sweat of overcrowding and thick with the sharp smell of Cleopatra cigarettes. In the quiet that was amplified by the noise of the countless conversations that filled the bus, Yasmin closed her eyes. 

She was back at, ‘The Beach’. It was the day before her departure - mid-morning. She’d gone to say goodbye to her best friends. She, Seif and his sister Sawdah were all cross-legged on the bed at Seif’s family’s house. The yard was full of aluminum pots and pans that had been washed and stacked up, over them clothes had been draped and left to dry in the still morning air. Chickens pecked at the dirt searching for scraps, the women occasionally shouting and flapping at them. Two stubble faced men sat on upturned boxes playing dominoes. Yasmin’s eyes were full of tears. She felt as if she was stigmatised, as if everyone knew she was a coward. Sawdah had tried to comfort her. Her face was an oval framed in a cream scarf that hid her hair and hung down over her red tee shirt to cover her breasts. She told her it would be good for the family if someone could go abroad and earn money to send home. She comforted and cajoled. She said they too were a people of a Diaspora fleeing oppression. She would never be without friends from home. She would find them wherever she went. Seif tried to look sympathetic but didn’t know what to say. The two men took no notice of her 

* 

Dimly aware that the noises around her had changed Yasmin began to surface from the warm comfort of home. Slowly at first. Images of her family and snatches of conversation mingled with the growing sounds on the bus. Her shoulder was being gently rocked. She liked the motion but recognised it as a call of some sort. 

“We’re here, sleepy one.”

She looked up to see the face of the teacher. It was reassuring. She looked around. Bags were being pulled down. Passengers were pushing to get off the bus.

“Rafah?” 

He nodded and she looked out of the window. Crowds of people stood talking and smoking, bags were being tossed to the ground or being handed down to outstretched arms. Passengers returning home were being enveloped by family members. Women ululated at the sight of their children coming down the steps.

“Can you see your relative?”

She shook her head.

“My wife is over there. See,” he said pointing into the crowd.

She looked at his face. It radiated tranquillity.

“Where?” she asked following the direction of his arm.

“There, look. She’s waving at us.”

Yasmin still couldn’t see.

“Over there,” he repeated and then she saw her; a handsome, strong featured woman with thick black hair and gold necklace smiling and waving back at them. She was surprised it was her because she’d been taught to think badly of women who went out without scarves. Yasmin didn’t particularly like to wear hers but her mother scolded her for offending the honour of the family when she caught her without it. 

“Come; let us get your things. Zaynab and I will look after you until your family find you. Come.” 

He helped her with her meagre belongings and they left the bus to join the seething crowd at the bus stop.

“This is my wife, Zaynab,” he said introducing her to Yasmin.

Zaynab’s eyes flicked quickly between her husband and Yasmin. “Welcome my child, what is your name?” Her voice was kind, firm and reassuring, a bit like her husband’s.

“Yasmin,” she replied, feeling herself blush slightly for no particular reason. “Your husband has been very kind.” 

She smiled then and said, “I expect you’re being polite. He is always picking on innocent people to lecture with his unfashionable political ideas.” Turning to him, she said, “I bet you did, didn’t you, habibi?”

“She’s waiting for a relative to collect her. She’s got a job in Cairo. At a hotel I think. Yes?”

“Effendi, ya rai,” boomed a great bearded man from a few paces away. The teacher turned and the man launched himself at him in a great embrace. “How good to see you again.”

“Mohamed, you young rascal. What a fine gift to see you so well. What brings you to the bus station?”

“I’m looking for a young woman. She’s the daughter of my father’s cousin. She’s going to Cairo but the poor thing has no papers. I can’t stay long,” he said nervously looking around him. “She’s probably waiting by the bus. Now I must go to find her or the family will be most upset if they think I have neglected her,” he paused, remembering his manners, “It is always an honour to greet my old teacher again.” He was clearly agitated which didn’t sit well with his big frame and that somehow made him seem less threatening to Yasmin.

“Oh Mohamed, you always were in such a hurry that you never noticed anything around you. You don’t seem to have changed much. It’s bad for your blood pressure.”

“But this time I really am in a hurry.”

“Oh dear,” said the teacher smiling as he stroked his chin. He turned to Yasmin. “Do you know this man?” 

She shook her head.

“Stop making fun for goodness sake and introduce poor Mohamed to Yasmin,” cut in Zaynab.

“Yasmin here,” he said gesturing toward her, “is a young woman from Gaza City waiting to be met by a relative who will help her on her journey to Cairo. I think you should ask her if she is the person you are looking for. I saw no other young woman travelling on their own.”

Turning to Yasmin he said, “I’d like to introduce you to Mohamed, once an enthusiastic student of mine who is today a zealous fighter, as you can see, in God’s new army.” 

Mohamed ignored him and looked shyly at her while he seemed to try to shrink his great bulk. “Is it true?”

“It might be,” she said and then spoke the names of her father and mother and then of his. Mohamed relaxed and smiled with relief.

“Thanks be to God,” 

The teacher looked on for a moment, eying them both up as if deciding whether he could leave Yasmin in Mohamed’s care.

“Children, be careful. Yasmin, I wish you good luck and hope that you will call your first son Hashem to remember your past and to make sure your future never severs its roots. And you, my poor student. How many times must I quote the Prophet’s great hadith, peace and blessings be upon him, that ‘the ink of the scholar is more holy than the blood of the martyr’?” Mohamed smiled, a youthful grin framed by his black beard.

“Teacher, you are a wise man and I will always respect you. You taught me well, but there is more than one path to heaven. The way of peace espoused by the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, is for those with peace in their hearts and who are willing to accept the true word,” he turned, still smiling, from his old teacher and looked briefly at Zaynab who nodded. Mohamed bent to pick up her bag and said, “follow.” 

They were quickly lost in the crowd. She turned once to wave and hoped he might have seen her hand above the heads. Nervously, she followed Mohamed whose bulk and confidence intimidated her. She didn’t know how to start a conversation with him and he rarely turned to look at her. He seemed not to notice her and cast only occasional glances to make sure she wasn’t lost as they threaded their way through the crowds. She stopped beside him by the road and watched the donkey carts and sherut taxis enveloped in their private dust clouds. Mohamed hailed a passing sherut and they clambered aboard to be squashed and jolted in the throng of the overloaded minibus. 

They travelled out of the middle of the town, past occasional elegant, white washed houses and down avenues with tall spreading palms. The aura of a Mediterranean idyll was soon lost as the taxi took them away from the centre of Palestine’s poorest city toward Shaboura; a district of one room shacks built mostly of corrugated iron, tarpaulin and cardboard. It was the heart of misery into which gazed the hated watchers from their tall towers so that to be in Shaboura was to be under constant surveillance. Mohamed got out there and she followed meekly, unknowing and uncomprehending. They entered a small side street. For a few moments he stood in silence looking round the corner at the street that stretched out towards no-mans land with its razor wire, trenches and towers. Then he gestured for her to stand at the corner and look. She stared at the street. Children played naturally and rowdily but the adults seemed to move with a darting motion as if frightened of the light. Someone had scrawled, ‘Welcome to the Ghetto’ and near to it, another painted slogan shouted, ‘Yesterday Warsaw, Today Rafah’. Mohamed quietly explained to her that she would be going underneath all of that to get to Egypt. 

She fought for breath. The stark ugliness of the scene was so bleak and terrifying that she didn’t know what to think. How could she think anything? She looked at him in silence and lowered her face as if shamed by everything around her. She was cross that Mohamed had confronted her with such ugliness. It seemed degrading and left her feeling sadder and lonelier than ever.

Then they left again taking another taxi. As they got in, she said, “You shouldn’t have brought me here.” 

“I wanted you to see it,” he said once they were safely on board, “because now is the time to tell me whether you still want to go,” he sounded concerned in a fatherly way. It was the first time she felt no distance from him when he spoke. 

She bit her lip, caught herself doing it and blushed slightly. She told him she would do it and fell silent again, lost in a suspended state of denial as she looked at everything around her and registered nothing. Then as they moved closer to Rafah on a different route into town she saw fields of beautiful carnations. She awoke to herself and gasped at its luxuriant brilliance, at the gently waving carpet of red, white and pink. She looked at him smiling up with infectious happiness and he grinned back. 

“Beautiful isn’t it? Not everything is Rafah is ugly. Sometimes we make things that give happiness,” he shrugged. It was a deeply sad shrug, a gesture of impotence and anger. “Even when we have something so peaceful and pretty to sell, the Jews won’t let us.”

She saw his hurt and asked him to tell her about himself. He started to talk then, his voice a low conspiracy between them which drew her closer to him. He told her about his business selling Cleopatra cigarettes and electronic goods smuggled in from Egypt down the tunnels she would leave by. The tunnels that the Israelis believed only existed as a conspiracy to kill them, were a lifeline for business. Sure, he said, guns travel in the tunnels but they were nothing compared to the goods that travelled down them avoiding ruinous border delays and iniquitous taxes. A note of anger crept back into his voice and she wanted to touch his arm but knew she couldn’t. She looked away briefly and thought with mounting terror of the dark tunnel she would crawl down. At that moment all she could imagine was a great bulldozer smashing through the one she was in, burying her in earth and then carting her away in its ugly mechanical snout. She rubbed the sweat off her palms. He noticed the gesture. 

“What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing important. Tell me why the teacher scolded you with the hadith?”

“He is a wise man, that’s why,” he smiled but Yasmin thought his reply held a trace of falseness, of condescension even. “He knows it is our impatience which drives us on, not wisdom. He counsels humility while all around we are persecuted and impoverished. I am one of the impatient ones, sister. I can no longer believe like him,” he studied her briefly and added. “You are not running away, you know. We need voices on the outside too. You will not let us down, will you?” 

She said nothing, just mumbled, “ainshallah”. She was embarrassed and tried to smile through the ache that was tightening around her guts as a dark tunnel with no light and no end to it swallowed her. She couldn’t really hear him at all any more. 

After a farewell dinner with Mohamed’s family, he took her back to Shaboura. In a small house, more a shack, she met a young Bedouin smuggler. He was of the Sawalha, the oldest of the Sinai tribes from its west coast. He would be her guide. After Mohamed took possession of the cargo he had brought across from Egypt he wished Yasmin well and she in turn wished him luck and thanked him. 

During dinner,she had been smitten with a terror that had bordered on fever. They had sat around a small table on a motley collection of chairs, men and women together in recognition of the scale of the decision she had made to leave everything she knew and everything that comforted her. They had tried to make her feel like an explorer or alternately, she thought, like an ambassador at large for the imprisoned of Gaza. These alien ideas weighed heavily upon her. She was lost and exhausted by the comfort they tried to give her and frightened by the vision of their expectations. They were being kind; she could feel it in the rhythm of their voices and see it in their gestures. Their concern to fill her with the confidence she would need in the future and their reassurances that they were proud of her bravery made her shrink further into herself. Their voices gradually ceased to be real and began to echo in her head like the remnants of morning dreams. They were disconnected voices. 

As the evening wore on and her half eaten plate bore silent witness to her fear, they talked amongst themselves determining for her a future that was remote from anything she had imagined in the secret world of her ‘dream’. The terror inside her only mounted as she silently compared the simple vision that she and her mother had nurtured with Mohamed’s family’s vision of the escapee returning miraculously with the keys to the jail. She was starkly aware that she had no message, that their hopes were a burden she could not carry. She felt like crying with the weight of their expectations. So heavy was the moment that she lost sight of the portrait framed in her mind of her family waving to her on the departing bus.

- THE END -