Free Meet Me in Gaza by Louisa B. Waugh

ravenous. But often I just have a snack of bread, tomatoes and hummus because I receive so many invitations to dinner. Gazans I’ve never met before, friends of my Palestinian friends over in the West Bank, keep calling to invite me to eat in their homes and meet their families. I have dinner with Saida and her family too, at least once a week. When I first arrived here, almost two months ago, I presumed I would be spending most evenings home alone. But my mobile keeps ringing and now I rarely spend an evening in my own company. I wonder how many people in Scotland or England invite virtual strangers to their houses for meals that last half the evening.
    One night I have dinner with the family of Sharif, my first Arabic teacher, who I met in Ramallah. After we’ve eaten a fine meal, Sharif ’s mother takes me to one side. She tells me Sharif has been in touch: he’s very homesick and wants to visit them. She takes my hands and begs me to see her son next time I’m in Ramallah and to persuade him, for his own sake, not to come back.
    When I go out at night, it’s usually Muhammad the driver who drops me off and then brings me home again later, when I’m sleepy and full of good food. I always enjoy his company as we drive around town. Most of the time we just banter, making bad jokes about the life here, distracting ourselves from the realities festering around us – like the mounds of rubbish stinking in the streets because there is no fuel for the municipal trucks or enough power for the plants to crush the rotting debris.
    Occasionally, though, Muhammad talks to me about what’s really going on in his life; he speaks about his wife, Lina (Tender One), who is pregnant with their fourth child, and his worries for his three young children and their future here, with all these bombs, the endless political troubles and the lack of money. Like hundreds of thousands of other Gazan men, Muhammad used to work in southern Israel. He spent ten years as a textile worker in an Israeli factory.
    ‘They spoke Arabic, we spoke Hebrew, we all ate the same food. I used to go to work in Israel, then come home to Gaza to my family.
Ya Allah
(By God), life was better then,’ he tells me as we drive, his voice suddenly dreamy and nostalgic.
    The first Palestinian intifada began in Jabalya refugee camp in December 1987. Years of Israeli–Palestinian tensions, exacerbated by the brutish ‘Iron Fist’ policy of the Israeli military, erupted when an Israeli tank driver knocked down a group of men from Jabalya, killing four of them. Palestinians united against the Israeli occupation in seven years of mass, mainly non-violent, demonstrations and civil strikes that tainted Israel’s image, yet utterly failed to deliver independence for the Palestinians. The second intifada, which started in September 2000, saw blood on both sides’ hands. 22 The Israeli military launched tanks, helicopters and live ammunition against unarmed Palestinian demonstrators and stone-throwing youths. Impotent against Israel’s military might, Palestinian militants launched suicide missions, deliberately blowing themselves to pieces in crowded Israeli discos, cafés and public buses crowded with civilians. Hamas, and others, unleashed forty-seven suicide attacks inside Israel in 2002. Overall, it is Palestinian civilians who have borne the brunt of these clashes. Three and a half times more Palestinians than Israelis were killed between December 2000 and February 2005, thousands of Palestinians still languish inside Israeli jails – and a whole generation of Gazan men like Muhammad the driver lost their jobs in Israel and started scrabbling for work inside the Strip.
    This evening Muhammad drops me off in Nasser district, just north of the city centre, where another friend of a friend has invited me for dinner. Her name is Niveen. When she opens the door, I see a small, middle-aged woman, with striking cheekbones and shoulder-length, thick mahogany hair. She