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Letters from Gaza

From Alison Swinfen

Letters from Gaza 1

We crossed into Gaza today. I have spent most of my life with Gaza being constructed as a

place to fear, a place of impossibles too numerous to list. We crossed into Gaza today. We

crossed at Rafah. We were invited to cross through the tunnels for 100 Egyptian first of all, but

our letters in Arabic, which I could not read, and the words of the border guards I could not

understand, were, it seems, like the words which could part the seas. I have spent a lot of time

at borders with asylum seekers and know they are troubling places, designed to confuse,

intimidate, to produce anxiety.

We reached Palestine

and were taken into a

lounge and welcomed

with coffee. I wonder If

this is a practice we

might adopt in

terminal 5 at

Heathrow. A practice

of hospitality.

I am here with a

project linked to my

own University and the Islamic University in Gaza. The project is led by Keith Hammond,

inspired, courageous, committed to work in this context despite all the many obstacles. The

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project is working with lifelong learning in Palestine and my colleague Rebecca and I are tasked

with creating relationships and conversations with a range of academics, NGOs, UN

organisations and women and refugee groups here. We are working as ethnographers of life

long learning. We are driven from Rafah through the strip directly to the University. Camels,

mules, olive trees, date palms, to the north the glitter of the sea, to the south the glitter of the

guns and the security fence.

IUG is a new campus. It was destroyed 2 years ago during the war. We met our joyful colleagues

to hear their stories of education. It is remarkable. Stories of stubbornness and humour, of

persistence and patience. We learn of the time the president of the university was told it had to

close by the occupiers and he refused. Instead accommodation was organised for staff and

students and triple shifts were taught even though Gaza was sectioned off. And of the 26

community centres where the University happened instead, and of how during this time "not a

course was missed not even a summer school" and how "if students came late because of

blockades we taught them anyway."

Emerging from our first afternoons of conversations, guava juice and coffee is a story of energy,

persistence and pride in the many inventive solutions to what, to my eyes, are entirely

intractable problems. Since it was destroyed in the war of 2009, the Campus has been entirely

rebuilt. The President shows us photographs of the history of the University, from tents 30

years previously, to corrugated iron sheds, to majestic Islamic style architecture, sustained by

donations from charities around the world.

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The most dominant impression is of building. Everywhere there are half finished houses.

Cement and

concrete is being

mix all around us

and the university

is training vast

numbers of

Gazans in the

craft of building

and engineering,

so that what has

been destroyed

may be rebuilt.

This is a building a

little resonant of Eastern Europe after the changes. Determined, persistent and defiant of all

the odds. Grateful for the land which has been returned since the war, and the plentiful

tomatoes, oranges, dates, potatoes. No matter how many times you strike us, we will rebuild

our homes, our schools, our universities. I have spent most of my life with Gaza being

constructed as a place to fear, but on my first day here I find a place being constructed again

and again by its determined people as a place of hope, of a future.

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Letters from Gaza 2

The last couple of days have been spent visiting a range of projects in Gaza city and across the

Gaza strip. Unemployment is at about 65% in Gaza and a dominant concern in each

organisation we meet. Purposeful work represents hope for the future. All around us there is a

sense of purposeful activity but employment represents dignity and possibility and a future that

has some security. Aspirations are high but once they finish their studies there is virtually no

opportunity for work for graduates. Amongst the poor families, especially those from the

camps the situation is terrible. UNWRA have been working in Gaza since the first Nakba in

1948. They run all the schools and many of the health clinics and food aid distribution for Gaza.

750,000 rely on food assistance and over 1 million on aid in general, of which, we are told in our

meeting with the UNWRA deputy director, 600,000 are only dependent because of the

blockade. UNWRA are clear that the future depends on finding peaceful opportunities to

contribute to civil society for young people as the other option is violence.

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In our meeting with the Palestinian NGO network the need for justice is clearly and powerfully

presented. Peace is not a siege, a blockade, the ability to bring goods in through tunnels and fill

the Gaza mall with Swiss chocolate. Peace is the active, engaged and continuous striving for

justice in all walks of life. We hear about a move to develop work from capacity building to

mediation and conflict transformation amongst young people. There is a strong sense of hope

and of the potential of young people to steward the history and experience of the Gazan

people. We visit 3 remarkable projects which are incubating businesses established by the

Islamic University

Gaza's wonderful

department of

continuing

education which

has found a way of

extending the

studies of it

graduates and

giving them

seedcorn funds to

begin to make

their proposal a

reality.

We visit an

exceptional

optometricist who

is using technology

to cure sight

disorders in new,

interdisciplinary

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ways. He welcomes us with his bright eyes and crisply ironed white coat and proudly gives us a

tour around his clinic. His acute sense of calling is palpable and as crisp and clear as the healing

hope that lights his eyes. Then we move to see a young fashion designer who I already

employing 3 people and making new designs with Gazan embroidery and with interior design.

Finally we visit Gaza's first ecommerce delivery company and see 20 new staff employed in

offices on the top floor of downtown Gaza. The buzz of energy and embodied hope is infectious

and electrify in each of the places. Stories just tumbled out of the director with a gentle

excitement, stories of cakes delivered, satisfied customers, the full of the challenge of making

something happen where previously there had been nothing. There is such determination and

energy for a future that it threats to overwhelm us with something close to joy.

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Letters from Gaza 3

A day with and for women as a prelude to international women's day. We begin with a visit to

the women's union in Gaza city. The union was founded by our host's great aunt and her

picture hangs in the committee room. As we arrive we are immediately invited to take off the

scarves we have worn since we drove across the Sinai. Coffee is brought and we are introduced

to the 80 year old woman who I the Chair of the Union and who's whole life has been spent

serving women and children through education. All the trustees are gathered to meet us and

tell us of their work. It is extraordinary what can be achieved when women get together and

organise their lives, focused on care. The building is relatively new and they built it themselves

as volunteers. It now houses a nursery and a kindergarten and the wall of activity and sense of

sanctuary are immediately palpable, as palpable as the pride.

Around the walls are framed tapestries and embroidery, whole maps of Palestine symbols of

the struggle for freedom and justice. We visit the knitting project, where school uniforms are

produced by women who would other have no other source of income, the embroidery scheme

with its small shop, the balcony overlooking the play park and the nursery. Everywhere there is

purposeful activity. This is, indeed, an enduring element of all I witness in Gaza but it is tangible

here at the women's union. We keep being given evidence of living to touch; garments, tissues,

books, babies, beads. A long Palestinian wool scarf is hung around my neck as the women claim

me for their cause, fierce, proud, so very proud of all they have achieved and of the need for

their work. They outline their plans a ask for my help, for replacing their broken down bus

which they us to ferry the kids to school, the need for a new storey on the building for a library

an resource room, for computing facilities in the Khan Younis camps and for a library for the

kindergarten. The projects may rely on aid and Partnerships with people in solidarity but they

are part of the landscape of determined justice, building carefully, with integrity and a clear

plan for a just peace. The suffering is present, but not articulated. It broods beneath the

activities of hope, creativity and faith in life. Each scrap of embroidery, each child taught, each

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summer camp represents justice lived out and created where justice is absent. It is the

strangest paradox.

From the women's union which serves those who have had little opportunity for education to

the Society of Women graduates which serves women after University. Again, the

unemployment and waste of talent and skills and energy is the main concern and the projects

developed speak of the same determined hope we keep finding. Perhaps most inspiring is the

series of short, engaged films about Gazan life for women and about the political struggles.

Here young women have become leaders and directors through a carefully scaffolded

programme of training. We offer to show the films through GRAMNET (Glasgow refugee asylum

and migration network) which I co-convene with my colleague who is here with me, Rebecca.

We have a film series at the CCA and can immediately see way of video linking the films to the

directors in Gaza. Two minutes after making the suggestion I find myself on the phone to

Ramallah asking for the film rights. There is no time like the present in Gaza.

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Here, too, we are made to feel welcome and as partners in a project which is building hope. In

all these visits the siege, the war and the right to return are stories woven through everything

we see. The dominant hardship, which we are suffering with our hosts, is the constant lack of

electricity and the power cuts which make everything very much harder and very much colder.

There is a sense that the war is a passing thing, beginning to belong to the past, or at least that

there is a sense that people believe they can begin to believe the war may be over, however

fragile the peace. While we are in Gaza the power is available for no more than 6 hours a day.

Many visits need torch light and often we here people tell us that they have recently bought

generators, but that petrol is now in such short supply that even then it I hard to ensure a

supply for lighting and communications. Houses are cold, everyone wears coats and scarves

inside as well as out. Frustration, exasperation, patience. ‘It is our suffering that gives us

strength to go on’, we are told.

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Letters from Gaza 4

To the west, sea and Israeli warships, lined up on the horizon, about a foot apart, the way my

eye measures that kind of distance, 6 km out from the shore. In front, small yellow and blue

fishing boats. To the east, Khan Younis refugee camp and a focus of much of the aid activity. To

the south, greenhouses and olive trees, date palms and orange groves, planted on land left

when the Israeli settlers left Gaza to settle more land on the West Bank. To the north, Gaza

City. On the horizon, watch towers and a large air balloon watching Gaza's every move from the

other side of the separation barrier. We are with the vice president of administrative affairs at

Al Aqsa University. This University specialises in fine art and physical education. Slowly we begin

to discover campus, on foot. It is made up of new buildings generously funded by Gulf states

and Turkey and many of the buildings. Men and women are segregated and our host is keen to

explain that this is a mark of respect for women, who are honoured, he says, with the highest

place in society. The line through the campus which represents this gender division is a hibiscus

hedge.

The buildings we are shown used to be the villas of the Israeli settlers. This was the best land in

Gaza and the villas were spacious. We are taken to the basements of the buildings first of all

and shown the bunkers and bomb shelters. It is clear that these people lived in a great deal of

constant fear. Now the bunkers are prayer rooms, decorated with images of peace and rugs.

They are full of the peculiar calm which soaks into the walls of places of prayer.

Over head there is a buzzing noise which I don't really register. Our host twinkles at us and nods

to the sky: “The Israeli drones”. We enter the large lecture theatre in the new block and

suddenly hear the sound of bombing close by. "They are bombing" our host says, in a matter of

fact way with no sign of concern. It is reassuring and we take our cue from this reaction and

continue our walk across the campus, speaking of buildings and teaching and hibiscus hedges,

not bombs.

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We walk over towards the faculty of fine art to an installation made in the sign of peace from

the spent shells which killed and mind many hundreds during the 2009 war. Then we begin to

view the art work in the different classrooms. Everywhere the theme of the key, the return, the

land, the suffering, the love of kin and family, and reuse of bullet blasted materials for

expressing defiance, anger, hope and a long sustained cry for justice. The images speak for

themselves. I move among them carefully, there are no words between us. The art tells the

story. Our host is bursting with pride at the extraordinary achievement and courage his

students, though absent, are communicating here.

A message arrives and we learn that trees and house to the north of Gaza have been destroyed

by Israeli bulldozers. My host turns back across campus towards the point of farewell, pressing

hibiscus flowers into our hands.

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Letters from Gaza 5

International women's day is a public holiday in Palestine and today is the prize giving for the

volunteer graduates of the women's graduate society Gaza. It is held in the beautiful newly

renovated archaeological museum which holds treasures and hope of tourism in the future, as

well as being the venue for celebrations. The prize giving begins and ends in poetry, long

honorific stanzas of praise to the hosts, the society, the graduates and women. Through the

windows we can see the sea, and the warships moving, and the sunlight catching the waves,

which crash on the shore in time to the rhythm of the poetry.

After the prize giving there is a celebration lunch, plates and plates of salad, olives, humus,

fatousch, baba ganoush, of spices Gazan peppers and tomatoes and then kebabs and lamb and

chicken and possibly camel, though I am not all together sure. All though lunch we are

introduced to students we have connected with before through projects from the university.

Stories flow. It is important, it seems, that we just listen and hear the depth of the struggle, the

longing the suffering, the hope. Scarves flutter around us in this light and airy space, ancient

stones and modern women, chattering purposefully. It is, my friends says, like being in a aviary,

listening to bird song at dawn. Insha’allah.

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Music and clapping accompany the arrival of the most enormous cake I have ever seen,

together with a ceremonial knife and candles. There is dancing and smiles and children rushing

forward with open hands and excited eyes.

It's international women's day.

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Letters from Gaza 6

Its Friday, the weekend here and the day of prayer. Our hosts have arranged a day, to take us

the length and breadth of the Gaza strip. A day to see and experience it all. From the gold

market to the meat market, the fruit and vegetable market, the mules, rabbits, chicken, foals,

the overwhelming stench of the slaughtered halal meat into the peace and tranquility of the

mosque before prayers. Gaza is 45 km by between 12 and 6 km. it is bordered all around by

fences and buffer zones, by the wall, and by the exclusion zone out to sea.

The sun shines here. There is blue sky. All distances are short. Our host speaks to us of what we

are seeing. “Here, there was heavy fighting”; “This area of bombed two years ago in the war”;

“They bombed the prison”; “People living here are bombed”. We drive north from the sea to

the fence. This is perhaps the most dangerous area in the world, constantly under threat,

constant attacks and barbed wire stretching across the buffer zone. To the west, UNWRA food

stores, clinics , services for the disabled, rehabilitation dentures for the wounded, an old

people’s home, light industry and the rubbish tip. To the north east we see the golden domes of

a small and isolated mosque. “There is a cemetery here”; “My father is buried in the cemetery”;

“the Israelis have bulldozed the cemetery”. Cautiously we are driven a little way along the dusty

rutted track towards the border. “This used to be full of orange groves and olive trees but they

destroyed everything”. We turn back as we reach the cemetery “Here is everyone you love.”

Quiet. Quiet, not peace, but quiet, and bird song. M eyes fill with tears of sadness and rage.

We continue on the north road to Beit Hanoun refugee camp, another area that had suffered

greatly in the 2009 war, where whole villages were wiped out. From the hill above the Beit

Hanoun/Errez crossing, which is closed to all but foreign VIPs, we see the wall and a soldier

advancing with a gun. Slowly the car turns road and we drive away from the crossing. “There is

a saying in the Koran” says our guest, in flat tones “The more walls the closer the end”. So build,

the end will come sooner. We pass the agricultural school which has been blown to pieces and

a school full of mortar shell holes. “This is where we would bring the engineering students for

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summer picnics. It was a very nice place.” This area is known as the fruit basket of Gaza:

lemons, strawberries, oranges, figs.

As we turn back to drive south we pass through a new town, buildings made of mud and sand

from the blockade times, the sewage farm, which doesn’t work properly because the treatment

is affected so badly by the siege conditions. “Here people lived on the ground floor for safety”.

The biggest refugee camp in Gaza and the West Bank is Jabalia Refugee Camp, with over

100,000 people living in dense conditions, tiny alleyways, packed markets, unfinished houses

everywhere. “We don’t finish our houses and we accept that we cannot finish them. It is part of

how we have to live here, with what we have.” We drive on through more camps on the road

south, weaving up and down the 6 km width of the strip. “There were tanks here”; “Here the

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fighting was intense”; “Here it was hell”; “This is where the palm trees grow, the best dates in

Gaza”; “This is the river which runs down from Hebron, but the Israelis have drilled down and

taken our water so it doesn’t flow to the sea”; “The bridge here was destroyed in the war”

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I listen to the sentences, letting them take hold of my soul, with their chill power juxtaposed

with fierce pride and hope. It is close to midday and the minaret’s are shimmering with sound,

the stones are shouting aloud, calling to prayer. Every yard of the journey affirms life, in the

face of death, affirms the land, the prayer, the indestructible spirit. Snatches of poetry come to

me,

“Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes.”

(Mary Oliver)

And with the poetry in my echoing head, comes the solidity and certainty of old, old prayer:

Save us in the time of trial.

Lord have mercy.

Christ have mercy

Lord have mercy.

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Letters from Gaza 7

During a lunch of fragrant rice, chicken, yogurt, salad and spiced nuts we are entertained by

children. They want to say words to us in English and want us to say words in Arabic. We invent

a language of our own. They bring us flowers, daisies, anemones, ragwort and together we

make a garden. The sea is in the salt wind, the sun in the silvery sky. As they take our hands and

lead us through their house up to the top floor to show us the view out over their world there is

a proud pink bedroom for 3 girls and common rooms made for many to share. As we leave and

take our photographs, on each side of the hosting and guesting the girls hold their hands to

their chests, puffed out, and then open them out towards us “We love you” says the eldest.

“We love you too” we give back, our breath taken. More flowers are pressed into our hands

and find their way in between the tight pages of my precious notebook, pressed into eternal

life.

It is when we are up on the most fertile land in the south east of Gaza, the land which had

belonged to 2,000 Israeli settlers, that we sense a stirring, a common mood of anxiety, news, an

energy which is unsettled, unsure. Our host takes us to the Gazan fun fair, full of children

playing on rides and running round and picnicking. We watch as kids run up and down sand

banks screaming with delight. To the north, Gaza city. And we hear the sound of shelling again,

coming from the city, and shooting.

News trickles through; there has been an assignation of a resistance leader, a shelling of a car

so that all that was left of the bodies were pieces of flesh, more shooting. Long queues are

forming at petrol stations, even though, in Gaza, there is no way of escape, no way out of this

huge open air prison. As night falls we are driven back to Gaza city through the power cuts, the

camps all in pitch darkness. We take the coast road and where previously we had seem

warships at intervals every foot along the horizon, now they form a close dotted line, glaring

white lights at intervals of an inch. We notice, but say nothing. What would we do with the

meaning?

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Letters from Gaza 8

Bombs fall on the city all night. At 8 in the morning we go down to meet some of the women

who have now become friends and with whom we have worked for over a year now. They hold

us close, greet us with the kiss of peace. All night the bombs had fall around their house, a

pharmacy had been destroyed, there was many causalities but no one knows exactly. “We

don’t know what this means. Maybe it is war again.” We exchange our gifts. A book of poems,

some pebbles from Columba’s Bay; brooches made of heather. They give us hearts, red ones. I

feel outraged that it is time, the scheduled time, for me to leave, and I am leaving them to this

fate, to more bombing, to what

may be war and is certainly an

escalation. “yes, we will write,

we will let you know how we

are” we all make these

promises. “You mustn’t feel

bad” says our friend who we are

leaving “we would only worry if

you stayed”.

It is a quiet journey to the

border at Rafah. We are served

coffee again as we leave and we

join with the Palestinians in the

holding room at the border to

wait for many hours until we

can move into Egypt. On the

Egyptian side there has been a

build up of tanks since we last

passed this way. The border

zone is nervous. We feel it too.

A taxi ride for 30 minutes finds

us back in our small hotel in El-

Arish, and sitting in the cooling day on the beach, watching cargo ships moving around the

blockade and making for Suez. We are tired and little disoriented, our stomachs unsettled from

the water born bacteria. We talk of international politics, the cold war, other contexts we have

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known. South Africa, Jamaica, Russia, East Germany before the changes. We wonder what it

would take to bring justice.

I log on to the internet in my room and go straight to the news: BBC; Al Jazeera and Ma’an news

are all reporting the escalation. The death toll is rising. A funeral has been shelled, bodies are

being brought into the morgue. Images of destruction, people crying, delegations travelling to

Egypt to seek a cease fire. There is chaos and order, weariness and sadness. I feel despair but

push it aside as this is not what I have been given by the people of Gaza. I pull hard at the

thread that is justice, the one that is hope, the one that is indefatigable, the one that is prayer.

And I sleep.

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Letters from Gaza 9

Cairo: A long, hot, fast drive across Sinai and Suez and into the throbbing optimism of this post

revolutionary city. We are staying overnight in a quiet haven of calm five minutes from Tahrir

Square. We find something to eat and then all wander past the street traders and alley ways

and stationary sellers and we gather to ourselves scarves, jewels, gifts for loved ones at home.

Standing in Tahrir square at night watching the demonstrations in Homs and the solidarity of

the continuing camp and presence of the Tahrirers I feel hope crackle and spark with defiance.

This is our freedom, the air seems to say, that the crowds breath in and out, it is our life and we

will not let it go. The Nile is alight, the boats are dancing. Change comes when least expected.

And that too, is hope.

Our flight leaves very early in the morning. Mostly we sleep and laugh together. I leave my

companions in London as I have a small matter of a Sudanese visa to attend to the next day. As

I emerge into the arrivals terminal of Heathrow Terminal 5 I see Joy and Ian Mead, fellow

members of the Iona Community, waiting for me, rushing over with hugs and something akin to

bewilderment. Back in their sanctuary in the Chilterns, where I have enjoyed hospitality on so

many journeys, there are bottomless pots of tea, a shepherd’s pie, ice cream, the silk of a

scalding hot bath, and Palestinian fair trade soap to cleanse the grime of 3 days travel. Joy and I

walk out into the world of green footpaths, under the same bright sun that promises spring to

us all.

Emails begin arriving from those left behind in Gaza. A young man who had taken us round the

start up projects writes to follow up on the work we are doing together. In between the

practicalities he says this: “I wish you had a safe exit from Gaza after the violent night of Friday.

I wish you did not have to experience this, but again this is one side that cannot be denied

about life in this part of the world.”

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Coda:

Two years ago, when we were campaigning to keep our foster daughter from deportation and

detention, at the height of our struggle, someone – I do not know who – carefully, beautifully I

might even say, crafted a mock prayer of hate and stuck it onto my office door. It took the

words which give me strength, those of mercy, justice, peace, beauty, of liturgy and rhythm and

grace, and made them vile things that poison. The words tore me as nothing else has done.

They tore away my words of prayer. For two years I have struggled through their absence. Each

time I have heard the rhythms of our liturgies, have had prayers to write or read, have gathered

with others for words in worship, it has been painful. I cannot say more than that. It has been

painful. But still I have gathered with others for prayer, and promised prayer to others who

have asked this of me, I have kept faith with the loss that tells of presence, with the absence

which tells of life. Through this time, silence has nourished, and swimming. I know that prayer is

many things and not only words, but as a poet, a writer, words matter to me immensely.

Standing in Khan Younis, as the ground shook

beneath my feet and I felt the bombs in the

soles of my feet I also felt a place for prayer

returning. What had been crushed and closed,

unsafe and fearful was given anew, like the

places of prayer in the old bunkers, like the

bird made of spent shells. It is deep and quiet,

a green place, I think, swirling with colour, like

the Gazan sea and sky, full of hope and

certainty that life is life. Strange that this is

how it should return, and make its presence

felt, wordless, quiet, a gift out of darkness.

‘Prayer refreshes on the knife edge’, said

George Macleod. Amen. Lord have mercy.