Read Online I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey by Izzeldin Abuelaish - Free Book Online
Authors: Izzeldin Abuelaish
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on the floor of our one-room house doing my homework by the light of an oil lamp as my siblings tumbled about me. I could tune out the noise and focus on the task, but sometimes concentration just wasn’t enough. I recall one rainy evening when I was carefully printing the answers to my homework—tidiness was very important to my teachers—and suddenly there was a drop of water on the paper, then another, and soon enough the words were blurring and blotching and running down the page. The leaking roof had let the raindrops spoil my homework, and I had to start again.
There was no summer camp or team sports or videos in my growing-up years. Mostly they weren’t available, but I also was exclusively focused on learning, and when I wasn’t in class or studying, I was earning money in order to stay in school.
My mother was like a lioness when it came to protecting us. But she was demanding as well. She expected me to give as muchas she did to the effort of improving our situation, and when I failed, I paid for it with beatings. The Palestinian mother is the author of the survival story of the Palestinian people. She’s the heroine, the one behind the successes. She feeds everyone before taking food herself, she never gives up, and she pushes at the barriers holding her children back. For my mother survival was always paramount. School was important, but it didn’t carry the same value as a job. If I could earn money, she’d encourage me to skip classes to do it
There was one curious incident that stays in my memory although I didn’t fully comprehend what had happened to me until I was grown. In 1966—a year before the Six Day War would end the Egyptian administration of Gaza and replace it with the Israeli occupation—my cousin on my mother’s side invited me to go to Egypt with him. I was eleven years old and absolutely ecstatic about the idea. He was a trader, my mother told me, and he took goods from Gaza to sell across the border in Egypt. I had enormous dreams for what I would see on this trip to Cairo: the pyramids, the anniversary celebrations of President Gamal Abdel Nasser that everyone was talking about, and I desperately wanted to go to the zoo. I’d never been outside Jabalia Camp except to go for a day to Gaza City. I’d only seen photos of zoo animals and the pyramids in picture books. And President Nasser was discussed all the time—Nasser this and Nasser that. Imagine, I could see this man whom everyone talked about.
My cousin prepared me carefully for the trip across the border. My mother gave me a special jacket to wear, into which she’d sewn extra pockets. She also gave me a pair of size nine shoes that were much too large for me. My cousin stuffed the pockets inside the jacket as well as the oversized shoes with many pairs of socks he wanted to trade. I didn’t have a clue what he was up to, and thought it was just a clever way for one person to carrya lot of items. What I didn’t realize was that Gaza was a duty-free zone and my cousin was trying to avoid paying taxes when he crossed into Egypt to keep the cost of his goods low. I also thought I was helping him with his job, which in fact I was, and felt very grown-up to be selected for the task.
My cousin set off to Egypt with one of his partners by car, and he put me on the train that would go across the border accompanied by his other partner. When the customs officer came onto the train to inspect the passengers and their parcels and asked me if I was bringing in anything that needed to be declared, I confidently said, “No.” The truth is, I didn’t know what he was talking about. The officer didn’t believe me, opened up my jacket and found all the socks. He smacked me across the side of the head. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong and now he was holding me by the ear and yelling at me. I was scared to death. There was another man sitting in the same train compartment, a military man, a peacekeeper from India, who took
There was no summer camp or team sports or videos in my growing-up years. Mostly they weren’t available, but I also was exclusively focused on learning, and when I wasn’t in class or studying, I was earning money in order to stay in school.
My mother was like a lioness when it came to protecting us. But she was demanding as well. She expected me to give as muchas she did to the effort of improving our situation, and when I failed, I paid for it with beatings. The Palestinian mother is the author of the survival story of the Palestinian people. She’s the heroine, the one behind the successes. She feeds everyone before taking food herself, she never gives up, and she pushes at the barriers holding her children back. For my mother survival was always paramount. School was important, but it didn’t carry the same value as a job. If I could earn money, she’d encourage me to skip classes to do it
There was one curious incident that stays in my memory although I didn’t fully comprehend what had happened to me until I was grown. In 1966—a year before the Six Day War would end the Egyptian administration of Gaza and replace it with the Israeli occupation—my cousin on my mother’s side invited me to go to Egypt with him. I was eleven years old and absolutely ecstatic about the idea. He was a trader, my mother told me, and he took goods from Gaza to sell across the border in Egypt. I had enormous dreams for what I would see on this trip to Cairo: the pyramids, the anniversary celebrations of President Gamal Abdel Nasser that everyone was talking about, and I desperately wanted to go to the zoo. I’d never been outside Jabalia Camp except to go for a day to Gaza City. I’d only seen photos of zoo animals and the pyramids in picture books. And President Nasser was discussed all the time—Nasser this and Nasser that. Imagine, I could see this man whom everyone talked about.
My cousin prepared me carefully for the trip across the border. My mother gave me a special jacket to wear, into which she’d sewn extra pockets. She also gave me a pair of size nine shoes that were much too large for me. My cousin stuffed the pockets inside the jacket as well as the oversized shoes with many pairs of socks he wanted to trade. I didn’t have a clue what he was up to, and thought it was just a clever way for one person to carrya lot of items. What I didn’t realize was that Gaza was a duty-free zone and my cousin was trying to avoid paying taxes when he crossed into Egypt to keep the cost of his goods low. I also thought I was helping him with his job, which in fact I was, and felt very grown-up to be selected for the task.
My cousin set off to Egypt with one of his partners by car, and he put me on the train that would go across the border accompanied by his other partner. When the customs officer came onto the train to inspect the passengers and their parcels and asked me if I was bringing in anything that needed to be declared, I confidently said, “No.” The truth is, I didn’t know what he was talking about. The officer didn’t believe me, opened up my jacket and found all the socks. He smacked me across the side of the head. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong and now he was holding me by the ear and yelling at me. I was scared to death. There was another man sitting in the same train compartment, a military man, a peacekeeper from India, who took
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