Read Online I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey by Izzeldin Abuelaish - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Izzeldin Abuelaish
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pity on me and said, “Let the kid go.” When my cousin’s partner augmented that request with a small amount of cash, the officer did. I shook all the rest of the way to Cairo.
When I got off the train in the city, I could hardly believe what my eyes were feasting on. There was no electricity in Jabalia Camp, but the city of Cairo was a festival of lights. I thought I had arrived in the capital of the world, or gone from under the ground all the way up to the moon. It was colourful, noisy and, in the eyes of a child, a glorious sight. But as I soon found out, I would have no time to enjoy this grand city. My cousin’s partner took me to the low-rent hotel where the traders met to do business with the locals, where we met my cousin. And that’s where I stayed the whole time, watching the customers come and go, sitting around while my cousin did his business.
So on my one trip out of Gaza as a child, I smuggled goods for my cousin. What’s more, he knowingly sent me into danger, fromwhich I was saved only by the efforts of an Indian military man and his partner whose bribe also helped persuade an Egyptian customs officer to let me go. My only reward? I got a watermelon from Ismailia, capital of Egypt’s Canal region and renowned for its melons, which I brought back to my family. When I told my mother what happened, she laughed as if she’d known all along that I was being used as a courier.
When I got back from that misadventure, I continued with my survival routine—going to school and trying to earn a few piastres for the family. I sold ice cream and seeds and geraniums after school. I accepted any work that came along, and never tasted the sweetness of a summer holiday. For a while I had a job at a brick factory, where I had to line up bricks, water them down so they’d harden, and carry them to a pallet and stack them. I was paid two piastres for every hundred bricks I stacked; I worked there after school each afternoon until the factory closed. Consider that there are 100 piastres in an Egyptian pound and it takes 2.3 Egyptian pounds to make a U.S. dollar. Hauling those bricks didn’t give me much, but I took what I could get and though sometimes I was reluctant (what child wouldn’t want to keep some of the money he earned), I always handed the money over to my mother.
School was the place where I got my rewards. When I was in the sixth grade, in 1967, I was selected to become the school broadcaster, which was tantamount to class president. The teacher prepared the news each day, and I read it over the intercom for the entire term. I liked that. I liked almost everything about school, because the teachers—not all of them, but the most important ones—persuaded me that with an education I could do anything I wanted. I worked very hard to earn their praise, to stay at the top of the class. I remember the June day the results for the final exams for all grade six students in Gaza were supposed to beannounced: it was the day the Six Day War started. At first I was more upset about not hearing the results of my exams than about having to endure a war. Perhaps it was because I understood so little of actual war when it started. But I learned.
It wasn’t the first war of my lifetime, but I was only an infant during the 1956 Suez Crisis, also referred to as the Tripartite Aggression or Sinai war, in which Britain, France and Israel attacked Egypt on October 26, 1956. Egypt and Israel had been sparring with each other ever since 1948, when Israel declared nationhood. My father told me the entire region was on tenterhooks the whole time, that there was always a border dispute or the threat of attack. So people weren’t surprised when the Sinai conflict actually began, sparked by Egypt’s decision to nationalize the Suez Canal after the withdrawal of an offer by Britain and the United States to fund the construction of the Aswan Dam. People just didn’t know what shape the war would take, how it would alter
When I got off the train in the city, I could hardly believe what my eyes were feasting on. There was no electricity in Jabalia Camp, but the city of Cairo was a festival of lights. I thought I had arrived in the capital of the world, or gone from under the ground all the way up to the moon. It was colourful, noisy and, in the eyes of a child, a glorious sight. But as I soon found out, I would have no time to enjoy this grand city. My cousin’s partner took me to the low-rent hotel where the traders met to do business with the locals, where we met my cousin. And that’s where I stayed the whole time, watching the customers come and go, sitting around while my cousin did his business.
So on my one trip out of Gaza as a child, I smuggled goods for my cousin. What’s more, he knowingly sent me into danger, fromwhich I was saved only by the efforts of an Indian military man and his partner whose bribe also helped persuade an Egyptian customs officer to let me go. My only reward? I got a watermelon from Ismailia, capital of Egypt’s Canal region and renowned for its melons, which I brought back to my family. When I told my mother what happened, she laughed as if she’d known all along that I was being used as a courier.
When I got back from that misadventure, I continued with my survival routine—going to school and trying to earn a few piastres for the family. I sold ice cream and seeds and geraniums after school. I accepted any work that came along, and never tasted the sweetness of a summer holiday. For a while I had a job at a brick factory, where I had to line up bricks, water them down so they’d harden, and carry them to a pallet and stack them. I was paid two piastres for every hundred bricks I stacked; I worked there after school each afternoon until the factory closed. Consider that there are 100 piastres in an Egyptian pound and it takes 2.3 Egyptian pounds to make a U.S. dollar. Hauling those bricks didn’t give me much, but I took what I could get and though sometimes I was reluctant (what child wouldn’t want to keep some of the money he earned), I always handed the money over to my mother.
School was the place where I got my rewards. When I was in the sixth grade, in 1967, I was selected to become the school broadcaster, which was tantamount to class president. The teacher prepared the news each day, and I read it over the intercom for the entire term. I liked that. I liked almost everything about school, because the teachers—not all of them, but the most important ones—persuaded me that with an education I could do anything I wanted. I worked very hard to earn their praise, to stay at the top of the class. I remember the June day the results for the final exams for all grade six students in Gaza were supposed to beannounced: it was the day the Six Day War started. At first I was more upset about not hearing the results of my exams than about having to endure a war. Perhaps it was because I understood so little of actual war when it started. But I learned.
It wasn’t the first war of my lifetime, but I was only an infant during the 1956 Suez Crisis, also referred to as the Tripartite Aggression or Sinai war, in which Britain, France and Israel attacked Egypt on October 26, 1956. Egypt and Israel had been sparring with each other ever since 1948, when Israel declared nationhood. My father told me the entire region was on tenterhooks the whole time, that there was always a border dispute or the threat of attack. So people weren’t surprised when the Sinai conflict actually began, sparked by Egypt’s decision to nationalize the Suez Canal after the withdrawal of an offer by Britain and the United States to fund the construction of the Aswan Dam. People just didn’t know what shape the war would take, how it would alter
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