Wednesday, 21 January 2009.Three days before, Hamas
and Israel announced a cease-fire after 22 days of war. Finally, after weeks of
waiting at the Egypt-Gaza Strip border, I and hundreds of other journalists
were allowed to enter Gaza Strip. We were running in a rush towards Gaza.
And…I dropped my bag. After getting it back, I found
out that I was left behind.
I was alone….
All of a sudden, I was sweaty. My heartbeat was
racing. I rang other journalists, but to no avail. At the border crossing,
mobile phones were frequently jammed. On the other hand, my colleague was still
eight hours car ride away in Cairo.
I was about to enter aterritory that had been wall-besieged
in the south, east and north; and naturally confined by the sea in the west. This
was a territorywhere its 1.5 millions of people had been haunted by the Israeli’s
tanks, helicopters, and jet fightersbombardment for the last three weeks. This
was a territory where a ceasefire could be violated anytime.
From the border, I had witnessed bombs day by day exploded
just hundreds meter away from me. I could feel thesudden pressure of the wind slapped
my face and the warmth of the air wiped my body. I could smell the death as I
saw smoke was billowing like a giant mushroom. Whilst, what I had read and watched
on television were the bleeding victims, the weeping parents and children, andthe
increasing numbersof death toll which had reached more than a thousand.
Those images accompanied me to enter Gaza Strip. And
single-handedly, this 27-year-old journalist carrieda seven kilos tripod, a
three kilos camera, cables, a laptop, US$ 700 cash, and a basic Arabic language
skill.And anyway, this is my first time covering a war.
*****
“Where do you want to go?” a middle-aged taxi
driver asked me.
As I knew nothing about Gaza Strip, what I could
do was showing him Al-Jazeera and Associated Press addresseswhich were given by
my colleague at TVOne headquarter in Jakarta.
Muhammad was the name of the taxi driver. In that
bumpy road trip, the father of nine explained what I had seen along the street:
the long lines of people for gas; the collapsed houses; and craters left by the
Israeli bombing.
“Israeli tanks were stationed
here,” he pointed to an untidy tank trails beside Gaza Strip main street.
At the end of the trip, he asked me to come to his
home for a lunch. I said “yes” if the time allowed me.
*****
Thursday, 22 January 2009.
My colleague arrived from Egypt and introduced me
to Mahmud (22) and Mohammed (19). Both were volunteering at Al-Shifahospital to
help the war victims. They became our guide who later became: our tour guide.
Yes. They were treating us more like a guest
rather than a journalist. They invited us to attend lunch invitations offered
by their family and relatives. Once we attended aninvitation, it had taken
hours as we need to accompany them to Gaza Port to buy fish, waiting the fish
to be processed and served. They did care about us, but not to our job.
“Come on… We don’t have a lot of time,” I grumbled
to Mahmud and Mohammed.
It took time to do the live report. We had to set
up the camera and satellite connection. Most importantly, we had to have new
material to be reported.
One morning, we decided to leave them at the
apartment while they were sleeping.
*****
A Hamas policeman offereda guide after we did a
live report front of the destroyed Palestinian Legislative Council building in
Rimal. We accepted it in a hope to have a better guide.
The 26-year-old bearded policeman gave us a free ride.
It was a dull seventies black-painted sedan, dents-decorated, obsolete metal,
and broken manual windows.
“How could you make your family ends meet?” I
asked him as I knew that the war had causedpolice in Gaza Strip hadn’t been
paid for eight months.
“Here, we help each other,”the father of a baby replied
easily.
Later on, this policeman had become my anxiety
tranquilizer. Just like when a bomb exploded only hundreds meter away behind us
when we walked down a street.
“That was [a bomb] from a tank,” he told me calmly
while I was shocked and half-bending my body to the ground.
He offered us a free stay at one of his relative’s
apartment.The apartment was located at the fourth floor of an eight storey
building. The host, Abu Hamza, transformed his living room to be our
bedroomwith a brown carpet and a set of blue and beige stripes sofa mattresses.
“A doctor at the eighth floor want to meet you”,
Abu Hamza said.
After finishing our work, we came to the doctor’s apartment.The
father of four kids got his medical degree in Romaniawhere he met his Romanian wife.
Because of his expertise, he was offered to stay in Romania. Instead, he decided
to live in Gaza.
“You might live better there.”
“I don’t want to leave my land and let the
Israelis capture it.”
At the end, he invited us to have a breakfast at
his home. And the next morning, we were served with khubz (Arabic bread), fried
eggs, olive oil, labneh (strained and thickened yoghurt), tomato, and hot tea.
*****
We had received many invitations, from a Hamas
leader to a common people, from a stranger on the street to a community in a
village. But, we could attend only some of it.
Wednesday, 28thJanuary 2009.
It was the last day we were permitted to stay in
Gaza. Mohammed, our first guide, called and begged us to accept his parent
lunch invitation. We had promised him to visit his family. As we had to go back
to Egypt soon, it was our last chance to fulfill the promise.
Mohammed’s family house was located in a slum area
in Deir el-Balah. The house was formerly part of a prison block, built by the
British government.
We had our lunch in Mohammed’s room. The wall was
light yellow-painted with some of its surface damaged and a set of steel frame
peeked through it. The room had a tiny glass block window which gave sunlight
enough space to illuminate the humid room. This time, we had khubz, humus,
brown lamb flavor-rice, lamb, green chili, lemon slices, and orange juice.
Beforehand, on the way to attend Mohammed’sinvitation,
a little boy greeted us loudly from his house.
“Hi, uncle!”
He approached us.With a vivid smile, he gave us
something and run back to his house. And the thing was a candy.
