Kidnapped in Gaza

Chapter 1 - Gaza

On the frontline of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is the Gaza City Corniche. Like a penitentiary yard during rec time, the seaside promenade is just beginning to fill up. Friday afternoon families are out for a stroll after the salat al'asr, the early evening prayer – the week's pent up frustrations in desperate search of an outlet, a diversion. The smell of salt and fish wafts in off the harbor. Traffic along the cracked sidewalk is a slow parade of seeing and being seen, of Hamas and Fatah flags fluttering from car antennas – rival prison gang signs daring a provocation. Honking their horns, smiling wildly and holding up Kalashnikovs, they shout at me, my brother and even Dima, "Ahlan wa sahlan fee Gaza! Welcome in Gaza!"

Their feverish exuberance at having foreigners in their midst feels strangely akin to the welcome 'fresh meat' is accorded when walking the gauntlet into prison for the first time. The gravity of what we have done is sinking in, quickly diminishing the initial excitement at having 'snuck' into one of the Middle East's most notorious hot spots for sectarian violence and international 'terror' organizations.

In the wake of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, when control of the southern border with Egypt was seceded to the Palestinian Authority, cheap weapons flooded into Gaza. The fighting between Hamas and Fatah only heightened anxiety among Gazans which fueled the demand for more firearms. "I read that guns are like cell phones here now, everyone's got one, isn't that right Dima?" I ask, hoping I'm wrong.

"Sah, correct, but the biggest problem is the weapons come out first in any dispute," Dima says. "Now people talk through the barrel of a gun."

"Well, an armed society is a polite society," Drew says with a smile. It's something I've heard him say many times before. Neither Dima nor I comment.

A light breeze, blowing in from the Mediterranean Sea, ruffles through my close- cropped hair, drawing my gaze towards the water. Out on the blue horizon, boats are silhouetted against a setting sun. I wonder if they're Israeli war ships enforcing the blockade at sea that has turned Gaza into the world's largest open-air concentration camp.

While it may be the biggest prison on the planet, Gaza is just 6% of the total land mass of what's left of the Palestinian Territories and yet it contains half of its' entire population. Around 1.4 million people are concentrated into a strip of land roughly twice the size of Washington D.C. which makes it one of the most densely populated places in the world. Half of the total population are children under the age of ten. With 43% unemployment and 900,000 people on food assistance from the UN, it has been predicted that by 2021, Gaza will be unfit for human life.

Like the population density, the air is thick and heavy. The humidity is suffocating the gentle breeze trying desperately to provide us some relief. Catching a nauseating whiff of what can only be raw sewage, my brother lifts his Oakely's onto his tan forehead and looks at me accusingly.

"Whoever smelt it, dealt it, but that wasn't me," I say pointing to the brown sludge slithering its way through a drainpipe to the beach. With a snort he nods his head, dragging deeply on a Marlboro Red.

"We ain't in Dubai anymore, are we Dorothy?" Drew asks Dima with a wink.

Dima laughs self-consciously, tucking in a stray corner of her colorful hejab, her Islamic headscarf, under her pointed chin - the Arabic version of a Western girl tucking a loose lock of hair back behind her ear.

As an English teacher on the women's campus of a university in the Persian Gulf for the last eight years, I've seen this girlish mannerism many times. It's cute, kind of endearing, I think, the fiddling and fussing. Blue jeans, Converse and a Gap t-shirt round out her modern Arab girl look. Aside from the hejab, she could be any other twenty-something girl you'd encounter anywhere else in the world.