Kidnapped in Gaza

Chapter 5 - A Connection

After just a couple of weeks of captivity in Gaza, we've already become like our captors – nocturnal. This is what happens when you get kidnapped on the eve of Ramadan. Not sure how it portends but I figure it could go one of two ways: we could either end up getting released as an eidea (a gift of Eid) in the spirit of being kareem, i.e., generous, you know like Ramadan Kareem and all that or we could end up as an adha, a sacrifice like the goat or sheep slaughtered at the end of the holy month.

Concluding that I must continue to engage with our jailers - Ahmed, Hanni and Mohammed (Hamees, the ringleader, hasn't made another appearance since the first night) even more than I have been to get more of their back-stories, I collect any and every piece of intel on them that might help us get the hell out of here. I always figured Arabic would come in handy but never did I imagine it like this.

Imagining myself now in that scene from Silence of the Lambs when the girl is in the well, yelling her name to Buffalo Bill, I realize that being on a first name basis with your tormentors is really the first step in humanizing yourself to them, to connecting with them. The more human you become, the more you connect with them, the harder it will be for them to kill you, in theory.

From theory I practice chatting up our kidnappers when they bring us our food, the novelty of an American speaking Arabic managing to peak their curiosity, soften their stage faces a bit. Shway shway, or little by little, with each interaction, they, yanni, begin to lower their guard, so to speak.

A sure fire sign of this is that they've mercifully doled out everything we need to make our own tea – a hot plate, a kettle, a plastic spoon, two glass cups, a large bag of loose tea leaves and a block of raw sugar. To avoid dysentery, e-coli and other waterborne diseases rampant in Gaza, it's essential to boil all the water we drink, especially the water we use to clean our wounds. After the first night of violence, this biological battle and the psychological conflict we're both fighting to not give way to hate are the real and present dangers.

"Mashallah!" Exclaims Mohammed as he walks in our cell to see Drew pouring out a glass of Chai Sulieman – the hot brown liquid dropping an arms' length from the kettle held high in one hand to the tiny glass in the other, in the local style. He caught on quick! It bubbles up like the head on a beer; its aroma, bittersweet. Drew manages to smile and offers the glass to Mohammed, the most westernized of our captors and as it turns out, a resident of the building where we're being held.

"Whiskey Berber, ya akhee" I say, repeating the joke I heard over and over again in Morocco. Mohammed grins indulgently. The 5 o'clock shadow on his face, permanent; his hair - wavy, even under all that gel and without even sniffing, I can smell his musky cologne from across the room.

"Iwa, whisky! He laughs good-naturedly. "Why iz za taste too mush gud for Ramadan?" He wonders aloud, as if to himself, willfully betraying a secret.

"Because it's haram, or forbidden. "For me," I say putting my right hand on my heart and speaking in Arabic, "whiskey is haram too but not because I'm fasting or Muslim but because I cannot NOT drink."

"Cannot NOT?" He repeats, looking me up and down. "What zis? NA?" Mohammed asks suspiciously. He pulls a pack of smokes out of his jeans, lights one up, hands one to me and passes the lighter. With the tea in one hand and the smoke in the other, I guess someone's not abstaining for Ramadan.

"La, AA," I reply, sparking it up. He tosses one to Drew too who nods in thanks. "I went to NA a few times in Muscat," I admit, "but I always felt like a tourist there, arift kef?" I exhale slowly. "I never shot heroin and I was the only American in a group of Omanis. "

"Iwa," yes, he says nodding. " Me too in ze AA," Mohammed chimes in. "I go many times kaman because boss, old jehud make me to go to......ze meeting in za bomb zhelter in Tel Aviv, istagfer Allah," literally meaning, I take refuge in God but in essence, 'Oh, hell no.'

"Ana Kaman!" Me too!" I exclaim excitedly in my Shami dialect of Arabic. He smiles somewhat sardonically, taking a long pull off his smoke, a coy smile on his lips. Drew is just watching, enjoying his smoke in peace. "I was zee only Falestin. So I feel strange kteer because rockets coming from my place in the Gaza."

"Gareeb fee ard gharib, stranger in a strange land, I say. He smiles. "So was it Tramal?"

"Nam, tramal." With one bloodshot eye and the other one pinned out, there's no doubt he's high. No wonder he's so talkative, shit is like sodium pentathol. "I am clean for a bit bes relapse and I take shekel from ze old jehud, and zen back to Gaza. One month, flying before again need."

"So you went underground?" I ask. His dark eyes, framed with thick, bushy eyebrows stare at me suspiciously from behind long lashes.

"I say zis, already?"

"About the tunnels?" I guess, remembering the report I had seen on Al Jazeera. It's one of the ways Tramal gets into Gaza. Initially shocked, he slowly begins to nod, like he's just been caught out.

"Yalla, shabab, ok guys," he says stamping out his cigarette on the floor of our cell. He walks out the door and locks us in lest we forget we're hostages.