We left in a rush after school last Wednesday, excited, pumped, and nervous. For me it was just adrenaline shooting up and down, for many many reasons. First of all, the last school bell marked the beginning of a much needed spring break. I really think the teachers were much happier than the students to hear that bell ring. The night before and the morning of, M and I had packed up all of our stuff, carefully packing each item, for our weeklong vacation to come to Egypt. Yes it was to enjoy spring break, no doubt, but more importantly this was a visa run, as in our three month visa that we were using would expire and we needed to exit the country and hope and pray to be able to come back in again with another visa to make our stay and work here last for at least until the summer. Under Israeli law, it is illegal for any international to stay in the occupied Palestinian territories for more than 48 hours. Cleeeeeeearly..we’ve broken a few “rules”.
I was experiencing adrenaline rushes, wiping out every trace of Palestine involvements for the last three months, every item that we packed up was scrutinized, our computers were completely wiped out, labels from shampoos and conditioners and chip bags and snack bags were peeled off and removed and most public things online we had to get rid of. So this blog entitled “fahmida goes to Palestine” was down for a bit, for obvious reasons :)
It was the three of us leaving, M, myself and Gabriella ( Maggie’s friend). Throughout the process of packing, knowing that a very probably ending to the vacation may be never seeing this house in Ramallah or being kicked out of here, I could not make up my mind if I was packing to leave leave or simply for an innocent vacation. It was both.
Hailing a taxi in Ramallah to get to Jerusalem catch a 5 hour bus ride to the Taba border we crossed over with a sigh of relief after a full day of journeying with little to no problems from Israeli immigration and were greeted with a friendly “Welcome to Egypt” sign on the other side of the immigration building in the middle of nothingness in the Sinai Desert at 11pm at night. Another extremely dodgy 9 hour bus with a sleep deprived bus driver across the Sinai followed, leading us finally to our 12th floor hostel room in downtown Cairo, where the three of us would stay together for the next 4 days.
The jostle of Cairo was captivating and I was exhilarated to be in the middle of a big boisterous city, wide eyed at the lineup of mannequins from top to bottom of display windows, the cabs, run down buildings, glorious mosques, bazaars and fully alert and awake at 2am in our room because of the sheer volume of the city; though I might have been trying to sleep, the city was certainly up and beating with a pulse.
Gabriella and I spent a whole day together, gone to explore the pyramids at giza, to gape with wonder and dodge vendors trying to sell us camels and horses and dodge the heat of the sun. Up till then, Gabriella was just a friend of Maggies, and I knew this that and the other about her, but never really had the chance to actually get to know her. She bounced around from being a girly girl to this genius academic professor from York (her actual profession) and I was intrigued by her perspectives. It was fun spending so much time with her and laughing at silly things. Giza followed by the pyramids at Sakkara then a fun girls night out at an Indian restaurant and followed by an even bigger treat to be swallowed within automated glass doors into a 8 story high City Stars Mall. Our last 2 days together were spent by the beautiful Red Sea in Dahab. Wow. Breathtaking. Gabriella and I had a blast smoking sheesha, which is not something I usually do, but it was a deal indeed to sit by the Red Sea, smoke amazing sheesha for about a dollar, hearing the beach and the sounds of the beach late into the night. And of course, its during these outings that people you barely know start feeling like friends. I learned more and more about Gabriella, her frustration with her extremely successful career as an academic and her choice to live in Palestine. We were all talking about our lives and our plans, and where things go from here, and she kept on saying “my problem is that I really can’t imagine leaving Palestine. I really can’t”. We exchanged stories of our reaction to Jerusalem, and it felt so nice to speak to someone who feels as chaotic as I do, when I first experienced Jerusalem and when I go to Jerusalem. She kept on saying that it breaks her heart every time to go to there, to see people not being allowed to pray or being denied basic rights in general. Sitting down in a café looking out at the crystal waters of the Red Sea, you could see Saudi Arabia to your left. “it breaks my heart to see and think about the fact that these people aren’t helping their own brothers and sisters”. One thing was clear. She really really loved Palestine, so much so that she wanted to stay for a long time, and doing that would actually jeopardize her career back in Europe.
Last night, the three of us sat on our beds going over our stories and preparation for immigration early this morning. All of us were set, we rehearsed questions, we rehearsed answers and a had a last magical night out in Dahab, by the sea, sitting with our 2nd or 3rd cup of Hibiscus tea.
This morning, up at 5:30am, we all mechanically got ready, boarded the taxi and made our way across the Sinai again to get to the border. The usual, I was taken aside apart from M and Gabriella to be questioned, and truly if anyone was to get screwed, it should and would have been me. This time around, I was a Hindu Bengali American. M got her passport back almost instantly, while Gabriella and I waited. The three of us with our luggage sprawled out by us, standing in a nearly empty building just waited. The wait turned into 3 hours, and we entertained ourselves with small talk and Gabriella and I got a huge thing of cappuccino to keep ourselves awake, talking about silly things, sprinkling in how we could go out to do certain things in Tel Aviv, and how lovely Tel Aviv is for certain things (there are microphones all over the buildings, and they pick up every bit of conversation, so it’s not that we had freedom to talk about whatever we wanted however we wanted, even that had to be strategized). After a long wait, I got my passport back, and I took it with a sigh of relief. Now all we were waiting for was Gabriella’s.
They took her in, questioned her, I couldn’t hear anything, but just watched her be taken into the room, and then asked to leave, then asked to sit for about 10 minutes and then taken back in again. Finally she came out, looked at us and said “I’ll call you guys later on…they wont let me in”, took her bags and was forced to leave.
Stunned. I was absolutely stunned. Leaving with M and exiting out of the building with our luggage strapped to our back or hanging from our shoulders to face the sun and getting into the cab, I thought of weird things, like “but wait, we have your bus ticket to Jerusalem, we all got roundtrip tickets, what about your ticket” or “wait but you forgot your water bottle”. I could not believe that second, or for the next 7 hours that three of us started this vacation and 2 of us came back. And that she was actually being deported. Not in my wildest dreams did I think that the three of us would not come back, and not in my wildest dreams did I think that that would be my goodbye to Gabriella, someone that I was genuinely looking forward to spending more time with in Ramallah.
More to come soon…
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