Meet Me in Gaza Read Free Page B

am in a large domed chamber lit with a huge iron chandelier. There’s a separate resting area set back into the thick walls, rugs and piles of crimson cushions draped across-wide stone ledges. The light is soft. It feels peaceful and very, very warm.
    Ten minutes later, clad in nothing but a thin cotton wrap, I step into the inner sanctum of the steam chamber. I’m lucky: I brought my stuff with me and arrived at the hours set aside for women. As I enter the chamber, a wall of wet heat hits me full force. For a moment I can’t see anything, then realise half a dozen women are either crouched on low stools, scrubbing themselves, or lying on towels on the hot stone floor as though they are sunbathing.
    I find a stool beside a stone basin built into the walls of the steam chamber and begin washing my body. The basin is smooth as soapstone from aeons of bathers. I tip bowl after bowl of cold water over my soapy skin. Then, red and tingling, I lay my towel down on the stone floor too and surrender to the heat. Hot water pumps steadily through the old pipes lining the walls like the beat of the human heart. I chat to the woman lying closest to me, both of us dozy as cats. After she leaves, I lie there sweating until my skin feels newborn and my bones soft as oil.
    When I finally stagger out of the steam chamber, the woman is still sitting in the changing room, fully dressed, stubbing out a cigarette. She offers me one and laughs as I collapse onto the bench.
    ‘Come back next week,
habibti
,’ she grins at me through a veil of smoke, ‘this is the best thing we have in Gaza!’
    When I eventually emerge, flushed and damp, Abu Abdullah is in his chair. He asks me if I’ve enjoyed my time. I say yes, and ask him how old this place is.
    ‘Almost 1,000 years old. This is one of the oldest
hammams
in the whole Middle East, built in the Mamluk period. But never destroyed …’
    ‘How long have you been working here?’
    ‘Forty years. But my family, we are the al-Wazirs, and we have been looking after this
hammam
for more than one century. It is part of our history.’
    I pay him and thank him, then pause by the door, suddenly deeply curious about the histories and secrets soaked inside these old thick warm walls, and inside Gaza.
    All I know of the Mamluks is that they were Turkish warriors, originally slaves, who once ruled this region, though I’m not even sure exactly when it was. But now that I think about it, the history of this place could be a key to understanding the violence festering here. I have plenty of time on my hands at the moment and I can spend some of it unravelling the story of this beguiling, broken place.

     
the
hafla
    The day before New Year’s Eve one of my colleagues at the Centre takes me aside.
    ‘We are having a
hafla
tomorrow night. Out of town. Someone will pick you up at your apartment at nine o’clock and we will drive somewhere away from the trouble. Don’t tell anyone and don’t bring anyone with you.’
    A
hafla
is a ceilidh, or gathering. A party. This
hafla
is going to be out of town because violence is stewing between Hamas and Fatah again. New Year’s Day is the anniversary of the founding of the Fatah movement, the de-facto government in the West Bank, and Hamas’s political enemy. Hamas has banned all public Fatah celebrations in Gaza, claiming its activists are being harassed and detained by Fatah in the West Bank. 5
    I have been in Gaza just two weeks now, and don’t know what to expect at this New Year
hafla.
At nine o’clock I am picked up just outside my apartment, as arranged, by a man called Samir and his wife. We drive north and park outside a large detached white villa. Inside, the villa is open-plan, with a sweeping staircase and a wood fire crackling smoky orange flames. There are a few other foreigners like me, and maybe thirty Gazans; most of them seem to be in couples. I’m introduced to everyone in turn – lawyers, businessmen, journalists, local UN staff,