I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey Read online

  I would hear the news on the streets, and though I was never involved I was also never accused of not being engaged. Clearly to understand the circumstances of life in Gaza requires an understanding of Fatah and the PLO. When the State of Israel was founded in 1948, the Palestinian people were also without a homeland. Although there’d been talk for decades that Palestinians would have to make way for an Israeli state, I think most Palestinians were in denial that such a thing would ever really happen. The first Palestinian National Council, which included representatives from Palestinian communities in Jordan, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq, Egypt, Qatar, Libya and Algeria, met in Jerusalem on May 29, 1964, and established the Palestine Liberation Organization at the conclusion of the meeting on June 2, 1964. Its mission was the liberation of Palestine through armed struggle. The original PLO Charter called for the creation of a Palestine with boundaries that had existed at the time of the British mandate, claiming this was an integral regional unit. In addition, the PLO called for the right of return of refugees displaced by Israel and most importantly for self-determination for Palestinians. Egypt’s President Nasser had argued for a long time that Arabs should live in one state. But not all Arab leaders agreed. At the meetings held during the mid-sixties, the suggestions for borders of the proposed Palestinian state were like an early warning signal of the trouble that would come. For example, rather than being an autonomous state, the West Bank would be controlled by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and the Gaza Strip would similarly not have any internal government that interfered with the Egyptian administration. In short, the Arab countries surrounding Palestine would enrich their own geography, and the Palestinians would be ruled by Jordanians and Egyptians rather than Israelis.

  Of course from school and conversations on the street and at home I knew the leaders’ names. Ahmad Shukeiri led the PLO from June 1964 to the December after the Six Day War in 1967. He was followed by Yahya Hammuda (December 24, 1967, to February 2, 1969), then by Yasser Arafat, who held on to power until he died on November 11, 2004, when Mahmoud Abbas took over.

  As for Fatah, it had been founded by members of the Palestinian diaspora in 1954. The name Fatah is an acronym comprising the first letter of each of the words of the full name of the movement: harakat al-tahrĪr al-watanĪ al-filastĪnĪ, which means “Liberation Organization of the Palestinian Nation.” In Arabic the acronym means “opening” or “conquering” or “victory,” and it reflects the organization’s ideology of liberating Palestine. Yasser Arafat, who was chairman of the General Union of Palestinian Students at that time, was one of the founders of Fatah, and his position in these two organizations made it possible for him to subsequently ascend to the chairmanship of the PLO.

  After the Six Day War, Fatah became the dominant force in Palestinian politics. It joined forces with the PLO in 1967, and to this day Fatah is the largest member of the PLO and carries the most influence on the council. I was aware of all this as a teenager, but I wasn’t preoccupied with it. We had no radio, no TV; I heard talk on the street about the new leaders, but to be honest, it was wise to be careful about what you said and did. For example, it was illegal to fly a Palestinian flag and you could be arrested for supporting the PLO or if you were caught listening to the single hour every evening in which Fatah Radio broadcast its message.

  There’s always been a pecking order in Gaza. Some Palestinians lived in the region before refugees started arriving in 1948. Although the refugees soon outnumbered the local population, the latter had roots there and we didn’t. We didn’t depend on them for jobs, and at first they didn’t see us as Gazans.

  From 1948 to 1967, the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian administration. The United Nations, after it arrived in 1949, provided primary health care, elementary school education and social support (rations of food, cooking oil, donated clothes). The rest—high school, tertiary health care, police, security, passport control and general administration—was all run by the Egyptians. After the Six Day War, the Israelis replaced the Egyptians as the de facto government. Although the high school I went to was run at first by the Egyptians and then by the Israeli military, the teachers were always Palestinian. Alliances were constantly being made and remade between various groups. It wasn’t something that interested me, but everyone learned at an early age that there were people to respect and pay attention to and others who had no connections.

  At El Faloja high school, I became a serious student again as well as a voracious reader. If there were books around, I grabbed them. I preferred novels to politics, but not just for entertainment: I wanted to strengthen my grasp of the Arabic language. Reading became my passion.

  I kept working diligently at whatever jobs I could find. Now, because I was older, these jobs tended to be better. For instance, I sorted oranges by size at the same place where I used to wash them, pack them in crates and stack the crates for transportation. Sorting by size paid more and also put me in a position to get extra pay on the side. The orange crates would fall apart and need repair, so whenever the sorting was slow, I’d pick up some more money repairing the crates. After the Israelis imposed their curfew, I couldn’t leave the factory in time to get home, so I’d sleep there with the other boys. In the morning we’d wash our faces with water out of a bucket at the back of the factory and head to school, which provided a rudimentary breakfast, milk and vitamins to the students. I remember being very hungry and always tired.

  One morning when the teacher had lined us up in class, I felt dizzy and faint. I tried to stay on my feet, but everything started to spin and I collapsed to the floor. The teacher came to my aid. My teachers knew about the long hours I worked, they knew there wasn’t enough food at home. I don’t know how I would have managed without them.

  Of all the awful jobs I took undertook, there was only one that I really hated. When I was old enough, I was able to get construction work in the city of Ashqelon in Israel, which was very close to Gaza. I loathed that work: the hot sun blistering my back, the heavy lifting, the relentless pace. But I took it because I could make good money—the best money I made as a teenager. An apartment building was being constructed in the southern part of Ashqelon city; I was part of the crew on Fridays and holidays for the entire year I was sixteen years old.

  I imagine it would be hard for anyone who hasn’t lived in Gaza to understand our lives. We were everything the word “refugee” stands for—disenfranchised, dismissed, marginalized and suffering.

  My mother wanted so badly for us to succeed. I would sometimes challenge her because it all seemed so hopeless. How I was supposed to succeed when I had to work all afternoon into the evening and again every morning, when I had no materials for studying, and when I had to do my homework by the light of a kerosene lamp while sitting on the concrete floor, hoping it wouldn’t rain because the leaking roof would splatter my papers and I’d have to start all over again? She always turned a deaf ear to my complaints and would admonish me if ever I wasn’t first in the class. She was equally tough on the other kids in the family, but the majority of parents were like that; the hardness of life affected the way they behaved with their children. I remember crying once when someone else had higher marks than me in math. I wonder today what those tears were about. Did they come from fear—that if I wasn’t first, I might be last and never get out of this grinding poverty? Was their origin my ego? Was excelling academically the only source of pride I had, the only dignity I could muster? I look back at that time and wonder. But when I look back, I also see the woman who demanded that I succeed no matter what obstacles I faced, and I hear the teacher who told me to dry my tears—Ahmed Al Halaby, the first-grade teacher who made me feel anything was possible. I learned from both of them that I was on the right path, and I cherish and honour their memories.

  Of the nine children in our family—the family of the second wife—there are eight high school graduates, of whom four are also university graduates, including a pharmacist, a public relations
professional, a teacher and me, a doctor. My mother is owed credit for our successes, even though she was forced by circumstances to view survival as ultimately more important than education. I think unemployment and poverty contributed to what I’d call an unhealthy manner of parenting. Yet because she saw to it that we survived, we succeeded.

  I graduated from high school in 1975. I immediately applied for a scholarship and eventually was admitted to the University of Cairo to continue my studies. I realize that it wasn’t until I was leaving home to go to Cairo that the family of the first wife and the family of the second wife actually came together in any meaningful way. I was the first person among the Abuelaishes to be accepted at a university. My departure for Cairo was a major event for my brothers and sisters, the whole family and indeed everyone from my home village of Houg. There had been only four students from Jabalia Camp accepted to study medicine.

  Everyone in my family came to say goodbye, even my halfbrothers. One of them travelled all the way from Saudi Arabia to be there that day. They came to ask if I needed anything, to say they were proud of me, and to wish me good luck. This personal coming-together helped me realize that sometimes it’s better to look forward, to move into the future, rather than dwell on the past. And there was so much to look forward to.

  But I carried the questions that had dogged me since childhood into the wider world. How come a Palestinian child does not live like an Israeli child? Why do Palestinian children have to toil at any manner of hard jobs just to be able to go to school? How is it that when we are sick, we can’t get the medical help Israeli kids take for granted? And I continued to wonder about the divide between Israelis and Palestinians, and why it seemed as if it couldn’t be repaired. We were peoples more like each other than not. And though I was young and ignorant, my experiences at jobs in Israel had instilled in me a sense of pride that had become something of a mantra: “I am a Palestinian from the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, and I am the same as you.”

  THREE

  Finding My Way

  IN 1975, I LEFT GAZA TO ACCEPT MY scholarship at the University of Cairo and began the long journey toward a medical degree. This adventure would move me one step closer to my dream of escaping the poverty that was choking my family. I was excited and full of anticipation about this next stage in my life. The scholarship was a doorway to the world, a ticket to learn. I felt like I was at the beginning of a journey I’d been praying for since I was a young child.

  I’d applied for the scholarship during my last year of high school. The University of Cairo accepted two hundred Palestinian students every year in twenty different faculties, including medicine, engineering, pharmacy, teaching and law. I had top grades, so I hoped I could get into the medicine school, but I applied to every faculty just in case. The way the system worked was that you applied and then waited a full year after high school before you learned whether you had been accepted. I would need money for room and board in Cairo, so for that year I worked every day I could in Israel.

  The border between Gaza and Israel was open at that time, so it was easy to cross back and forth on a daily basis; you only had to present your identification card at a gateway and the Israeli official would wave you through. That meant I could save money by living at home, but it also meant I had to leave early every morning to be in Ashqelon so I could line up with other labourers at a downtown square where employers picked workers for the day. I was seventeen years old and cocky enough to promote myself to the prospective employers at this hawkers’ market, telling them I was strong, knowledgeable and hard-working. I did every sort of job they offered—factory jobs, or work in agriculture or construction, both of which I hated because they meant sweating in the sun. Some days, no matter how hard I tried to sell my services, there was no work and I’d have to go home empty-handed. No work meant no help for the family, no savings for university, and I took these turn-downs to heart.

  But I also learned that sometimes something good can come out of something bad. For example, one day a man was looking for two workers to build a chicken coop. It was a two-day job. He picked me and another guy. But the second morning I was late getting to the square, I can’t remember why. I do remember running breathless to the pick-up point and seeing the other worker go off with his cousin to do the job I’d been hired for. I shouted at him and started berating him for giving my job to his cousin. I felt stung by the injustice, the loss of a work day. But another Israeli employer who’d been watching the drama said, “Forget it, come and work for me. I am also building a chicken coop, but it’s more than a two-day job.” I ended up working for that man for almost eight months. He had a contract to build chicken coops for his customers all over the district. He not only showed me how to wire the chicken coop, he also taught me how to install the electricity and the water system, to stain the metal exterior with rust repellent. It was a bonanza of learning for me. After two or three months he made me the manager. I brought boys from my neighbourhood to work with us and paid them as well as myself on contract rather than taking a salary. That way you get more work done and everyone works even harder because they can see the money to be made. I worked for him right up until the day I left for Cairo. He even gave me a goodbye present.

  I remember the moment I left Gaza for Cairo as if it was yesterday. I’d been accepted into the medical school, as I’d hoped, and it was an emotional and triumphant day for all of us. My mother wanted to be the mother of a doctor as much as I wanted to follow my dream of joining the field of medicine. I felt drawn to the profession as profoundly as a person is attached to his name. My heart was pounding. My clothes were packed in a blue plastic suitcase. I carried a satchel stuffed with olives, soap, red chili peppers and my mother’s homemade bread and cakes. I waved to my family, who were weeping with joy, from the steps of the Israeli bus that would take me through the Sinai into Egypt. Everyone was weeping with joy.

  The windows of the bus were painted over so that we couldn’t see outside, because we were travelling though Israeli-occupied Sinai and they didn’t want us to see their military installations. Once at the Egyptian border, the Red Cross organized the transfer to an Egyptian bus, which took us to a quarantine camp where our vaccination certificates were checked and each of us was examined in case we were bringing a communicable disease into Egypt, a procedure that took several days. At last we moved to the student quarters in Cairo.

  Arriving in Cairo as a student was unbelievably exciting. I wanted to see and do everything at once. In Gaza, there were no shops or cafés like this, no music blaring from loudspeakers. However, I no sooner arrived than I had to leave—the particular campus I was assigned to was a hundred kilometres away. I was terribly disappointed until I found out that, if my marks were good enough, I could transfer at the end of the first year to the Cairo campus. I took an apartment with two other students and started classes, determined to get top marks.

  There was a Palestinian girl in my class who flirted with me. I liked her, she was very beautiful, and I always saved a seat for her next to me. But her behaviour also distressed me. I wondered what she wanted. Was I to have a romance in Egypt? The thought shocked me, so much so that I decided I wouldn’t go out to the parties, not even to the cinema; I would study day and night to reach my goal. The girl approached me a few more times and I was cordial with her, but I was scared of a relationship that might become more than friendship. I was young.

  I made the grade academically and the next year I moved to the Cairo campus and began to taste the life in a big international city. I felt like I wanted to memorize every corner of this place. I did break down and go to clubs with my friends, although I never drank alcohol, and still don’t. I connected with students from half a dozen other Arab countries, joined the foreign students’ club, talked politics and girls into the middle of the night, and had my eyes opened to the world beyond the small refugee camp where I was raised. I didn’t have a girlfriend, but my colleagues tease me to this day about the lif
e we lived as students—carousing from party to party and staying out until dawn.

  Yet my priority was my coursework. While we had to study all the various medical rotations—pediatrics, internal medicine, surgery and so on—it was obstetrics and gynecology that caught me as though, when I was studying them, I was breathing rarefied air. The first time I assisted in the delivery of a newborn, I was nearly mesmerized. That a life had just begun at my fingertips, that the woman on the delivery table had come through this nine-month period safely and was grinning with love and joy and pride, was like a miracle to me. From that day on I saw pregnancy as a process as natural as eating and drinking water. Later, during my internship in Cairo, I knew I wanted to specialize in this field. Delivering a baby thrilled me. A mother would be screaming during the delivery and swearing she’d never do this again, and then she’d say afterwards, “I bet I’ll see you in another year or two.” I remember the first time I treated a woman who was hemorrhaging during a miscarriage. She could have died. I managed to get the bleeding under control and saved her life. Using my skills to save a life or help a patient in distress or bring a newborn into the world was the career I wanted.