Part 1: Gaza

Sayed was filming some footage near a huge open sewer in Gaza’s Jabalyeh refugee camp. It was mid-day in August, the temperature was about 35 Celsius, the humidity was around 80 percent and there were no trees in any direction. The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza was in its second week.

The area around the sewage lake was dotted with enormous piles of rubble that had once been homes. They had been bulldozed by the IDF because they’d been used as a vantage point for Palestinian gunmen who shot at the nearby (now evacuated) Israeli settlements. A Bedouin man and his small sons sat in the dirt under a makeshift shelter of an old tarpaulin held up by sticks; their donkey was tethered nearby, but there was no tarpaulin to shade him. Across the street was a hospital and next to it was a school, with a UNRWA flag flapping from a pole in the courtyard.

The smell of the heat-baked sewage made my gag reflex jump. I walked around, clambering over piles of rubble to get a closer look, took photographs, tried to avoid breathing through my nose and swallowed hard.

Suddenly a young man, a local, appeared over a ridge and began walking toward me. His hair was slick with shiny gel and he was dressed in black from head to toe – black cowboy boots, black jeans and a tight black t-shirt. He smiled and tried to chat me up in English, but it was no good – I couldn’t understand a word. 

 “Do you speak any other languages?” I asked. “French, Hebrew?”

“Oh,” he said, breaking into a relieved grin. “You speak Hebrew! Where are you from?”

“Tel Aviv,” I answered.

“Tel Aviv! I miss it so much. I used to go there all the time. I was a model for Castro Men in 1999.”

 I didn’t believe that he had modeled clothes for Israel’s largest clothing chain. But I thought it was interesting that he wished he had.

And so we stood under the hot sun in that desolate place that was devoid of trees and full of hopelessness and we spoke in Hebrew about Tel Aviv. About his favourite café and about the beach.

A few minutes later Sayed folded his tripod, lifted his camera to his shoulder and called out to me, “Lisa, we’re going.”

The young man trailed after me as I walked toward the air-conditioned Mercedes and the waiting driver. He muttered something to Sayed in Arabic. Sayed grunted something I didn’t catch in response.

As we piled into the car the young man waved at me and said wistfully, “Bye…”

“What did he say to you?” I asked Sayed.

“Nothing. He just wanted to ride in a Mercedes.”

Later that day we had lunch in a seafood restaurant. It was a hole in the wall, really – just a few Formica tables in a drab room. But the food was great – crispy fried calamari, freshly caught fish baked in a shell of rock salt and some local specialty that was a sort of fish stew baked in a paprika paste. I sat with Sayed, his friend - who was a local “fixer” for a big-time American newspaper - and the friend’s uncle, who was our driver. I spoke English to the fixer, and a mixture of Hebrew and English to Sayed, but the driver spoke only Arabic and Hebrew. So he and I spoke Hebrew.

 At the next table a young blonde woman sat with two local men. They had arrived in a Jeep painted with the logo of a well-known western NGO; I could see it through the window, parked just below. They spoke softly, laughing occasionally, as they ate and smoked Gauloises Blondes cigarettes. Each of the men got up toward the end of the meal, one after the other, unrolled a small rug in the corner, knelt to pray and then returned to the table.

A couple of times I tried to catch the young blonde woman’s eye and smile – especially when I got up to take some photographs of the beach from the second story window, which was close to her table. I figured that two western women having lunch with Palestinian men in Gaza might be curious about each other. But she did not look at me, let alone return my smile.

We were still eating when she and the two men got up to leave. The western woman came over to our table, smiled at each of my companions in turn, and said ma’as salameh. She did not look at me or say goodbye to me.

Later I asked Sayed if he knew the woman. He said he’d never seen her before.

 “I wonder why she ignored me?” I asked.

“Did she? I didn’t notice,” answered Sayed.

 Part 2: Tel Aviv

“I just got permission from the army to cross the checkpoints and come into Israel without restrictions,” said Sayed, via phone from Ramallah. “And the first person I’m coming to visit is you. I’ll be in Tel Aviv in two hours. We’re going out for lunch, so pick someplace nice.”

 Two hours later we were strolling down Rothschild Boulevard toward Neve Tzedek. It was winter, but the sun was shining and it was warm here on the coastal plain  – much warmer than Ramallah, which is up in the hills. Sayed slung his winter jacket over one arm and pushed the sleeves of his sweater up past his elbows.

 Breathing in deeply, he said, “Ah, Tel Aviv. How I love this city. I haven’t been here for four years. Four years! Since the first year of the intifada… Four years. I can’t believe it.”

 He told me that he’d first visited Tel Aviv when he was a teenager, when he ran away from his West Bank village after fighting with his conservative grandfather over some aspect of religious practice that Sayed had stopped observing. He’d lived on the beach for two weeks, selling ice cream and flirting with the girls. He told me that the city symbolized freedom for him.

 “Nobody cares who you are or where you’re from in Tel Aviv,” he said. “As long as you don’t bother anyone, you can live your own life.”

After lunch on the outdoor patio of Suzanna Restaurant, we walked down to the beach and strolled along the tayelet, the beachfront promenade, in the direction of Jaffa. Sayed threaded my arm through the crook formed by his. Just as we passed the Etzel Museum he said, “This is the happiest day I’ve had in four years. Really.”

 I laughed and said, “Sayed, your youngest daughter was born less than three years ago.”

 “I know,” he answered.

Just then the wind started to blow, which meant that rain would begin to fall in a minute. I grabbed Sayed’s arm and pulled him in the direction of a nearby pub/restaurant, called Pini baHatzer.

Brushing raindrops off our clothes, we sat at the bar so that we could watch through the window as the rain fell and the colour of the sky changed from purple to gray to black, because it was evening by then. It was warm inside the pub, and quiet. Sayed drank whiskey, I drank mulled wine and we joked with the handsome young bartender, who had fashionably close-cropped hair and a tiny silver loop in one earlobe. He gave us some dishes of homemade snacks on the house. I received a couple of phone calls on my mobile – one from an English speaker and one from a Hebrew speaker. Sayed’s phone rang and he spoke in Arabic.

While Sayed was in the washroom the smiling young bartender put another dish of snacks on the bar and said, “Where are you from? I hear English, Hebrew, Arabic. I’m confused!”

 “I’m from here,” I said. “But my friend lives in Ramallah.”

 “Cool,” said the bartender laconically. “Do you want some more wine?”

After we’d left the pub Sayed said to me, “I saw everyone staring at me when I spoke Arabic. But I didn’t care.”

“Sayed,” I said. “We were two minutes’ walk from Jaffa. It’s not unusual to hear Arabic around here. No-one was looking. No-one cares.”

“You just didn’t notice,” he answered.

Part 3: Ramallah

A group of American students, in Israel for a year on a fellowship, asked me to join two Palestinian journalists in discussing how the media cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The students, who were Jewish, were based in Jerusalem but had organized a daylong tour of Ramallah, including meetings with some prominent Palestinian politicians.

After the discussion I was invited to join the group for dinner at Darna, Ramallah’s poshest restaurant, where the atmosphere is basically -  "Occupation? What occupation?" Crisp white tablecloths, smartly uniformed waiters, an array of gorgeous Middle Eastern salads, the best baby lamb chops I’ve ever eaten, well-dressed diners, the sweet, pleasing smell of nargileh smoke – and the wall of fame: framed photos of the restaurant owner with all sorts of VIPs, from Jimmy Carter to Yasser Arafat.

 I enjoyed talking to the students. They were bright, thoughtful and idealistic – the kind of super achievers who manage to graduate from Ivy League schools and go on to major law schools but still find time for all sorts of impressive pro bono projects during and in between their studies. One of them, a young woman who’d achieved impressive proficiency in Hebrew in less than a year, stuck to the vegetarian dishes because she kept kosher.

Raja, a Palestinian-American who was at Yale the same year as a couple of the Jewish students, joined us for dinner. He’d become friends with the Jewish students when they were on opposite sides of the divest/don’t divest from Israel student debate. Today he works for the PLO negotiation team.

We were still working our way through the main courses when two young women walked in. One of them, it turned out, had been on the same programme the previous year and knew the group. She had decided to stay on and work for a NGO. Raja looked at the other girl, snorted with surprised laughter and muttered, “That’s the English girl who was kidnapped with her parents in Gaza last month!”

The former hostage didn’t stay, but the American girl joined us. She sat beside me, and we fell into conversation. She told me about her work with the NGO and asked me where I lived.

 Tel Aviv, I said.

Oh wow, she said. I love Tel Aviv so much. I’m based in Jerusalem, and I just hate it there – but it’s so convenient for work, because I’m in Ramallah a lot. I wish I could live in Tel Aviv.

Then she talked about the easygoing atmosphere of Tel Aviv, the cafes, the beach, the people, the cultural life. We agreed that it was one of the most interesting cities in the world, and one of the most pleasant.

Then she sighed and said, “But sometimes I’ll be sitting in an outdoor café, surrounded by people having a good time, using the free WiFi to work on my laptop, and all of a sudden I remember the occupation and I feel guilty."

“Guilty?” I said. “Why should you feel guilty? You didn’t occupy the territories. You don’t support the occupation, and you’re doing volunteer work to help Palestinians.”

Then I said, “You know there’s unhappiness, injustice and misery everywhere in the world. In Manhattan I ate meals in restaurants while homeless people sat outside. In India – well, you know… You can’t waste your time feeling guilty. You just have to do the best you can to make things better. You mustn’t make a fetish out of the occupation.”

She stared at me for a second and then she said, slowly, “I guess you’re right.”

Later she gave me a ride as far as Jerusalem, where I would catch a minibus back to Tel Aviv. There was a long queue of cars waiting to get through Qalandiya checkpoint. Finally, there was only one vehicle in front of us – a van, with three Palestinian male passengers. They had to get out of the van, one by one, open their coats, raise their shirts and expose their bare torsos to the soldiers. To show they weren’t wearing explosive belts.

Ninety minutes later I was back in Tel Aviv, drinking coffee with friends at the 24-hour coffee bar on Rothschild Boulevard.