SWIMMING IN THE WHALE WOMB

by Lucia Alessi (Italy)

A leap into the unknown Palestine

Erez looks like a disquieting whale unexpectedly beached off in the middle of the arid surrounding area. A kind of long cetacean of glass and iron, surrounded by total silence, inside, outside, you can’t hear a voice, a breath, its inhabitants seem to be only plates of silent metal, except for the “good luck” of the relatives greeting those who are about to enter. This is only the first of the three check points that must be passed to enter Gaza. The whale is the Israeli one, where extremely suspicious and hard looks reach you from every corner, from the guards who peer at you from the windows above, they make signs of waiting, control, disappear, return, and push you, as the minutes pass in there, to ask yourself if in the end you really don't want to blow everything up, if you are really sure you are not a damned terrorist. Yet I know I am not, nor have I ever thought about it, but they seem convinced about it, so much that after a while you start doubting it too. Actually I am entering Gaza only to do circus workshops with boys and children, a cultural exchange that can enrich their days at least. Spit out of the whale's belly, you find yourself face to face with the cosmic nothingness, you look around and there is simply nothing, not an animal, nor a human being, nor even a plant nearby. There is only a very long wire mesh and a barbed wire that protects it. And you find yourself wondering protecting by whom, by what then, if there is nobody here. Seriously nobody. Suddenly, a minibus arrives that ferries you for a handful of minutes through that desert, to the second check point, Al Fatah. I don't know if they did it on purpose, but compared with the Israelis’, this one seems like a chiringuito on a tropical beach, with a small bar, a simple where you can present your documents, people around talk jokes and laugh. Just a poster behind me brings the memory of where we are, the image of a scared Arab physically pressed by an Israeli guard and a notice that reminds "Be careful what you tell about your family and your country". Then, the last check point: Hamas. Four metal sheets put together, and held up by a lot of good hope, but inside the officers are very formal, with very serious faces and repeating constantly that no pictures are allowed there. Long waiting, checks on checks of this group of potentially dangerous circus performers, certainly unfaithful, probably sinners. Yet this entrance, in which differences alternate, but the senselessness and surrealism of the situation remains, it’s preparing me to the contrasts and absurdities I will have to face in Gaza. Because in Gaza you know that all over around piles of debris and rubble alternate with offices and shops which regularly carry on their activities, and with refugee camps where the metal plates have become houses, since decades, and it seems it will never change. You know this. Seeing it, well, it's another thing, but at least you know it. What you didn't know, is instead that more drones will travel on your head constantly, those Israelis always waiting for the moment to drop a bomb, those from the Italian government, who monitor us precisely to avoid "accidents", and those from Hamas; three different kind of drones which fly like wasps over our heads, and that background hum that propagates in the air and that makes clear that you are never alone. I didn't expect many things, in Gaza. Least of all, I expected to be taken aside by the director of a circus school, that he secretly introduced me to his 10 nephews, between 8 and 21 years old, and tell me "They can't do silks". At first I don't understand; many women can't play aerial silks. I look at the girls, one of them looks back at me and says "Women can't play anything here in Gaza". "Can you please train them inside my school? Just women, closed doors .." Just then, I understand. And smile: "Of course I can".