From Gaza with Love, deel 2
“Daddy, why do people make war?” my nine year old daughter asks when I bring her to bed. “I don’t know, sweetheart. Maybe they are afraid.” She suddenly starts crying. “I don’t want you to go,” she sobs. “I promise you I will come back safely,” I say and I rock her to sleep. Three days later I leave for Tel Aviv. It is my second visit in three months. The first time I went over to give a workshop to Palestinian actors in Hebron on the Westbank, this time I will go to Gaza and work with eleven Palestinian men, who make theatre for children and give drama-workshops. They are part of a theatre-company called ‘Theatre Day Productions’ run by Jacky Lubeck and Jan Willems. I’m invited to give emotional support and to help them deal with their own situation. Since 1991 I give men’s workshops in Belgium, Holland and Russia. My work is to help men express their feelings and bring them more in contact with who they really are. Many times men get absorbed by work, commitments, family or other issues and forget how to live a joyful and fruitful life. This is the second workshop for Islamic people, and although I’ve had already some experience with the actors in Hebron, Gaza seems even more of a challenge. It is the hotspot of the world and I wonder what will await me there. After a short night in Jerusalem I’m picked up by my Palestinian friend Amer who I got to know in Hebron. In the back of the car sits a lady, who looks Arabic, but turns out to be from Germany. “My parents are from Iran,” she explains. It happens to be that she is giving a workshop for eleven women at the same time. We introduce ourselves, start to talk and never stop during the time we’re together. We discuss the ideas of both workshops and imagine it might be a nice idea to organize a meeting between the men and the women at the end of the workshop. At the checkpoint of Erez, the entrance to Gaza, we have to leave the taxi. A young soldier approaches and starts questioning us. “Where do you come from?” he asks Sannam. “Germany,” she answers. “I remember the Germans,” the boy grins. It takes a minute before I understand the hint. “Only joking,’ he says. He looks through my luggage and asks ‘So where is the bomb?” We laugh. This guy is the opposite of what we expected. He tells us he loves Michael Jackson. ‘Really, he is the greatest.” “Yeah, for kids,’ Sannam adds. “You know I could keep you here if you don’t like Michael Jackson?” he says acting serious. “OK”, we say, ‘We surrender.” We walk through the first checkpoint and come to the second and the third point of control before we enter the ‘corridor’. The corridor is a half mile long tunnel that reminds me of an concentrationcamp: iron fences, steel bars, camouflage and some torn clothes hanging in the steel wires. “They’ve done a good job.” I say. “It almost looks real.” But the beautiful weather, the quietness of the time of day and the company of Sannam and Amer make it seem as if we visit a museum. Truth turns out to be quite different the very same evening. When we enter Gaza on the other side of the corridor we are suddenly in a third world country: one big city of broken streets and houses, dirt, old cars, poverty and bad conditions. It is a relative small area of a few square kilometres with more then a million Palestinians, the most crowded piece of land in the area. It is divided into three pieces by two Israelian roads. No one can go in or out, except through the heavily guarded corridor. Also food and water are brought into the area through the Israelian gate. It seems I’ve entered the biggest open-air prison in the world. The first evening everything is still calm and innocent: I’m introduced to the eleven men and we go out to the beach. We’ve all looked forward to this special time of meeting and the expectations are high. I tell the men about the work we will be doing and we discuss the schedule; Some need to work in the morning, so we decide to start at 14 o’clock each day, working until late. After the talks we jump into the sea and till late in the evening we are at the beach singing, drumming and telling stories. Having expected the worst, I suddenly feel like in paradise. But at night the scenery changes: When Sannam, Amer and me arrive in the hotel in Gaza-city we hear of the explosion of one of the israelian camps nearby. Six people are killed and 30 wounded. Immediately all corridors into Gaza are closed. We are trapped into it and we can only guess what will happen. The next evening the revanche starts: we hear six bombardments, of which one is closer then 400 meter. Silently we listen to the bombs coming down. Luckily the bombardments are very precise and only hit the targets that the Israelian army is looking for. The hotel becomes our safe haven in a land that is ruled by fear and boundaries. The first day of our workshop is rather bumpy. The group is eager to learn, and I realize I’m in for a rather intense time. In an exercise which is called the ‘father-son circle’ I ask the men to describe their relationship to their fathers. They sit in a circle and the men start to speak. The amount of grief and pain that comes out is enormous. No-one has a really good connection to their fathers and the pit of despair, sadness and loneliness seems never ending. Some hate their fathers, others never really had one and were completely absent. During all the years I give men’s workshops I know this is the deepest wound: the gap between fathers and sons is sometimes so tremendous that many men feel lost. They don’t know what a healthy manhood looks like. They start to look for confirmation in work, in sex, in depression, in war, but nothing can fill the pit of loneliness. Here in Gaza the pain seems overwhelming. At one point all of the men cry out in grief, while Amer is translating crying, and I listen crying. After a few hours we are exhausted, but relieved. The world is a different place when men share their pain. When I try to have an easy evening program it turns out the opposite. In an exercise called ‘sound-healing’ one of the men is standing in the middle while the others sing to him. When Mohammed, a young guy of 22 is standing in the circle, he suddenly starts to shiver. The men chant the name of Allah, and it seems Mohammed is going into a trance, which doesn’t look healthy. His eyes roll back and I ask him to lie down. He mumbles something about fire inside his belly and ghosts eating his body. I can’t understand what he is talking about, but I realize this boy is in a dangerous state and I sense the darkness and fear inside him. “What’s your name?” I ask him, but he doesn’t answer. It takes me half an hour to get him back in his own body, all the while talking to him and holding his hand. When I return to the hotel that night I’m quit tense and shocked of the things I’ve experienced. I’m used to the work and the traumatic release, but it’s as if a dam breaks through and all sorrow came out at once. ‘I need a drink’ I realize, but there’s no alcohol served in the hotel. “Come to my room, I have a bottle of whisky,” a Dutch woman tells me who is making a documentary. The alcohol doesn’t really help, but it calms me down for a while. The next day of the workshop is more gentle. We do exercises, talk about theatre, about being an actor, about life in Gaza and about women. They tell me about the hopelessness of the situation and their eagerness to get out. The women’s group is working all the while in another room next to ours and Sannam is rehearsing a dance with them. We are not allowed to look because the girls take their veil off when they practice. Inside I can imagine a room of aerobic girls dancing freely, outside they are hidden behind their islamic masks. It is a strange world, but it also creates a playful and exciting atmosphere between the men and the women. Some men try to peak into the room, followed by screams and warnings. The heat is on! In the afternoon we work with the old arabic lovestory of Majnun and Layla. Majnun, or Kais as he is named, falls desperately in love with Layla, the most beautiful girl of the town. But here parents don’t allow them to be together and decide to wed her to someone else. Kais goes crazy of love and wanders through the desert, only thinking of Layla. People start to call him Majnun, ‘the crazy one’. He makes poems about his beloved and her name becomes the equivalent with beauty, love and longing. Only when they die at the end of their lives they are reunited. Love is stronger then death and till this day everyone knows their story. When I ask the men to tell their personal version of the story some shocking facts come out. Mohammed, the boy that fainted the night before, tells of his Layla, how he loved her, but when her parents found out, they kicked her so badly she had to go into hospital. He tried to see her but his family kicked him out and warned him never to come back. One of the men tells about a girl he loved desperately, but she was wed to another man. He decided to join the fighting army, but his mother prevents him to go there by stealing his passport. Not much later he joins the theatre-group and becomes an actor instead of a killer. Another Mohammed tells how he was invited to the wedding of the girl he loved, but who was married to his best friend. He tells the story in such a way that we roll over the ground of laughter. Pain and humor seem to be close together. Machmud, an older man, who is on the phone each other hour because there is a tank in front of his house, tells about how he loved his Layla. At one point he stops talking and starts crying. “I don’t know I loved her so much!” It turns out that most men share the same history of broken love, forced marriages and unhappy lives with their wives. What a crazy world, I think. In the evening we all come together in the garden of the hotel. We sit and talk and smoke the waterpipe, and life seems a little easier. The stars shine brightly in the sky and tell of the beauty of the night, of Layla. We discuss the symbolic aspect of the story. Layla is the soul, the feminine, that part of ourselves that is hidden, dark, the mystery of the inner world. As men we try to find solutions for our problems in the outerworld, through working, fighting, talking etc. We can’t reach her, it seems. But without the soul we go crazy. The biggest challenge is to enter the inner world, the world of Layla, to come to our senses and to understand the deeper meaning of existence. The men ask me many questions. “How can I do that? How do I enter the inner world? How can I resolve the fight with my wife? “I donít know,” I say. “There is no answer, no help, no guidance, no solution. You can only open the door from the inside.” When the third day the women have their performance for their mothers, daughters and other womenfriends (we are still not allowed to see them dance) we decide to make a move: We invite them for lunch. While they practice their show we change the complete room into a restaurant and prepare a romantic lunch for them, including candles, roses for each woman and small presents. During the preparation the men are as exited as kids, but the moment the women come they are open ,quiet and full of devotion. The women are flabbergasted. It is the first time they sit together with men this way as equals. They feel they are honored. It looks like the ‘last supper new style’: this time it is not only twelve men sitting at the table, but 12 men and 12 women. It is all so innocent, but it seems a major step in the Islamic culture. Sannam sits at the other end of the table and winks at me; well done. When the women go out to do their performance we know we’ve made an impression as men and we listen to the great applause they receive inside the hall. It is the end of the workshops and both Sannam and I are overwhelmed with presents and gratitude. We embrace our Palestinian friends and some cry. I realize I started to love these men very much, their passion, their simplicity, their humor and their warmth. Mohammed comes to me and gives me a selfmade necklace with ‘Mohammed loves Ton’ on the side. ‘One day I will come to Amsterdam,’ he says. After we leave them the 24 men and women of our workshops will start a summer-course for 120 Palestinian children for three weeks. Young boys and girls who want to escape some time from their difficult situation and make theatre with other kids. The next day we plan to leave Gaza, but after some phone-calls we hear that Amer is not allowed to leave. We unwillingly leave him behind. We take a taxi to the gate, but coming there we are stopped. We don’t get permission to go through. There is a tank standing on the road and the Palestinian soldiers want to be sure that we have an arrangement with the tank to avoid any misunderstanding. The taxi-driver makes some more phone-calls. Everyone is afraid. I leave the car and walk around. Some young boys are flocking around the entrance of the checkpoint. “What’s your name?” they ask. ‘Ton, and yours?” “Abdoullah.” “Do you live here?” “Yes.” I look around and see the sheds of houses. They live on the edge of no-man’s land. “Get away,” the soldiers shout at the boys. I come in contact with a tourist who wants to get out as well, together with his two daughters. He tells me he has an influential brother on the other side who can arrange our pass-through. Half an hour later we are permitted to leave in another taxi and slowly we drive into no-man’s land. Sannam squeezes my hand. “I don’t know if I can take this.’ What has been an easy way in has turned into a war-movie to get out. We drive slowly past the tank. Nothing happens. At the other end there is some more hassle about permission, but finally we come to the corridor. There we leave the taxi and start to walk through the tunnel to the Israelian side. A British cameraman and an Israelian journaliste join our group to get out. It feels we are the last survivors in a strange science fiction movie. After we’ve walked the half mile to the end of the corridor we find the iron gates closed. “Don’t shout,” the journaliste says, otherwise they keep us waiting here forever. After fifteen minutes we hear shouting from the other side through the loudspeaker. ‘Get back. Stand in line. Leave your luggage. Come forward one by one.” We all do what has been said. After some screening the iron gate opens. I look in the face of soldier ‘Michael Jackson’. “So its you who did al this,” I say. He recognizes us. “Yeah, did you like it?’ He grins. He tells me he had four days free and this is his first day back on the checkpoint. He shows me his little concrete cabin, with a hole in it to look into the corridor. “This is my house.’ ‘Nice,” I say. “Shall we change places?” he asks. “Naah, I need to go back to Amsterdam.” He tells me he used to work as an entertainer in Eilat. “Without this costume I’m really a nice guy,” he assures Sannam. We talk about music, travelling and the heat, while his colleaques check the formalities. It is 38 degrees and the hottest time of the day. “Watch the sun on your head,’ he tells me. “Can I borrow your helmet?” “Sure.” We laugh and say goodbye. “Take care.” “Go to Eilat,’ he says. “You will like it there!” We look back one more time and wave goodbye. Two checkpoints to go and half an hour later we’re outside Gaza. At the last point we find out Amer has also permission to get out of Gaza and we call him. “You have to come now.’ After four and half hours we are free. I think about the other men and women who will never be able to come to this point. They can only dream about it. Sannam and I say goodbye. She will leave to Tel Aviv, I go to Jerusalem and from there to Jordan to see some historic sites. Two nights later I’m on a high mountain in Jordan overlooking the Dead Sea valley, the hills of Jerusalem and the Gaza area. It is all so close by. That night I watch the news. A young Palestinian boy of nine years old has been shot. His dead eyes full of blood stare at me before he is covered with a white sheet. I think of the children of the theatre and of my own daughter. Tears roll down my cheeks. Suddenly all sorrow and anger comes out. How has it come this far? One day later I call my daughter. “Daddy, I’m so happy you call. Somebody shot a ball at my head and now I got a bump on my head,” and she starts crying. I send her a big kiss through the phone. “I see you soon, sweetheart. Sleep well.”
Ton van der Kroon is the author of ‘The Return of the king; the book for men on love, lust and leadership’. He organized a yearly conference in Jericho, near the Dead Sea. For any information send a mail to tvdkroon@xs4all or look at www.healing-conference.com
