by Benjamin Granby

Saturday, March 9, 2002

I had imagined Friday night that this was about it for the airstrikes. Surely, every pile of rubble repeatedly hit was just churning up more dust. Stepping out of an Internet café that I'd ducked into, I was faced by three rapid explosions about a mile ahead. Despite the distance, the sound was maddeningly loud — vastly in excess of what I remembered the last missile sounding like. I asked the café propietor where he thought the bombs had hit. "Fatah," he said, gesturing to the southwest of us.

It turns out that the area houses a third target that I had confused with Ansar. Arafat's Palace and the Fatah guardposts next to it were just a little further down the coast. It was their turn tonight.

To my delight, I caught on video the actual missile launches, while the helicopter itself remained invisible in the darkness. A glowing ball of white light shone for about a half-second and faded as the a screaming engine sound revved up. Darkness and silence. Bright white light. Darkness. Then the sound hit — a thunder that rumbled and shook vastly out of proportion to the size of the warhead. After filming two more of these, I decided to walk toward the attacks.

Just in the middle of another strike, out of the dark shadows of the sand-filled road emerged a group of soldiers. After quick and nervous greetings they asked to see my camera, and struggled to express in English the desire to see identification. I showed them all I had, including a business card from Al Mezan. While they escorted me on, I played the comfortable tourist, keeping my head creening upwards at the attacks, while ignoring the fact that I was being detained by gunmen wary of Israeli spies.

They placed me in the company of a man who spoke a little more limited English. He had me follow him a block down away from the airstrikes to a more safe location. I kept filming, and after one more explosion, things seemed to die down. On the way home, I passed a cameraman for Palestine TV and a group of kids rushing to the scene.

One boy exclaimed, "I know what you should photo!" and he stepped into the road to retrieve a small bong made out of a plastic 7-UP bottle. Again on the way home while filming ambulances speeding past another group of soldiers stopped me to question what I was doing. It is all understandable — but from the stories I've heard, when Israeli commandos sneak in to murder Palestinians, they do so disguised as Arabs, not naive American tourists.

Sunday, March 10, 2002

At home I took a long bath, reading Robert Fisk's brutal 600 page account of the civil war in Lebanon. As I settled in for bed at about 1:30 a.m., the hedge trimmer plane had turned up to annoy me to sleep.

I awoke to an awful sound. It hit again. And again. I stumbled out of bed as the windows and walls shook. The time? 3 a.m. What the fuck is happening? Another enormous explosion — louder than any I had heard before. Shit. Those fuckers. And again. I began ducking, as if I was immediately at risk. I couldn't see any explosion (nor much else as the power was out) and felt nothing, but the sound made me instinctively cower.

Again and again. They came in rapid successions, the tremors and sounds seemingly amplifying off each other. From the sounds, I was sure that I was the target. I had to get outside.

I threw on clothes and picked up my cameras, all the while muttering nothing but "Jesus Fuck. Jesus FUCK." to myself. Out the door, into total darkness — save for the flashes of lights. Explosions echoed off the walls of my apartment's courtyard. As my eyes adjusted I walked out on to the street.

Whispering black forms of soldiers and police nervously paced around, rapping their fingers against their machine guns. In the darkness I could walk past them and it was too late (or they had other worries) for them to stop and question me. It was silent again as I cautiously came to the corner on Nasser St. The silence scared me more. What if they're just waiting for someone to stroll out into the street? I turned back around the corner and braced myself against the wall of a courtyard. Flash. Thundering explosion. The walled streets seemed to funnel the sounds to the point of adding a hint of flange to the end. They sounded cosmic. Ethereal. On top of me.

The wail of a missile. Where will it land? A flash of light. Another frightening crash. I cringed. Too exposed. Once I saw the flash of light, it was clearly pointless to react to the noise — for if I were to be hit, it would be in the explosion, not in the sound waves generated. I knew this, but it didn't change my reactions.

I moved across the street again. I found a garage tucked 4 feet back from another courtyard wall (they run up and down the street in this relatively nicer neighborhood) and hid there. Two massive detonations on top of each other had me ducking down. Helicopters raced above, firing rockets and missiles from all sides. The target was clearly on the coast, but the scream of missiles seemed to be generated just above. I still saw the flash of the hit and yet cowered only when I could hear the monstrous sound finally reaching me. My reaction didn't make sense. But from the vantage point of Gaza, nor do the Israelis.

I again crossed the street, a little more back towards my home. But this time the pattern was interrupted by some armed police officers in urban camoflauge sitting on a stoop. One who spoke English fairly well invited me to sit with them. Rami was his name, and by day he was a student at the local university. By night, a hiding soldier. "My friend and me, we have exam tomorrow at university. I don't think we will be prepared," he laughed.

After I told him who I was, more missiles were fired. "We just wait until we die. To be or not to be, is our motto here." I didn't question his misinterpretation of English literature at this time. "How are you?" he asked.

"I don't know... I don't know."

"Just say, 'I am in God's hands.'"

And I said it, softly, still shaking.

I fucking just prayed. It modified my abhorrence of religion none, but it enabled me to lean back and relax some. I found myself talking to Rami as the next explosion went off, and I only flinched a little. Instead of hiding, instead of some of my stupid mindless walking into danger in the past, I could just sit and accept whatever happened. Sure I could go home and improve my odds, but oh well, inshallah, as the Arabs say. Rami asked me about Sharon and Bush.

He asked why I didn't already have Arabic girlfriends. When I got around to telling him I was American he paused, threw his arm around me and yelled, "I caught one!" We laughed. He asked a little about Sept. 11. He asked if I was there, and I told him I had been in Belgrade at the time. He asked about the "theory" of Jews flying the planes. I told him that I didnt think it was true, but I was sure that people like Bush were very pleased by the opportunity the situation provided. I hoped to skirt that subject. "Sharon is a Donkey," is much easier to deal with. At times I had to adjust my legs whenever I noticed the barrel of his Kalishnikov rifle shifting downwards when he laughed. There's always something to be nervous about in Gaza.

It was 4 a.m. and after a good 20 minutes with no further attacks, and the sounds of aircraft fading, I opted for bed. More than 30 missiles had been fired into Arafat's empty compound that night. Late-night terror seemed to be the main intention. Rami had asked what type of rockets the Apache helicopters fire, and given the massive sound of those explosions, I really couldn't say.

I sustained my first injury that day. On the way to work that morning, while adjusting the tuner on my radio, I walked into a tree.

Benjamin Granby is an intern with the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza City. He was in West Bank this week during some of the fiercest fighting of the intifada.

— graphic by Carl Durbridge (carl@fuzzynet.co.uk)