I have crossed many borders, most with my brother Ben in southern Africa, but Rafah was the worst. The Palestinian National Authority stamp I now have in my passport is by far the hardest one I’ve acquired in the last 26 months of traveling.
After pocketing a stone from the Philadelphi Strip, Hussam and I drove to the Rafah Border Crossing. He told me I’d have plenty of time – it was noon and the border closed at four.
While I was grimy and sticky already from the humid tunnels, when I took my bags from the car and began walking towards Hamas’ customs house, the heat instantly engulfed me. Sweat trickled out of every pore as I scanned the madness.
About two hundred people were jostling for position before a huge black iron gate guarding the path out of Gaza, to Egypt and beyond. Black-clad troopers wore grimaces behind the gate, taking verbal abuses stoically. I recognized one of them from my entry – Mohammad had guided me around Hamas’ offices. I elbowed my way to him, flashed my passport and press card.
“What languages do you speak?” asked a tall teenager as my Arabic began confusing the guards.
“Mo Canada” was from Ontario, of Palestinian descent, and had been trying to get his sister through for the last five days. He’d crossed via a tunnel much like the one I’d been down, and was craving to return to North America. “First thing I’m going to do, bro, is get my girl, go to a club, and take a couple of shots. Then go camping.”
Even with Canadian passports, they weren’t getting through. However, Mo hitched his hopes to mine and told the guard about my imminent flight. The gate was swung open to reveal a small white office. The official behind the window was fielding phone calls and scanning names in a huge registry, tasjeel. I showed my letter from the Cairo Press Center, and he called up the food chain. No one had heard of me and I would have to wait. I wrote my name in Arabic for him so he’d remember me amidst the flood. I asked him his name, and he glibly responded “staffer” in Arabic. What kind of shit is that?
“If you get through, can you tell them there are Canadians stranded here?” Mo asked from the other side of the gate. “Don’t forget about us.”
I was learning quickly to not believe the hype about the Rafah border opening in post-revolution Egypt. Perhaps fears of a Muslim Brotherhood expansion, or responsibility for Gaza, keeps the gates under tight lock and key. Ask any Gazan, and they’ll tell you the truth: it is open now, like it has been, for just the rich and connected. Or white, in my case.
The hopeful migrants were now irate. I was too, but I sweated not in the thick, roiling mass of people pressed against the gate thrusting their arms through clutching travel documents and flight tickets, cursing the guards and shining with sweat under the midday sun. I had a dull plastic chair to myself on the other side of the gate. I was essentially still at the border, unable to talk to Hamas officials, just grunts, and fiddling time away chatting with the taxi drivers who ferrying travellers between the gate and the customs house a kilometer away.
From behind the gate, an American from New Jersey began asking me how I got on the other side.
“We’ve been stuck here for two and half weeks,” the 45-year old man said, his US passport just visible out of his shirt pocket. “I missed my flight a week ago and have another in two days. I will probably miss that too.”
No word came on high to let me through, and I stewed in the sun like everyone else. The hours passed and I realized I wasn’t going to make it to a Cairo rooftop party to wish the city well in style, as planned.
“Just one minute,” said the official. “The boss is coming.”
I waited another hour, in vain, and then began calling the Cairo Press Center for help.
“I am sorry, we cannot help you. It is not possible today or tomorrow,” they said. When? “I don’t know.”
At dusk I was starving and depleted, sapped of hope and energy. Ted confirmed my worst fears – if I hadn’t crossed by now I wouldn’t that day. So I packed it up, took a ten shekel shared taxi back to Gaza City.
“It’s not a normal crossing, man,” Ted said when I got back.
After a long night of pingpong, I tried my luck again. This was my last chance to get to Cairo to catch my night flight to Tunisia.
Arriving early, at 0800, I was one of the first people there and the first to cross the initial threshold of the gate. A new official in the white office was nicer than the one previously, and because the swell of people hadn’t yet arrived, he had time to call the big office about me. Still no word, he said, had been recieved from the Egyptians about me, so I was to wait.
The clock slunk onwards in a loopy waltz of heat mirage and sun dreams. I kept pestering the official, and he kept calling. By 1100 I was angry and showing it, waving my documents around – I had a flight at 2150 in Cairo and a five hour drive, at least, from the border to the airport.
“I will go now to get the boss,” said the official, hopping onto his Korean motorcycle and gunning it down the featureless road I so desperately wanted to run down. He returned half an hour later with a bag full of sandwiches, sodas and vegetables. With a mouth full of food, he saw my anger, gulped, shrugged and shyly handed me a pita stuffed with cream cheese.
“I didn’t ask for this,” I said, “but I’ll take it.”
The sun had risen so high that my gear and position was fully in its relentless rays. A guard and I moved a small bench to the shade, and I fell asleep while reading The Polymath. I awoke to a strange vision.
At the gate stood a tiny Asian man with a string beard, full lips and long hair. Wearing a medical vest, he was talking to a guard quietly. When he came through, I introduced myself and began peppering him with questions – boredom plus reporting instinct. Akhwan was from Jakarta, Indonesia and had been in Gaza for just over a year building a hospital near the worst cesspools of Gaza in Beit Lahya. While we were getting to know each other, an Indonesia ambulance pulled through the gate and a non-descript Hamas official asked for Akhwan’s and my passports.
I jumped into the ambulance without further thought. Akhwan offered me shotgun, and I rambled off questions, trying to keep up the appearance of connection to the health workers for the Hamas official. The ambulance was full of Indonesians and Akhwan’s gifts, including an olive tree.
The short ride ended in the large customs house I’d been warmly recieved in a week earlier. I waited in line with Akhwan and when my turn arrived, I asked for a Palestinian National Authority stamp. This was the hardest stamp to get of my life, with Algeria being a close second.
We then boarded a bus that took two hours to cross 200 meters. I won’t go into the frustrating details. Three words suffice: hot and boring. The Egyptian border entry at Rafah was just as I remembered it, with one staffer out of nine processing passports with the rest talking about a TV show. However, I was given express treatment when I told them about my flight.
On the other side, I checked the time.
Six hours until my flight with just the Sinai desert, the Suez Canal, and Cairo’s traffic in my way.
