The scenic village of Ayn Karim lies 7.5 km to the west of Al-Quds

Short bursts of light flashed out in the night sky. Behind the shouts of the crowds and the insistent sirens, shots rang out. I couldn’t tell where they were coming from, and to tell the truth, I couldn’t care less. After all, I was only a few meters away from stepping into Gaza.
For a brief week, the road to Palestine was paved with dreams and dozens of parked relief trucks. I set out before dawn on January 25 from Cairo, driving through a fog as heavy and relentless as the Israeli siege on 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza.
The distance between Cairo to Gaza is approximately a 7-hour road trip, but for many Egyptians, it is a practically unthinkable journey.

Storming the Gates
On January 22, the impossible happened. Unable to concentrate on a report I was writing, I watched the news in awe as hundreds of Palestinian women broke through the border gate, opening the way for a mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to escape the crippling Israeli siege on Gaza.
Soon almost 7 miles of the border were open, and the difference between families and neighbors were wiped out. Palestinians flooded into the Egyptian side of Rafah and into El-Arish to stock up on goods and return home to Gaza.
After hearing of Egyptians traveling into Gaza, two days later, my friends and I decided to travel to the edges of Palestine by car, following a relief convoy that was to leave the morning after we took our decision. We packed no clothes with us.
I have always talked about traveling to Palestine “one day”, but I had never imagined that day would actually be realized. As soon as our travel arrangements had been made, I called a journalist friend in Gaza City to tell him that I was finally coming to Palestine.
In previous communications I had talked to him about how much I had wanted to visit Gaza, and he would repeatedly invite me, but we both knew that the day may never come. When I called him to tell him the good news, it took him several hours before my giddy announcement finally sunk in.

Reaching Rafah

The destroyed Palestinian village of Al Bassa lies 19 km to the north of Acre, Just south of the Lebanese border

We had already contacted friends inside Palestine, and they had assured us that as soon as we reached Rafah, they would come to pick us up. By that time, we had entered Rafah and soon found that many of the streets had been blocked by Egyptian security forces.
Eventually we reached the furthest point we could and, not knowing at the time that I was making a mistake, I parked my car.
After what seemed to me forever in my impatience to get inside Palestine, our Palestinian friends found us, and each of us carried a box or bundle of goods we had brought with us and headed toward the border by foot.
They brought with them a young boy who like many others, had seized the opportunity presented by the chaotic situation and employed himself as a package carrier, using a push cart to carry heavy goods to the border wall.

Over the Wall, Into the Dream
The couple of kilometers we trekked towards the border were the most crowded and chaotic in the entire trip. Thousands of Palestinians were either heading back to Gaza or into Egypt. There was a power outage and the night was pitch black. The only light came from street side vendors selling odds and ends.
Men herded sheep, goats, and cows toward the border, while others carried sacks of food on their backs. Mattresses, soft-drinks, biscuits, and other goods were carried by hand, by push carts, or by donkey carts. A black market currency exchange business thrived as hawkers called out rates and currencies.
As we neared the border, the anarchy became complete. Sirens wailing, ambulances carrying injured Palestinians tried in vain to part the crowds. Soon, I saw flashes of light, and probably for the first time in my life, heard gunshots in a potentially dangerous context.
“What was that?” I asked Ahmed, one of the Palestinians with us.
Utterly unconcerned, Ahmed said, “Probably the Egyptian security forces.” They had been firing in the air, and according to Ahmed, sometimes they had fired at the Palestinians, trying to scare them back across the border.
No one else seemed aware of the gunshots, as we were all focused on not losing each other in the crowd. We pressed on and soon found ourselves at the border wall. In the dark, we could make out cranes carrying barrels of fuel across the wall.
From what I had seen in the news, I had imagined that the entire border wall was leveled to the ground, and that we would simply walk over it. Seeing a wall that was higher than me was not something I was expecting.
“We’re going to have to jump the wall.” Ahmed told us. “Usually we just jump it, but because you girls are with us, we’ll find someone with a ladder.”
At the wall, we found another thriving business. A boy held a wooden ladder to the wall, charging one Israeli shekel per person for the use of the ladder. We climbed over and jumped down to the ground on the other side.
We were inside Palestine. The impossible had come true.

Under the Olive Trees

The city of Haifa lies on the Mediterranean coast in the north of Palestine

The heart of the Palestinian dream beats in shadows under the olive trees. Its scent lies under patient boots standing on a satin soft ground that is saturated with the perfume of an unfaltering belief in freedom.
The eyes that watch from the shadows, beneath the olive branches, have seen a heaven we have only known in words.
The commander of the area, who was to be our guide that night, drove us through unlit streets, talking to us and all the while communicating through a walkie-talkie with his men. After a short 15 minute drive, we reached our destination.
We trudged single file through dark and winding paths bordered by a dense growth of prickly pear cactus. Although we had come almost directly from the border wall, the exhausting trip from Cairo into Palestine was quickly forgotten.

Like Millions, Like Very Few
The night was still except for the sound of our shoes. The only light came from a scattering of distant stars.
We were going to visit the men who spend their nights on the borders between Gaza and Israel, watching and waiting. These are men who know that they are fighting an army with immense technological, material, and financial advantages.
They stand in the cold, in the rain, during storms, and under fire. When Israel strikes, they are the first to die.
These men, mainly in their 20s and 30s, spend most of their time away from their families and loved ones. Their commander, we were told, sees his wife for a maximum of one hour daily.
Every night, they pick up their weapons and merge into the shadows, resuming a 60-year struggle for freedom.
Like millions of others, they have a dream that one day they will be free, that one day, the land of their grandfathers and ancestors will return for their children and grandchildren to run and play in. They dream that the now bulldozed fields of olive trees will one day be replanted with hope and peace.
Like very few, they know and have come to terms with the fact that they will be killed in pursuit of this dream. To them, their own death is a certainty, the only unknown is when.

Lightening-Quick Eternity
We finally reached the front line, or at least the most advanced position we could safely be taken to. The ground was soft beneath our feet and the air was crisp.
In the faint light of the stars, I could make out the bulky shape of a fighter standing quietly underneath an olive tree. His face was covered, and I could only see his eyes.
He turned to us in greeting, and seeing us crowding near his chosen position, politely stepped back to allow us room to move freely in.
At a modest distance, we could see the wire fence separating Gaza from Israel. Red lights blinked near the fence.
I could scarcely breathe. It was approximately 10 pm and I had only been in Palestine for a little over 3 hours. I felt like I was standing at the edge of the world, between the pages of history.

Hebron lies in the southwest of the West Bank, just 30 km south of Al-Quds

The moment was a lightening-quick glimpse of eternity. My friends and I fell to the ground in prostration. I touched my forehead to a softness I had never known before. The fighters surrounding us sensed the private emotions that had engulfed us and gently, without a word, turned aside and talked quietly amongst themselves.
This blessed land that had welcomed into its depths thousands of its children killed by the rhetoric of politicians and the arms of an unyielding occupation welcomed my own simple homage.
The touch of its hospitable smoothness echoed the generosity of its people, and their eagerness to make sure our trip to Palestine was one we would never forget.
I inhaled deeply the fresh yet ancient scent of a beloved land. Never before had the earth smelled so pure. I thought of the blood that had been spilt on this soil in the Palestinian fight for freedom. Is this what dignity smelled like?

Posing With RPGs
I could have stayed forever with my face to the ground underneath the olive tree, but realizing we couldn’t occupy such a strategic position for too long, we got up.

It was time to move on.
We trekked back through winding paths and the cacti until we reached paved streets and hit the jackpot.
At a t-section in the street, we met at least 10 fighters, all with their faces covered. They greeted us cheerily and seemed eager to show off their arsenal.
“This is one of the mines we use,” said one, showing us a black, ominous looking contraption about the size of a woman’s small purse. “Do you girls want to try lifting it?”
Ever eager to take on a challenge, I stepped forward. Truth be told, I did manage to lift the mine, but only just a few centimeters off the ground.
The watching fighters smiled. “I don’t think you should try lifting the one we use for tanks,” one of them said, pointing to a much bigger contraption. “It weighs around 50 kilograms.” I agreed.
We asked them if we could take pictures of them. They agreed, but would only allow us to photograph them with their faces covered.
For a few minutes, they put aside their duties and humored us. They stood in the darkness and posed with their RPGs (rocket-propelled grenade launchers) and Kalashnikovs.

The commander, whose name we were not told, waited patiently while we took as many pictures as we wanted, then told us we had to move.
We climbed into a four-door pickup truck. The small sedan we had arrived in was nowhere to be seen. The fighters said goodbye to us and stood watching as their commander started up the truck and drove off.
It was a long night. I had been awake since 4 am that day, and it was nearly midnight. Although I am known to my friends as someone who “sleeps with the chickens” because of my early to bed, early to rise habits, I couldn’t have been more awake.
As we drove off, I looked back at the men we had left behind. One of them waved to us.
At the end of the day, we were journalists who had entered Palestine and would be leaving it to go back to our comfortable homes and warm beds.
At the end of the day, they were young men who had willingly devoted their lives and forsaken any possible comfort for one cause alone: freedom for their people and their land.
We would spend that first night in Palestine in the warm house of friends.
They would spend that night as they spend all their nights: waiting and watching in the cold under the olive trees.

Marwa Elnaggar is a writer, a poet, and a consultant to both IslamOnline.net and one of its projects, the Reading Islam website (www.readingislam.com).