What It Means to Travel as a Gazan

11.06.2024 - 22:27 / cntraveler.com

This essay is the second in a series about traveling after confinement. Look for the next one later this summer.

I dream of seeing Gaza by plane.

Instead, I see Gaza through drone footage. It shows a place in rubble—my many memories and dreams and close friends buried with it. But wherever I am in the world, I always think of home. I’ve traveled to dozens of countries now, but nothing beats the golden shores of Gaza.

I grew up in the Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza. It wasn’t until 2002, at the age of 12, that I left Palestine for the first time on a two-month-long trip to Jordan with my aunt and sister, Zainab. Our Palestinian commercial flight was one of just a few in operation after Israel first bombed Gaza’s only airport in 2001: With no airport inside its home country, Palestinian Airlines restarted operations until 2005 at El Arish International Airport in Egypt, which was used by Palestinians in Gaza to travel outside of the Gaza Strip.

The vast expanse of the Sinai Desert was a reminder of a world far bigger than the confinement I had known

Back then, and as of this writing, no planes flew out of my hometown, which meant that the excitement of boarding a flight was almost too much to handle for someone doing it for the first time, and I insisted on taking the window seat. Pressed against the window, I gazed at the Mediterranean sparkling down below with its beautiful waves; Gaza was just visible on the horizon, its borders suddenly less clear. And then, the vast expanse of the Sinai Desert—a reminder of a world far bigger than the confinement I had known.

For a moment, I felt like the birds that flew over me each day without restrictions.

Stepping off the plane in Amman meant discovering there were no checkpoints like the ones we had to cross on our way out. Gaza’s access to the world has always been restricted, including for patients in need of good healthcare, and my aunt had taken Zainab and me to Jordan for treatment. But we were also going to be spending time with relatives we rarely got to see—both from Jordan and the West Bank. We suddenly felt connected with the rest of our family, even if just for a short while.

During the two months we spent there I remained amazed by the high buildings. The infrastructure was so much more developed than it was in Gaza. It meant I could learn how to ride a scooter and a bike for the first time, zig-zagging down paved roads and past flashes of green space. It was so different from home, but I didn’t fully understand that I’d been living in a concrete jungle until years later—when I left Gaza for the first time as an adult to study in Malaysia.

The tropical scenery in Kuala Lumpur was beyond the imagination of someone who grew up in a refugee camp. The