"We eat under shooting," he said.
Another round of rifle shots. Loud and close. Over my right shoulder.
Just outside the window at my back. I continue to eat.
A bowl of zucchini (kosa), pumpkin, and meat. Delicious. I am not a vegetarian in this hospitality.

Khalil Bachir looks at me again, even smiles slightly. "They are shooting to tell us, 'We know you have foreigners in there with you.'"
Another series of shots from at least two soldiers. Some bursts come on top of one another. That's how I know. At least two shooters.

The wife of Khalil Bachir, serving the food, smiles courteously at me.
"You are welcome." I am puzzled. Her eyes are so clear, open and frank, not clouded suspicious or dark. Like the children. Clear eyes.

"I saw many bullets strike the dirt, near us in the house," said Samah Mahammad, Psychiatric Nurse, of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, spiritual woman who has permitted me to join her on this Crisis Team 'home visit.'

They long ago had bulldozed the greenhouses, demolished all neighboring homes, and killed the trees. Alone is left the up torn dirt.

"Do you follow sports at all Mr. Bachir?" I asked.
"Yes, sometimes, but because we are all locked up in one room from six pm to six am, and most sports TV is on at night I don't see much of sports."

More shots, sometimes one-two-three-rapidly. CRACK. Concussive. They keep coming.

I sit next to Mr. Khalil Bachir on the same side of the small table. My right shoulder almost touching his left.
'Grandmother' tears off a corner of khobiz (bread) and hands it to me. I dip and load it with some vegetable in the bowl and a bit of rice from the table.

BANG. "I refuse to hate, no matter what they do to me or my family. If I become angry I will have to leave my home."

"Look," she says, the wife of Khalil Bachir. A small room, the blue bed covered with broken glass, debris, and the very glasses case which her husband discarded when "the bomb" came through the window.
"Only by the will of Allah was I not killed."

He was badly wounded in the back of the head and neck.
From that attack and trauma to his system, Mr. Bachir has since developed diabetes. Samah tells me that GCMHP helps coordinate some form of medical attention for his diabetes. But I do not know how that works because he is strictly limited in where he can go:
"The soldiers tell me that I can only travel in one direction, this way." He gestures to the west. "To the school where I am Headmaster (Rodelf Filter Elementary) and back. That's all."

When Mr. Bachir tells me that, I am disturbed again, forget my original question, and leap to ask, "Can't you go shopping?"
He shakes his head.
"But how do you get food?"

Before I hear a reply, I am interrupted by Yosef who grabs off the bed, and holds up for me to examine, what looks like a twisted bicycle pump. It is part of a missile, fired into the house from the settlement military tower that overlooks the house and can see on a line, directly into this bedroom.
I feel stupid about my incredulity. This is a missile? in this little bedroom, come screaming into the heart of this peaceful small family? A missile on the bed?

Is this war? Is this Occupation? Imprisonment? Confinement? Civil living?
I am at a loss for a context by which to understand.
I turn around almost full circle looking at children and all. "But, but, ah . . .
by whose authority are you imprisoned in your own home and threatened daily?"

The family, even my friend Samah are polite enough, but they seem to be wondering about me as I am shaking my head: "Doesn't he get it?" they seemed to be saying to themselves. "This is what it means to live in Occupied Palestine!"

After a pause, Mrs. Bachir responds to my question, "By whose authority?" and says, "They do. The military. They have the power."

That is not an answer for me. I do not understand.
And I still don't know how they bring food into the house.

"We used to sleep here but when they tried to kill us by shooting through the window into the bed, we moved to an inside smaller space where it is a little safer."

The bedroom dresser top has 80 to 100 empty shells sitting up on their end arranged in a pattern to spell out P E A C E. It is the idea and expression of eleven year old Mohammed. He leans on the dresser, beams a smile up to me, and asks with eager widened eyes, "Do you like it?"
He has added around the letters, a circle of upright shells, looking like a wild-west fort. Protecting the P E A C E. Mohammed is aware of the ironies.

With permission, I reach down into the cracked, bowl-shaped light chandelier which is on the floor, next to the bed. It is full of shells and bullets. Making the world safe for spiritual darkness.
I select one of the empty shells, and one black bullet. I hold it in my palm.
It is shaped exactly like what it is - a heavy lead missile. I heft it, and like its feel. This heavy, lead, bullet!

Did this one come from the bullet hole in the closet door at my back? Or from the wall after passing through Destiny's jacket? Pick any wall in the house.
I want to ask for some token of their family and of life, of their spiritual discernment, their refinement, but I, 'yes and,' I dare not.
I heft the bullet again and put it, with shell-empty, into my pocket.
"I shall refine thee in the furnace of suffering."

We go across an open hallway space to enter the other modest bedroom.
Standing before the dressing table mirror, is Zana, seven years old. She has magically changed into a becoming longer dress, and is brushing her hair.
A set of shells decorate this dresser as well. Mother reaches over the shells to show me a framed photo - a graduation? - of her daughter, who now lives in Germany.
Zana likes to see me admiring the picture of her sister, smiles, nods her approval, and resumes brushing her lovely long hair. Seven. Magical.

Jail and hospitality, bullets and shells, food and smiles . . . I was beginning to experience what I could not grasp this morning at the GCMHP Clinic in Deir El Balah, when Samah had invited me to join her for a Crisis Team visit to the home of Khalil Bachir.

She had said, "It is very difficult for us. Please come. You will see."

Samah was referring to the Crisis Intervention Teams that had been formed at each of the GCMHP Clinics - Gaza, Jabalya, Khan Younis and Deir El Balah - to respond to victims and casualties of the recent increased violence and pressure - targeted killings, Apache helicopter attacks, tank incursions, demolished homes, punishing checkpoints, and absolute closures.

"So, there are families and children in all Gaza who need our help. But in this house, the soldiers are there, occupying the house - and they shoot, and shoot. It is dangerous to visit the family, even for us."

That afternoon, after we had left the car:
"We have to walk to the house. It is dangerous. They will shoot, even foreigners."
"Please Dr. James, do not carry a bag or anything. They will be watching us."
Samah and I walked together on the dirt trail. Ahead, not far and starting to loom, was the settlement wall, adorned on top by curls of shiny razor wire. I dared not look at the wall. It seemed ominous.

"There it is, the house." I looked right, and we turned into the yard: A large house, three stories high, bullet holes marking every single face of stone.

"Who is that shaking a rug on the steps?"
"One of the family."
"Where are the soldiers?" I asked.
No reply to the question, but she said, "They see us."
I bowed my head and felt ashamed that I was glad for my white hair.
Up the steps, greetings from the young son, then ushered into a nicely kept sitting room with settees.
I was relieved to be out of the direct scrutiny of the soldiers.

I watch Samah settling in with eleven year old Maysoon, and Zana. Samah brings to them a natural attention and quality of caring that they both welcome with nods and smiles.

When Samah asks about something difficult or painful, there is a slight tightening of the eyes, an acknowledgement and acceptance of harsh realities. I think: These little girls, too young to have to accept so much, so soon.
"When I was young, green and golden, and happy as the day is long."

"This (shooting) is common," he said. "My children live here, they play here, even know some happiness."
"We will not leave. We will not hate no matter what they do. They are friends, human beings. All my family knows this. We live by it."
"I do not know if my children will have long term effects from growing up under these circumstances." CRACK. Another series of fire.

I feel foolish. I can only think of formal studies on resilience and children.
Yet I guess to myself: These children - not incredibly, from what I see and from what I understand about children surviving and more, thriving - they will, perhaps, not know terrible long-term effects, secret, repressed, festering. Because it is all here, out in the open, literally on the table. Everyone partakes. Spiritual pathways?

Shots. Louder. Somehow closer. I look over my shoulder. Three feet behind my back and above me is the window. I see one of the turrets of the settlement less than one hundred yards away. A fluttering of blue and white flag.

I have been in shooting zones before. For me, other times, rifle shots sound like pops! But these, as we eat under shooting, these are CRACKS.

Grandmother is to my close left, sitting at table, eating, in this home, my right shoulder close to left shoulder of Khalil Bachir, his little girl close, over the table touching distance from my hand, we sit at table. "We eat under shooting."

The shots carry and convey an absolutely unmistakable intention to insult, an ugly unashamed intention to violate, spit and damage. Polish ghetto? Who was it that shot at prisoners in the concentration camps? I begin to feel ugly. Then I look around the table. They eat. I eat. Relax. Be here. I am here. Intifada - shaking off the anger.

The little girl has caught something in her throat. Coughs. Grandmother and mother pat her back. She's okay.

"What is the line of fire?" I am not afraid, and, I do not want to give credence to this vulgar shooting. I want to focus on this experience of sharing a meal with my new friends and their children. Yet I ask.

"East to west, they shoot," I think he said.
I still do not know. "Where are they shooting from?"
"Just above us, through the ceiling, up there," pointing.

Samah starts to leave the table, and is persuaded to remain for a little while. Later, she tells me of her fear during the meal eaten under shooting.
"I was afraid. I wanted to leave," she said.
I tell her I was afraid too. When I say that, I begin to feel, and inside, weep sadness.
Days later, Samah and I will debrief - speak our feelings frankly - risking to be vulnerable - with other therapists and friends at the GCMHP Clinic.
My denial says to do so, to debrief, - to talk about my emotions - is tiresome, is unnecessary. I am an experienced therapist. Sigh. Yes, and . . . I know my case is not different.

"To the jail." The sign on the side of the door to the room where this married couple, Grandmother, and all the children are kept under locked-and-ready rifle and key, every day.
Every day, "since three years."
Three years. Six pm to six am. One barred window at the end.

"Sometimes the soldiers stay in the room with us."
"Always there is even louder shooting during the night, without lights. It's worse than the regular shooting during the day."

"What if someone has to go to the bathroom during those twelve hours?"
"The soldiers must give permission, unlock the door, take you to the bathroom, and you must leave the door open as they watch you."
I look at her. I am free. Stripped. Liberated. Never again may I speak of humiliation. Nor have to.
"Still falls the rain."

Mrs. Khalil and Samah sit together, and talk.
Outside, on the steps. The sky, high, sunlit and perfectly blue.
"Look up, see? The camera." On top.The roof, aimed down. Close-up and wide-angle lens panning, sweeping the area. The shooting range.
Son Yosef. Slim. Gentle. Graceful in touch and word. He guides my
attention: "See the palm tree?" One only. Blasted. Violated. Target practice. Daily.

"Someday I would like to live elsewhere. Yet, here is my duty."
"How old are you?"
"Fourteen or fifteen," I think he said. I cannot hold on to what I hear. What I see. What I pretend not to feel.

"They will kill you if they see you with your video camera. Yes, just shoot you, Canadian or not." I am told that many times. I believe them. But I don't.
I have seen it happen, then and now. Here and there. CRACK.
CRACK. But I still do not believe it.

"You tell us that the soldiers are not our enemies. But why do they shoot us?
Why did they try to kill you father?"
The youngest boy was nine then, two years ago, when his father suffered that serious head wound from the shooting into his bed.

"So I talked again to my son about love being stronger than hate. 'To err is human, to forgive divine.'" "I tell my son, 'they are our friends.'" Khaliil Bachir.
Not a quiver of righteousness in his manner. I do not hear the phrase as a cliché.
"If you prick us, we bleed."

He, same size as me, much younger, only fifty one. In great shape. Standing facing one another, each holding aromatic tea in our right hands. A few moments earlier Mrs. Bachir had invited us to leave the tiny kitchen. Even she had become a little nervous about the level of shooting. For the sake of Others.

We are now standing on the back? front? steps. The camera above, and
soldiers, how many? On the second and third floors. The settlement's high
barricaded wall just across the way. Mediterranean sun is lovely. Not too hot.

I inch closer to Khalil Bachir even the more. As I listen and almost stare into his eyes, level with mine, grayish blue? clear, friendly - reassuring, I am aware of myself, my Self. Somehow I cannot believe my eyes. Nor do I wonder that I am not surprised by his serenity, in his refusal to hate or be angry no matter what is done.

Not amazed? Why? Finally I get it. Obvious. Of course, with this man - his spirit pervades the entire family. I apprehended, and quite naturally felt it, from the first moments when he walked toward me as I stood in the middle of his shattered private bedroom of marriage, and before I heard his eloquent English speech, "Welcome to our home."
There is no dismay in me now, nor surprise at his bearing: a shuffling off of anger and hate.
Simplicity! - "An uprightness of the soul which prevents self-consciousness."

"I gain strength from my commitment not to hate. It comes from within. I am not acting. It is not pretence for me. I do not have to pretend."

The mother shows me bullet holes in every garment hanging on the stand in the bedroom. A child's light tan, collared wool jacket, with three quarter length sleeves. Would look wonderful on Zana, the little girl, or my grand-daughter 'Destiny.'
Shot in the back of the neck.
"See what a rent was there."
"After the first death there is no other."

"Not my son. No. My son would not do such acts. The sons of other mothers, perhaps, but not mine. He would not do such things."

"They told me, 'Your house is divided into three sections, A, B, and C. B and C belong entirely to us, the Israeli soldiers. A is yours, but only partially. There are many things that you have to get our permission about.'"

"Family no longer visits us. It is too difficult and dangerous with the soldiers."

"I have told them many times. I will not hate, and I will never leave this house of my birth." "I believe someday we will have peace."

"See this mirror?" It is a fine old mirror, in a wood frame with graceful flourishes carved. "It is the only thing left from my mother's wedding. She loves to look at it. It reminds her of when my mother and father first came to the original old house. It was destroyed in the first Intifada."

Mrs. Khalil says, "We are a married couple living like this, locked in every day from six pm to six am. It is very difficult."

One of the family has developed serious bladder and kidney problems from trying, night after night, not to have to ask the soldiers, not to have to go to the bathroom between six pm and six am.

He says, "Sometimes the soldiers take me out of the room and 'allow' me to stand with them all night. Not sit. Stand. If they want to punish."

"Dr. James we must leave."

"Khalil Bachir. Please help me. I feel like a wretch to ask. May I make some kind of small contribution to your school, or family, or toward education of your sons and daughters?"

I am an older sophisticated man of many tough experiences, and white beard. Yet I am moved to tremble. He holds me steady with a relaxed look. No dramatics.
I lean into his eyes and shake off my anxiety. An Intifada of my ego. Nor do
we clasp hands and mutually acclaim. Merely, two men standing together in the A section of his home, owned and controlled only partially by Khalil Bachir.
He responds, "Thank you, but, . . ."
For me, I hear, 'Yes and, . . . '
"It is enough that you bring your sympathy and emotions."

As a group we walk off the porch of tea, across the torn up backyard, to his
car parked on the dead-ended dirt pathway that points eastward about one hundred yards to the barb-wired wall of the settlement.

Mohammed runs after me. He has in his hands that symbolic gift I had wanted to request from this family, of life, of their life, and of living, beyond empty shells and bullets. So here it was. Mohammed, my youthful friend, with that infinite smile, gives me a stem and branches of 'Otra,' a simple plant of plain green leaves, and fragrant.

Samah and I get into the car of Khalil Bachir.
He turns it around, and drives us two hundred yards west - "The only direction I am allowed to go." - to the yellow car of our colleague and driver Said, who, earlier that day, when delivering us, was not permitted to drive Samah and I any closer to the Khalil Bachir house than he did, for the promise of mortal danger to do so, could not have been more reliable.

In a careful way, as conscious men and new friends, in a "good way" as my Lakota Indian friends say, Khalil Bachir and I agree that I will - 'Insha' Allah' - return, "Next Wednesday, June 25, 2003," when I am scheduled to be again working with the staff and Crisis Team at the Clinic of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme in Deir El Balah.

We transfer into our car, and exchange final goodbyes.
Mr. Bachir says, "I do not feel too much regret, for you have said, 'See you next week.'"

I have come, in time and cause, whether in Canada, Los Angeles or Palestine, to hold the phrase "See you in Gaza," fondly in my heart.

Now, from this day, from this day in the home of Khalil Bachir, still falls for me, another poetic phrase, and clear - "See you next week." 'Insha' Allah badin.'

Earlier in the day, on the porch of the Deir El Balah Clinic, surrounded and touched by beauty and a beauteousness not to be spoken of aloud, I floated some of my feelings, on the wings of English words, to eight year old Ahed, who, wholly comprehending, heard:

"Ahed, you will encounter, as you grow through years of youth and manhood, sometimes of a sudden, beauty almost blinding, moments of experience, love and pity, suffering and sacrifice, so utterly fragile and enduring as to fill and break your heart. Hold to those moments. They are more than your mind, kith or kin. And they will carry you forever."
Ahed smiled at me and said, "Ay wa."

Khalil Bachir. His home and family. "I refuse to hate. I believe love is stronger than hate."

Back at Marna House, Gaza city. In my room. Alone. Safe, comfortable.
With friends. Here, I am "like him, like him with friends possessed."
Yet, I am tired. I do not want to think of, nor feel, admiring, admirable, exquisite sympathy or pain.
'Oh poor sensitive soul.'
"And look upon myself and curse my fate."
"Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I."

"Yes, and . . . . " I look at the clock. Minutes before six pm.

"The soldiers come in from this kitchen door." He gestured to his right as we sat at the table, eating. "And they come through the front door. We know the routine."
"To the jail," says the sign.
"I round up the entire family. We all go into the room. The soldiers lock us in. From six pm to six am."

With light, with what little light or air, privacy or peace, to safely sleep?

"Sometimes they stand inside the room with rifles pointed at us."
"Or they leave the door open and watch with rifles, and sleep, two or three, outside the door."
Yosef mimes holding a rifle to his shoulder, aiming to shoot: "To scare us."

"Sometimes, if they notice my anger and hurt at their deliberate cruelty, sometimes, I see guilt in their eyes. They try to justify themselves and say, 'We are only doing our duty.' But I think they know."

"Not my son."

"The soldiers are not my enemy. You cannot divide humanity."

It is six o'clock. I try to ignore my . . . yes, prideful despair.

I am embarrassed to be out of the jail. Finally sleep. Fitfully. When I awake it is still, . . . only, . . . just, . . . a few minutes before six o'clock am.

Now? The 'next day' has become this evening. Again. Six pm awaits. It is after six pm. "To the jail." In the jail. And tomorrow.

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow."

What time is it? Still in the jail.

How long does it take to become six o'clock am?

"See you next Wednesday, June 25, 2003."

_ _ _ _

James L. Crossen, Ph.D., Psychotherapist
Volunteer, Gaza Community Mental Health Programme
June, 2003, Gaza