Eyeless in Gaza

Summer in Gaza City was easy and beautiful.

I emailed my ex-girlfriend in New York

that I’d just walked past

the most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen.

She sent something back like,

I’m the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen, you dick.

Later, she admitted that it had upset her,

even though she’d laughed it off at first.

In bars and restaurants, sometimes we’d point out

attractive people and admire them together.

I’d liked this about our relationship. I’d thought it was a sign

not only of our security but also of a certain

bohemian openness, as if we were Horacio and La Maga

from Cortázar’s Hopscotch.

She didn’t want me to go to Gaza, but she’d already left

Chicago for New York. We hadn’t made a clean break.

In a moment of pain, she’d called Gaza a dump,

which pierced me more than any of the other hard things

we’d said in the relationship’s death throes. She’d been scared

when I didn’t call her for almost a week,

stranded on the Egyptian side of the border, waiting to get in.

Alice Walker was there, singing with the Code Pink activists.

My delegation was separate but we joined forces.

I didn’t sleep but a few hours each night.

The border was uncomfortable and noisy,

and later our hosts in Gaza put the men together

in one room. I never slept well

next to new people, especially not the goateed

opera singer whose ragged snores shook the bunk bed.

The testimony we collected and the horrors we saw

on daily visits with families, orphans, widows, widowers,

children with cancer or burns or broken limbs

also made sleep difficult, and made finding

a phone that could reach New York a low priority.

My life in America seemed totally

unimportant and forgettable.

I felt I didn’t owe anyone there anything,

though of course I did. It hurt to imagine

I would leave Gaza now that I was here,

falling in love with everyone I met

and didn’t meet.