John

I'm just going to write this out while it's still fresh in my memory. No embellishments, no adjectives. I'm too confused- too angry- to be literary, so bear with me.

I was walking back to my hostel an hour ago when a man strolled up alongside me and tried to get my attention. Lanky, clean cut, and clear-eyed, dressed in a pressed pair of slacks and a collared shirt.

Normally, I just blow by these characters; they're Egyptian tourist touts, trying to lure you back to their brother's travel agency or their uncle's hotel with a a bright smile and a lot of fast talk. Alternately, they're offensively friendly Arabs trying to welcome foreigners by practicing their five-word command of English on them.

This guy got my attention by saying he was from Gaza. Not: "I'm from Falastin." He said: "I am from Gaza."

He seemed calm, yet clingy. He told me that he had escaped from Gaza 35 days ago, when Hamas blew up the border fence between the Strip and the Sinai desert. Half of Gaza's million inhabitants rushed into Egypt to buy supplies of bread and fuel before returning to their homes.

This man stayed. He had no home to return to. His wife, sister, mother, a friend, and his four children had been killed days before, when Israeli bulldozers and tanks cut a swath through his neighborhood. His family was crushed inside his house; his friend died in the lobby of the hotel he operated next door.

John, he said his name was. He had been in Egypt 35 days, living off his last reserves of cash. "Egyptians, they care about Palestine, but they don't care about Palestinians." Now he was out, and he needed money to get him through the night. Could I please lend him some money to get a room and buy a sandwich?

Money, money, money. I stared at him. Either this was the most despicable scam I had ever encountered, or... it did not bear thinking about. Was he lying? His eyes were calm. Not pleading, not desperate. The eyes of a con man? But in my experience, refugees- people who have lost everything- are the calmest, proudest people I have ever encountered. Bereft of all but their dignity, they are determined, at all costs, not to lose that too.

What could I do? We walked, talking, to the nearest sandwich stall. I don't know if that surprises anyone.

Then he asked me if we could sit down and talk. "I need to talk to someone. Not like... (I had to supply the word "strangers" to him; his English wasn't perfect)... but like brothers."

So we did.

"I don't like asking Egyptians for money. I don't want to. They will look down on me. But you are not from here, so I ask you. I am very sorry. I have... big problem. Big problem with food, with sleep, but also... big problem inside.

How to talk about my family? They are gone. They are gone."

And this man gripped my arm, white-knuckled, and began to cry. At a coffee shop, in the middle of Talaat Harb Street in downtown Cairo. With effort, he gathered himself, and talked about his life.

He was a Christian. "My family has been in Gaza for one hundred years! We were from Yemen. It's not easy to be Christian in Gaza. Hamas, they don't like Christians. The Islamists, they don't like Christians.

I used to own a hotel. It was small. Before the trouble, many Western people come and stay, so I can speak some English. But not read! Speak a little only."

He needed to talk, needed to vent. He wasn't angry, or vehement. He didn't seem dead inside either. But it seemed that he needed this, to have coffee with a friend, or a stranger- to do something normal again. To feel human again.

"We are all little people. You know? Not like... er... er... big politicians. I never care about politics. What it matter to me? You know..." - And he grabbed my arm again- "You know... before this, I go many places. I go Amsterdam, I go Bucharest, I sleep in hotel. I have money.

So when I see people with no money, I try to help them.

What good is money? You take with you to Heaven? Give to poor people. Help people. What is more better, money or life?

I don't know why this happen to us. Many of us little people now in Gaza, we have big problem. But why this happen to us? What did I do? What did I do to Israel?"

He was eager to assure me that the money would be repaid to me. He gave me a number, and said that the Palestinian Authority owed him reimbursement for the loss of his property; and in any case, a friend from Sydney would lend him money to get by within a week. If I called him upon returning from Luxor, he would be happy to repay me.

He repeated this several times, each time firmly, punctuating each sentence with: "You understand me?" He didn't want to seem like a beggar. He wanted me to understand that this was a loan between equals. This was nothing like the insistent, assertive, shifty-eyed demands for free cash I get every day from Cairo's streetfolk.

"When I have money, I help people. Now I have no money, and no one will help me. But you did. I will never forget it."

I gave him 50 pounds. This is something less than ten bucks. It would get him through the night, and little further. Part of me screamed that this might still be a scam, and my own dwindling cash reserves could not handle more.

We talked, and talked. He liked to drink and to "go disco", and "talk to women. Not fuck, you know, but just talk. But you know, all women are problem. They want earring, they want necklace."

"And Bush, he make problem. He want all the money. He want from Iraq. I don't like Mubarak, he is like Bush's dog. And France, also, Sarkozy (France's right-wing president, an ally of Bush), he is also Bush's dog.

What about Canada? Who is your leader?"

Harper's name would have meant nothing to John. "He is also Bush's dog," I told him.

We said goodbye after an hour. He shook my hand in the limp-wristed Arab manner, looked me in the eye, and repeated his demand that I call him upon returning from Luxor. He walked away, straight-spined, and did not turn back.

I came back here, to the hostel, my thoughts in turmoil- they still are- and sat down at my laptop.

***

Was this a scam? John's story was, in my buddy Kieran's favorite phrase, "too preposterous to be a lie." His reactions to everything fit; the way he gripped my arm, the correct, dignified behavior of a man who did not want to reveal too much to a stranger, the numb, self-denied manner in which he could not talk about his family, but only about his commercial life. The way he told me to always keep an eye on my finances, because "When you have nothing, who will help you? No one! You must always have money to look out for yourself."

And when he said he'd escaped Gaza through the border with Egypt, he could not possibly have known he was talking to someone who reads the Israeli news websites every morning.

And if it was a scam, I lost a grand total of ten dollars.

But if it wasn't...

I'll probably have more to say on this later. I have to go catch a train to Luxor, and I have to leave now. I'm still so angry, so buggered.

There was a big debate in one of my Political Science classes a year back about the difference between "politics" and "justice".

The debate said that politics is about the ability of grand sweeps of policy to solve big issues, but justice is about making sure that individuals are provided for.

Fool that I was, I couldn't conceive of any difference. Politics is about making sure there can be justice, right? We have grand sweeps of public and foreign policy so that everyone can have a better future, right?

But when Israel bombs Gaza to make a better world for Jews, there's collateral damage. When Bush invades Iraq to make the world safe for democracy, there's collateral damage. When Canada ignores Kyoto so that our economy can thrive and I can have money to travel overseas, there's collateral damage. And John is just one of those faceless billions: the victims of grand, well-meaning sweeps of politics- the collateral damage of history.

What is the difference between politics and justice? I can tell you now. Politics says that the ends justify the means. Justice says that that just ain't so.

Whoever John is, I wish him well. In the world we live in, Palestinian or not, he needs all the luck he can get.