The New Yorker:

This year, I learned the difference between a traveller and a refugee.

By Mosab Abu Toha

The first time I travelled outside of Gaza, I was twenty-seven years old. Growing up, I had always thought of “travel” as riding a taxi, bus, or bike within the borders of the Gaza Strip. My family lived not far from Railway Street, but there were no trains there. I had heard stories about the Gaza International Airport, but Israel had bombed it when I was eight. I remember asking my childhood friend Izzat, a soccer fan, about the places he wanted to visit one day. “Barcelona,” he told me. “I want to play alongside Messi, Xavi, and Iniesta.” In 2014, a few days after Izzat graduated from college, he was killed in an Israeli air strike. Our freedom of movement was just another victim of the occupation.

The first place I tried to visit was Boston. I needed a U.S. visa, but was not allowed to travel forty miles to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, or to drive four hours through Israel to the U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan. Instead, my brother-in-law drove me to the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, in southern Gaza, so I could fly to Jordan for my visa interview. I remember standing in the travel hall in Rafah, surrounded by the young, the old, and the sick, and thinking that my suitcase, like me, had never been on a real journey before. When my plane took off from Cairo International Airport, I had the feeling that my legs were shrinking below me.

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