"Come, look, the cinema is burned down!"

My name echoed from one end of the street to the other, and I lifted my gaze in worry. Worry – because this wasn't just any street but the main one, Omar al-Mukhtar Street, and the city wasn't just any city but Gaza itself. And the one who called my name from afar, her voice thick with shock as she pointed toward a blackened building that had once been a movie theater – the famed al-Nasr Cinema, torched by Hamas men – was my wife, Yael. To my ears, the street had fallen silent, and only the Hebrew from her lips, a language absent from the city's soundscape for many years, rang out loud.

It was 20 years ago, in 2005. Gaza before Hamas's takeover was still steeped in hope, despite the Israeli occupation that strangled it from every side and the malignant settlements planted within it. We were the only Israeli visitors then: myself, a journalist for Haaretz come to cover the life of music in Gaza accompanying the Belgian NGO Music Fund headed by Lukas Peiron, and my wife, who joined me as photographer.

"You're a married couple? You have children? It is irresponsible to enter such a dangerous place!" the officer at the checkpoint chastized us severely. "Why, have you ever been inside?" Yael asked him. He kept silent.

Welcomed with joy

Yael aimed her small film camera at her surroundings – at the menacing crossing we had just passed with its loudspeakers blaring violently from above, at the fertile fields that unfolded beyond, at the seashore, at her new friends in Gaza. "I feel as though I'm forced to photograph in secret," she kept telling me throughout the day. "Where do these feelings of guilt that chase me come from? Perhaps because I can leave, and everyone around us cannot?"

Now her hand, pointing at the charred cinema, was steady as stone – the hand of a film editor and producer who has cinema in her soul. "This is a bad omen. They burned what's dearest to me, the screen," she said. And the passersby – their looks seemed amused at the sight of her. It was as if they were glad to hear Hebrew suddenly returning to the heart of the city.

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