Le mirage de Rafah

No one quite knew what to expect. There was no real plan, only intent, gut instinct, and a stubborn belief that something had to be done. The heart led. The reckoning would come later.

It all began with a simple DM. A marcher wrote to tell me she was heading to Egypt. The goal: to join a humanitarian march meant to reach and camp at the Rafah border, that frontier city between Egypt and Gaza, a pressure point where food, soldiers, wounded bodies, and despair piles up, depending on which side of the line you stand.

Global March to Gaza: a sprawling, decentralized effort. No leader. No headquarters. Likely the largest international civilian mobilization to converge on a single point since the slaughter began.

Four thousand people, perhaps more, from nearly sixty countries. No reliable figures, only a moving mass, carried by a volatile blend of faith, anger, and a recklessness willingly chosen.

What if I went?

The plan called for fifteen Canadians. Seven hundred applied. The wave rose too quickly, too intensely. It had to be broken, cut down to roughly a hundred. Names were sorted. Risks weighed. Causes draw crowds. Here, momentum is not enough. You have to know what you’re stepping into; or rather, what you’re sinking into. In Egypt, protest is a wager for your freedom.

A few phone calls later, I’m in.

Further across the chessboard, the Freedom Flotilla is intercepted by the Israeli navy. Twelve activists, including Greta Thunberg and Rima Hassan. A blade plunged into diplomatic waters. Farther south, the Al-Soumoud convoy pushes through the Libyan desert. Trucks sun-scorched. Flags snapping. Slogans drumming against steel. Another front. Another symbol.

And the marchers, amid all this? Neither heroes nor martyrs. An army without uniforms, made up of teachers, nurses, students, retirees. No big cameras. No famous faces. Just ordinary people stepping into a deeply unstable undertaking, united by one conviction: when the world learns to live with genocide, it becomes its accomplice.

-

The plan itself fits on a Post-it. June 12, between 3 and 5 p.m.: arrival in Cairo. At dawn on the 13th, a bus to El-Arish. Five hundred kilometres of asphalt and sand toward the country’s northeastern edge. Then a 50-kilometre, two-day march to Rafah. No staging. No forced breach. Just presence. Bodies moving toward a wall. An image. A symbol. Everyone knows the crossing is shut.

Since the October 7, 2023 attack, Rafah has served as a pressure valve. It opens, it closes, it locks down in rhythm with airstrikes and negotiations. On May 7, 2024, Israel takes control of the Gaza side. An iron curtain. In January 2025, a fleeting truce hints at a reopening. Then, on March 2: shut again. Since then, Rafah has been little more than a promise without a deadline.

From Montreal, everything takes shape inside a digital mess. Zoom. Signal. Telegram. A jungle of encrypted apps, vanishing messages, screenshots that evaporate as soon as they’re shared. Then logistics: scorpions, tents, sunscreen, SIM cards.

Then come the field instructions: no provocation. No slogans against the Egyptian state. No keffiyehs at the airport. We’re not here to play revolutionaries. This isn’t a protest but a march. Slow, disciplined, ostensibly apolitical. Humanitarian in appearance. Geopolitical at its core.

And inevitably, the conversations drift toward the real risks: arrests, deportations, areas off-limits even to Egyptians themselves.

Picture it: a horde of foreigners with vaguely activist looks, in a country where suspicion travels faster than accusation.

The Egyptian state remains silent. No green light, no explicit ban. Only a taut muteness. Heavy with suspended threat. Despite overtures to embassies, negotiations stall. On the surface, a few symbolic gestures offer crumbs of moral support. So we do what the others do: we enter as tourists.

For me: a simple transit visa, a laptop wiped of anything sensitive, a camera and that’s it. No press card. No official accreditation. Just my name on a list. In a country where practicing journalism means playing with fire, and where matches are in high supply. Egypt ranks 170th out of 180 in the World Press Freedom Index.

My editors arrange insurance on my behalf: kidnapping, death, prison. Tiny boxes checked somewhere in a PDF.

At a press conference, spokespersons roll out the vocabulary of courage, resistance, solidarity. Powerful words, carefully chosen, clearly spoken. But in the room, we’re mostly talking among the already convinced. We wrap certainty around something that, on the ground, barely holds together.

Because the convoy has nothing. No authorization. No guarantees. Just bodies.

Even so, the clock keeps ticking. Departure draws near.

-

The day before, the instructions start to fray. We were supposed to meet at Cairo airport. Instead, word comes from Montreal: don’t recognize one another. No signs. No contact. Disappear into the flow from check-in onward.

Three hotels were initially selected. Too exposed. Too many suspicious reservations. We scatter. On Signal, alerts stack up. Some stopped at layovers, others on arrival. Nearly a hundred members of the French delegation are turned back before even setting foot in the country.

Phone wiped? A useless precaution. Border agents restore the apps, unearthing every deleted scrap. Passports vanish. Interrogations begin. Detentions follow. From the outset, the script is no longer ours.

Despite everything, I make it through. Almost effortlessly. My sleeping bag draws no attention. It becomes clear why: it’s not the objects they’re screening for, but the names. Arabic-sounding names are hit first.

-

By instinct, or perhaps innocence, I book a room at Villa Layla. A small island of calm in a city that never closes its eyes. 

The hostel is tucked near the Saad Zaghloul metro station, named after the Egyptian prime minister exiled by the British for daring to dream of independence. A century later, the name remains. The décor has evolved. There’s a pool. I didn’t pack a swimsuit.

The hostel fills with an unlikely pairing: half clandestine marchers, half Chinese tourists dressed in Balenciaga. Two worlds crossing paths without contact, skimming past one another without comprehension. Each arrival stirs a quiet inspection. We read faces, weigh intentions, until the question everyone is holding finally surfaces:

“What are you doing here?”

“Tourism.”

“The real kind?”

“No.”

Around Tahrir Square, the big hotels are full of Swiss, Brazilians, Tunisians, all drawn by the same gravity. At certain entrances, bouquets have been replaced by riot-control trucks, with windowless police vans idling beside them.

First and likely last night in Cairo. A staggering city, never exactly confusing, just too dense to decode. Everything overlaps. Limousines brush past donkey carts. Women in niqabs cross paths with Tuareg kids wearing Versace sunglasses. Stray dogs sleep on the roofs of abandoned Beetles. Each fragment belongs to a different era, compressed into the same frame, drowned in dust, horns, and garbage.

We wait for instructions, scattered in small clusters across the city. In the meantime, a few of us regroup to eat grilled pigeon on the banks of the Nile. The riverfront has morphed into an open-air club: LED string lights, Oum Kalthoum run through autotune, street vendors, roaming photographers. The atmosphere borders on the surreal, yet somehow feels almost normal.

Until the phones start vibrating. All at once.

Israel has struck Iran.

-

The next day, everything unravels fast. The dawn convoy is shifted to the outskirts. Where? No one can say. Then the line goes dead. So we improvise. New watchword: Ismailia, a city 125 kilometres north. Officially, it’s for tourism. Scuba diving, if anyone asks.

We fragment into cells of two or three. Private taxis, worn minibuses, motorbikes, spontaneous carpools. Three checkpoints loom. No guarantees. Only rumours, racing ahead of the convoy.

The Italians are getting cold feet. Too vague, too risky. They refuse to move. The Greeks fall back as well. In the Signal groups, pressure builds until the surface gives way. Conspiracies bloom. Accusations fly. Insults follow. Some see infiltrators everywhere; others mutter about dirty money. Suspicion spreads to everyone.

Horizontality works on paper. On the ground, paranoia and conflicting information bring it down fast. Trust drains away. Delegations fracture. Some collapse before moving an inch. The Left devouring its own.

-

I order a taxi on DiDi, the Chinese Uber. Cash only. No receipt. No trail.

The driver appears. Mid-forties, worn down, suspicious. He can’t make sense of the sudden flow of tourists bound for Ismailia. Too many rides, too quickly. It reeks of trouble. We bargain well above the usual fare. He hesitates, then pulls away.

Beside me is Nidal, a retired Jordanian professor. His father fled the Nakba; he spent his life teaching in Palestinian camps. A quiet, dignified inheritance. In the back, Jordan, a Guadeloupean of Lebanese descent, quick, confident, funny without effort. An odd trio, rolling north.

The mood is easy enough. Desert rolling past, windows down, cigarettes hanging loose. It nearly feels like a road trip. Nearly. If not for the dry, brittle tension threading itself through laughter that breaks a little too fast.

Then the driver’s phone rings. He takes the call. It stretches on. Too long.

Nidal looks back at us. Says nothing. He knows.

We don’t ask questions. He gives none. Maybe he’s with us; maybe he isn’t. In Egypt, fear has a way of choking solidarity before it ever draws breath.

First checkpoint. We slow. Silence. A soldier circles the car, barely looks. We’re waved through.

Then comes the second. And there: the wall. Everything stops.

Ahead of us, traffic coagulates: pickups bowed under live goats, trailers stacked with gas canisters and bricks, taxis stuffed with pale-faced Westerners. Horns scream, engines cough, voices melt into a single roar. The air thickens.

Then it hits: passports seized en masse. Preventive arrests. Soldiers in Ralph Lauren polos advance from car to car, methodical. This isn’t random. They know exactly who they’re after: the “tourists.”

-

We step out and cluster together, disoriented. For the first time, we see one another clearly, perhaps a thousand people, marooned in the desert at the second checkpoint. How many fell at the first? How many will be taken at the third? In Ismailia, they say, anything that moves is swept away.

The place is stripped to essentials: a white mosque, broken latrines, an administrative building with barred windows, hands slipping papers and cash through the grates. A garden hose winds across the sand for ablutions.

Customs officers stand first. Behind them, police in white uniforms cradle glasses of tea, watching without a word. Around them drift men in plain clothes, jackets over neatly pressed shirts. And then the military: black plastic helmets, tired vests, slender, youthful bodies pinned down by the heat. They hardly move. They don’t seem dangerous. They take the cigarettes we hand them, smile at the activists. Most aren’t even twenty.

We wait. We sweat. Screens glow. The connection drops, returns, vanishes. The Canadian embassy is useless. Friday, a day of prayer: one more obstacle.

We share what little shade there is the way we share everything else. A form of solidarity that belongs to the movement itself. Out of mercy, or perhaps strategy, bottles of water circulate. No food. No answers.

The passports trickle back. Slowly. One delegation after another. Every name called releases a burst of cries, tears, desperate hugs. The more radical voices cut through the relief, reminding us that while we exhale, Gaza is still dying. Inevitable.

The hours drag on. Some people sing, others dance, as if to fend off the waiting. An unlikely crowd churns the dust: pink-skinned Brits, veiled Malaysians, oversized Americans, Portuguese activists in creased sarouels. Mandela’s grandson speaks to the press. The Turks pray in tight formation. Slogans flare in Arabic, French, Spanish.

My passport reappears. Desert light turns golden, the brief mercy of magic hour, rendering the scene almost beautiful. Almost. Then the command arrives, blunt and final: we must leave. Immediately. By bus.

Delegations collapse inward, forming tight circles, inventing votes. The exhausted retreat. The shaken break into arguments. Among the Canadians, there is no hesitation. No ballot. We stay.

With the refusal holding, the trap closes. The army tightens the ring. Sprinklers pulse on and off, soaking us. Highway lights flash like a signal. On, off, on, then darkness.

Night falls. And with it, the unknown.

Camping was the plan from the start. So we camp. No one wants to back down. The few kilometres torn from the desert won’t be given back. The heading remains the same.

Every blaring horn feeds the ember. An island of resistance, lit by headlights, battered by hot winds.

Darkness settles. And they come again.

The Baltagiyas.

Hired thugs, recruited in the city’s poorer quarters by a regime that prefers to outsource its dirty work. No badges. No uniforms. Just makeshift balaclavas, scarves pulled tight over faces, leather belts, riding crops, fists.

They surge in packs. In waves. Fathers of families alongside young men. Some throw bottles of water. Others charge straight into the crowd, arms raised. The police watch, impassive. Violence, delegated.

They hit without distinction. Women, elders, the young. It doesn’t matter. The aim is simple: clear the ground, load the buses. No destination. No triage. Just chaos. A whip cracks across the backs of women linked arm in arm. Jordan is encircled, forced down, kicked in the ribs. His phone is ripped away.

A young soldier brushes tears from his face, eyes fixed on the ground.

By chance, the Canadian delegation isn’t on the front line. Still, we’re trapped. The sit-in congeals into an immobile mass. No escape. Terror outruns the screams. Slogans fall away. Shock takes their place. Bodies give in.

None of this was in the briefing document.

-

When the clashes subside, a lull settles in. Not peace, but a suspended silence. The breath a riot exhales when it finally tires. Negotiations emerge from the haze, shapeless, confused, warped by mistranslation and crowd movement. Some argue openly, others scheme in whispers. The distinction between mediators, leaders, and marchers collapses. Who represents whom? Who, at this point, decides anything at all?

Manu, the head of the Canadian delegation, fights to make sure we leave together. He argues furiously. A scuffle breaks out. His T-shirt tears. I hand him my only clean shirt. An almost intimate scene in the middle of the turmoil.

Then new buses arrive. Disorder spikes again. Shouting, shoving, refusal. Some cling to the idea of staying, of going “all the way.” But that horizon no longer exists. Heroism feels hollow. Chaos takes over again. A blow grazes my temple, a slap snaps across my ear, fists strike my arm. They want the camera down.

We get on. Whatever celebration there was dies in a silent convoy. Defeated, sent back “to safety” toward Cairo. At Tahrir Square, we’re dropped off. No speeches. No farewells. Only exhausted silhouettes dissolving into the night.

At the hostel, I hear about the buses that broke away. Passengers bribed drivers to leave them on the highway, then dispersed in ad hoc taxis, in loose clusters. Some were intercepted. Others abandoned in the airport parking lot. Several still haven’t recovered their passports.

That night, no one really sleeps. Not after that.

-

By morning, the local press publishes its version of events. According to them, the convoy was attempting to “force” the Rafah crossing. A foreign provocation. Troublemakers. The narrative is sealed.

Then a message pops up in the Canadian Signal group: rooftop meeting, downtown, this afternoon. It reeks of a trap. I go regardless. I’m here to document.

A narrow elevator climbs, cables grinding, eleven floors, no emergency exit. At the top, a lukewarm 7-Up. The mood sinks. Manu takes the floor. A crooked smile, nervous delivery. We’re flagged, he says. The confiscation of our passports has put us in the system. Leaving Cairo now will require authorization from the authorities.

He promises answers after the international meeting. Then a hotel employee comes up the stairs. He asks for our passports. For security reasons.

And just like that, the scene shifts. The film starts rolling.

Shouts erupt behind me. Men in plain clothes rush in. Manu, then the other Canadian head of delegation, are taken in one clean movement, absorbed by the elevator in less than a second. Taken. Gone. Agents from Amn al-Watani, the Egyptian National Security. No uniforms. No badges. Just the cold efficiency of a regime practiced in erasure.

They disappear as quickly as they came. A panicked silence settles over the rooftop. No one moves. We meet each other’s eyes without a word. Then the reflex kicks in: delete everything. Messages. Photos. Anything that could compromise us.

The hotel staff, now impossible to trust, politely invite us back downstairs. In the lobby, a dozen agents are waiting. Anyone who films loses their phone.

The message needs no translation: go see the pyramids or leave the country.

I head back to the hostel, forcing my pace to stay calm. Three men smoke by the door. I turn around at once, without breaking stride. Jordan waits in a café a few blocks away, his plate untouched, ribs still sore. He says people feel followed. Some are moving hotels. Others are already leaving the country.

The March will never reach Rafah. Not even El-Arish. It’s clear now. There was never a plan. Only an idea. A romantic image of sleeping at the border, hearing the bombs, standing vigil while aid is blocked. Beautiful, but too pure for the real world.

Now, we’re left without a next move.

-

The hotel raid results in one leader deported. Manu vanishes. Literally. Listed as missing.

Behind the scenes, anger rises. Nearly every delegation begins to fracture. Fear settles in, corrodes the movement from within. Accusations fly. Some are said to have withheld critical information, others to have embellished reality, downplaying the risks. The route? An incantation. March to Rafah: a phrase repeated like a mantra until belief took hold. A self-declared prophecy we hoped to make real through sheer faith.

Many lay the blame with the organizers: for underestimating the Egyptian machine, for offering promises instead of plans, for funneling us into a trap everyone should have seen coming. Some insist they knew hotel registries were accessible to the state and that our names were logged before our planes touched down.

The embassies, already discouraging travel, now press their citizens to leave within 48 hours. Some depart. Others stay behind, suspended between inertia and principle.

Those who weren’t at the checkpoints feel the sting of FOMO. They stage symbolic gestures in front of their embassies and are taken almost instantly.

But how can one blame the movement? Its only weapon was intention. A heartbeat for Palestinian life, now indexed to global indifference.

Unable to reach the border, we were crushed by it instead.

Word spreads of hotel raids, of rooms torn through. Delegation heads fall one after another. Arrests are targeted. Foreigners are snatched off the street, without cause or explanation. An Irish journalist disappears. Anyone who broke ranks, who tried to reach Ismailia or El-Arish alone, is taken. One by one.

The drums of fear quicken as the situation deteriorates in this capital that never sees clouds. And I’m stuck here. Seven more days. Anxiety becomes a collective tide. Even in a city of twenty-three million people, we feel visible from kilometers away.

Some whisper about wearing the niqab, hoping to fade into the crowd. Others no longer step outside. Hunted in a city without edges.

An unreal capital. Vibrant with mosques, markets, ancient rhythms, calls to prayer. Everything is present, yet dulled, as if seen through tracing paper. A fine layer of mistrust coats the city, warping sounds, faces, even flavor.

Cairo stands right in front of me. I don’t dare photograph it anymore. Out of fear. Nothing else. Here, everyone has a phone. But no one takes pictures.

I hold onto an absurd gallery of kitsch tourist snapshots. Images without risk, without consequence. They’re what dress this text now.

-

Further reporting proves difficult, as Palestinian organizations operating in Cairo are distancing themselves from the movement, citing security concerns and the precariousness of their legal and political status. Marchers are now considered persona non grata.

I slip into an awkward, jagged hypervigilance. I watch my back, read faces, brace for the worst. Nights pass without sleep, in a heat no air-conditioning can dull. Each day grows heavier. There is no shelter left. No place to drop my guard.

Why this repression? The question is whispered on every balcony.

We’ll never get an official answer. So here is mine.

Egypt never wanted this march. And Israel demanded that it be smothered. The Egyptian authorities had two options: let the convoy move forward, at the risk of becoming complicit through inaction. Or crush it before it even took shape. They chose the second.

Because if we had reached Rafah, the script would have changed. The tents wouldn’t have lasted two nights, as planned. A community would have taken root there. Stubborn. Organic. Like Nuit debout. Like the American university campuses. Without hierarchy and without permission. And the images would have circulated. The world would have seen.

Then others would have come. By the thousands. From Vienna, Istanbul, Bogotá, Montreal. Activists, dreamers, hotheads ready to die for a cause they didn’t always fully understand. A sand colony. A hub of defiance.

Few states can live with that kind of uncertainty. Egypt cannot. Especially under Abdel Fattah el-Sissi. Rafah might have turned into a symbol the world could not ignore, or a chaos impossible to contain. So they strangled the idea early, before it breathed, before it spread, before the neighbor’s anger flared.

-

One of the few refuges the hostel still offers is the tacit understanding among marchers. Afghan, German, Mexican. Each arrives carrying doubts, fragments of information, gut feelings.  We cross-check, guess, try to impose meaning. It is solidarity, of a kind. And yet, whenever the dorm door opens, a single thought snaps back into place: this time, it’s for me.

There are also the lies. Minor, repeated, exhausting. Lies told to the staff, to passing travelers, to those stretched out in the courtyard who don’t know why some people here sleep badly, speak sparingly, avert their eyes. Why the laughter snaps instead of flows. Forced.

Since the beginning, the hostel has been held as a small oasis. An in-between space. But the pressure seeps in. Plainclothes police rotate through their watch. And that so-called employee, absent before, now haunts the lobby every day. He does nothing. He listens. He watches. Too attentive to be a janitor.

The movement has shifted from a pacifist march to a security-driven scenario, with initial momentum replaced by sustained defensive behavior. A spy thriller.

Some marchers fall silent. Others whisper about joining Al-Soumoud, the convoy pressing on from Libya, blind to the terrain, unsure how to enter.

And yet, through the paranoia, something endures: a solidarity that is discreet, obstinate, indestructible.

Arta, a Londoner with a friend trapped in Gaza, says they know about the march there. They’ve heard. And they’re grateful. Not for what it achieved, but for the gesture. Just for trying.

Arta wants to see her friend’s aunt, a refugee lost somewhere in Cairo. She drifts through the dorms, exchanging a few words. By nightfall, nearly six hundred dollars has been collected. A thin light in the suffocation.

And still, no news of Manu.

There is, too, a badly shouldered mea culpa. The sourness of stopping short. Of failing to illuminate the blockade, the famine, the bombs. A militant guilt, yes, but also a human one. Of having believed, too simply, that we would walk. That the multiplied peace signs of our hands could weigh on the world. I carry it as well: the guilt of not having brought this report to its end.

The Egyptian people, meanwhile, remain still. Scarred by 2011, by a revolution aborted and seized. Mubarak fell. What followed was a military coup, and a harsher regime. Since then, hope has dried up. And fear has taken over everything. A people who hoped too much. And lost too much. They seem worn down. I understand them.

The intensity bends time out of shape. It stretches and contracts, shedding coherence. Hours blur, days dissolve. I’m sitting in a café and feel my nerves give way. I ask to be repatriated five days before my scheduled return. My editors understand. They’re relieved.

I head to the airport in the dead of night. A young driver picks me up, dark sunglasses, music pounding. On the highway, he cancels the ride, slams the brakes, turns around. “Tourists, too risky,” he mutters. Then comes the price: four times the fare, in U.S. dollars.

I refuse. He yells, tells me I’m on my own. Then he pulls away, leaving me stranded. Halfway between two worlds.

A boy on a motorcycle finally pulls over. I offer him more than it’s worth. I don’t bargain. I want to leave. He nods, takes me on, drops me at the airport checkpoint, and disappears as soon as the money changes hands.

A police checkpoint guards the airport entrance. I’m searched. Bag, phone, everything. They scroll through apps, photos, mails. Then they wave me through. I walk the remaining distance, my hands shaking.

It’s only upon landing in Germany that my heart settles back into rhythm. My small nightmare ends there. In Gaza, it goes on. No one knows when it will end.

At Montreal airport, a few marchers are waiting. On their sign: my name. And Manu. He’s standing there, crooked smile intact after thirty-nine hours of detention, blindfolded, taken who knows where by the Interior Ministry.

As of now, some fifteen members of the Canadian delegation have been arrested, detained, or deported. Elsewhere, the numbers are higher and no one knows how many.

The Al-Soumoud caravan was stopped by Libyan authorities. Several people are still missing.

They ask me if I want to join the delegation next year.

After all, I still haven’t seen the pyramids.