Sammy and his lover couldn't seem to have enough of each other. They were promenading arm in arm on the beach, or with arms around each other's waists, giggling and carrying on like teen-age sweethearts. In this they were by no means alone. The beach was filled with amorous though less demonstrative men, both young and old, the young often with the old, sitting close together, or back to back, or stretched out full length on the sand.

"Take my picture," the English-speaking Arab asked. "Make me look like a soldier." He whipped out his pistol and, aiming it toward Tel Aviv, assumed a fierce look.

"Hold that pose," I said. "You look like Allah's messenger."

This gave me an opening for photographing everyone on the beach -- mementos of an all-male beach party. After I had taken a dozen photographs, one of the groups introduced himself to me as a member of the Gaza City Council. We chatted for a few moments and I asked:

"How does the war look?"

"See that water?" He pointed with his narghileh. "One month from now it will be black as far as the horizon with the nude bodies of floating Jews."

"Insh'allah, Insh'allah."

Just then Moustafa emerged from a clump of bushes to the left -- from a dark-shaded nook into which I had noticed Sammy and Ismail disappear. The two did not reappear until almost an hour later, arm in arm. The mystery deepened when two more members of the party vanished in the same direction -- and didn't return. As the afternoon wore on, one by one the trucks and cars, the lovers old and young, left the beach. "Let's go look for them," Moustafa said. We all rose. I deliberately fell in with the effeminate Arab whose photograph I'd taken.

"Our Bible says that Samson used to come to Gaza for his pleasure. Are the two friends for whom we are looking at a place where one may find public women for one's pleasure?" I inquired teasingly.

The Arab wheeled around, shocked, momentarily speechless. "We are very strict in Gaza," he gasped. "If we found any such places we would burn them. If we found any such women we would hang them." Quite upset, he left my company and did not talk to me again.

We walked to the clump of bushes, which thickened as we went through them, and emerged into a narrow, dusty, street. Ahead was an angular, three-storied, gray stone house, set off by itself, which appeared to be a hotel. Moustafa was on the verge of entering when the two men we were seeking stepped out. One of them was Abdul, a Green Shirt member. His companion, also a youth in his early twenties, was from Gaza.

"We were praying," Abdul explained, smiling.