Gaza City (CNN) -- Two Palestinian teenagers stroll amid the mounds of rubble left by last year's Israeli military offensive, listening to the tinny beat of a Turkish pop song playing on a cell phone. Nadir Mohammed Saleh and Ahmed Fayiz Abed Rabo are cousins and next-door neighbors. With their gelled hair, buttoned-down shirts and boom belts jeans, they look much like any other 16-year-old Palestinian boy. But looks, Ahmed says, can be deceiving.
"Only my appearance, my haircut and clothing, makes me look like a boy," Ahmed says, gesturing with his hands across his face. "Inside, I am like a female. I am a girl."
Until last summer, both Nadir and Ahmed were -- for all intents and purposes -- girls. They wore female headscarves, attended girls' school and even answered to the female first names Navin and Ola. |