With Eyes Wide Open
RAJA SHEHADEH (born Ramallah, Palestine, 1951) is the author of three highly acclaimed memoirs, Strangers in the House, When the Bulbul Stopped Singing and A Rift in Time, as well as a travel book, Palestinian Walks, which won the Orwell Prize in 2008. He is a Palestinian lawyer and writer who lives in Ramallah – his family were forced from their home in Jaffa in 1948 – and is the founder of the pioneering, non-partisan human rights organisation, Al Haq (Law in the Service of Man).
The electric kettle and coffee mugs rattled in their plastic bag as we drove up north. We hadn’t bothered to pack them well, our trip was just a short hour and forty-five minute drive. Now we worried they might break but decided not to stop. We wanted to get to the Galilee hills in time for an afternoon walk.
The route we took went through the Jordan Valley – part of the Great Rift Valley that extends from the Taurus Mountains in Turkey to Central Africa in the south. Here is one of the best places to observe how the Rift majestically meanders along the fault in the earth formed millions of years earlier by the movement of the tectonic plates deep in the ground.
The hodgepodge of stuff we were carrying did not all fit in the trunk. After placing the two pairs of walking boots and sticks, a suitcase with our bed clothes and toiletries, and our two backpacks, there was no space left. The books, towels, swimwear, packed lunch, kettle and coffee things had to go on the back seat. By the time we finished hauling in our stuff, the car was quite a sight. But we didn’t mind. It was but a short hop to the Galilee.
What a relief it was, we thought, to take a holiday that did not involve flying, with all the hassle of airport lines and searches. We looked forward to the drive down the wadi to the cultivated fields on this clear, crisp winter morning. My wife, Penny, and I had for several months been working long hours, hardly leaving our house in confined Ramallah, and we needed time, as Penny put it, to air our brains. A breezy walk along the hills of the Galilee was sure to accomplish this. If not, then surely sitting in the quiet serenity of the large stone patio overlooking Lake Tiberias at the pilgrims’ retreat would do the job. The only fault in this otherwise perfect refuge from the turbulence of life in our region was that it had no room service and did not offer the possibility of preparing coffee in your room. And Penny cannot wake up without her morning coffee. Which was why we were travelling with our coffee-making gear.
THE IMPOVERISHED PALESTINIAN farming villages we passed on the sides of the road were a sharp contrast to the highly subsidised Israeli settlements with their red-tiled roofs and spacious gardens, established since Israel occupied the West Bank on confiscated Palestinian land.
Three-quarters of an hour after we started we had already passed the first three of the four checkpoints along the way. At every stop we had to present our Israeli identification cards. The profiling Israeli officials practise at airports is not necessary here. These variously coloured and coded IDs tell everything about their holder, creating segregation amongst the Palestinian population that mirrors the fragmentation of the land by borders, checkpoints and settlements. So far, though, we were doing well and getting waved through without any question asked. And we were not unduly concerned about the last checkpoint ahead – the one separating the West Bank from Israel – because we had often passed it without incident. We were enjoying the drive, too, along a narrow two-lane road; we both dread highways where we find the zooming cars speeding on both sides of our slow-moving vehicle nerve-racking. So we were in a tranquil state of mind.
This was soon to end. We had just passed the Palestinian village of Zbeidat when we came upon an installation that felt stridently out of place in the midst of this beautiful valley. A large sliding iron gate, the width of the road and painted yellow, was flanked on both sides by high barriers of barbed wire. To one side was a prefabricated structure that I had often noticed as we passed but to which I had never paid much attention. We slowed down and stopped at the barrier, rolled down our windows, greeted the soldier and presented our identification cards like all the other travellers.
After inspecting them the soldier did not hand them back but said: ‘You go there,’ pointing to the prefab. As we pulled over to the right we heard him call out in Hebrew to the soldier standing in the sun that he is sending him ‘more Palestinians to check’. I now surveyed the scene and saw one young man carrying a machine gun, with three bullet magazines stuck in his belt, standing ready to shoot, a woman with long black hair holding a black dog by his collar, and a very young-looking man with a fleshy round face wearing a black cowboy hat who approached the first soldier and received from him our documents.
The young man now asked us to switch off the engine and leave the car, after opening all four doors, the hood and the trunk. Then he politely asked that we take out our stuff from the trunk. We unloaded two bags and placed them on the ground, then waited for the next order. The young man said: ‘You must take everything out of the car. Leave nothing inside.’
I looked at our plastic bags, boots, sticks, towels and said: ‘You can’t be serious. Why do you want us to take these out?’
‘They have to pass through the machine.’
‘What machine?’
‘The inspection machine over there,’ he said and pointed to the prefab.
‘But this is not an airport and we are not taking a flight from here. All we’re doing is driving a short distance to the Galilee. What is this about?’
‘These are my orders. You have to do what I ask you.’
‘But this is ludicrous. Your orders make no sense. When one is taking a flight I can see the logic of searching. But here, in this green valley, in the midst of these cultivated fields, it makes no sense.’
‘Do you need a trolley?’ the young man asked as if he had heard nothing of what I said.
I didn’t feel like accepting favours. I said, ‘No thanks,’ and proceeded to lift as many bags in my two arms as I could manage, slinging a backpack on each shoulder, Penny trailing behind me with the rest. We must have looked ridiculous but I didn’t care. I was getting angry. Then I stopped, dropped my heavy load and eyeing the young man with the cowboy hat said: ‘Can’t you see that your orders are ridiculous?’
He muttered: ‘I’m just obeying orders,’ as if to imply this has nothing to do with either of us.
‘Hasn’t it occurred to you how dangerous it is to obey orders without thinking about them?’ I responded. ‘Don’t you know what this can lead to? Think for yourself. For God’s sake, think.’
I heard the young man mutter: ‘You don’t want to know what I think.’ Then after a short pause and in a lower tone, he added, ‘Of you.’
But I pretended not to hear him. I suddenly felt my years, an older man concerned about – or perhaps afraid of – what the thoughtless behaviour of the younger generation, in this case one in control of my life and movements, could do.
‘Here we are in the middle of nowhere, in the Jordan Valley’s fertile cultivated fields, and you are acting as though we are going to board a plane when all we’re doing is taking a drive along this two-lane road, don’t you find all this bizarre?’
He remained silent.
I don’t often act paternal but I somehow felt responsible for this young man’s fate. He had an innocent face with big eyes and a silly hat and I could not let this pass. I kept on repeating, rather stupidly now, imploring him to think, think, just think.
‘I am here to protect my country against terrorism,’ he said to shut me up.
How could he believe this, I thought to myself. Doesn’t he realise that anyone interested in smuggling explosives can just cross through the low hills west of here where the border is open? Could he not have thought of this? But when I looked straight into his eyes, I could see he had not given any thought to what he was doing or to the strong possibility that his mission could so easily be thwarted. He was just a well-trained operative in a system far stronger than himself. So for the moment, I gave him a break and stopped bidding him to think, turning my attention to transporting my various items of luggage to the inspection machine which he was now manning.
As I stood looking at my suitcase and plastic bags, my hiking boots and the wooden stick that I found one day in the Ramallah hills, all riding down on the conveyor belt into the scanner, my anger began to dissipate. I felt that my words were being blown away by an indifferent wind that swept through the Rift Valley, all the way from the north of Syria to Lake Tiberias, in the midst of which he and I stood like specks in a gorgeous landscape that will endure beyond the short span of our lives and that of the political entities to which each belonged.
My attention was then directed to my car which now had a crucified look with all its doors open. The woman with the long black hair was directing the German shepherd where he must sniff. The dog did not seem enthusiastic but his nose was being led to the carburettor, the battery, the various tubes and plugs. When he finished one round he was taken again for a second one. Then came the turn of the guard with a pen light who opened the glove compartment and flashed his light inside it. Then he dived under the seat and inspected there. Like the dog he also repeated his round twice. I wondered whether this was what he was instructed to do or if he was just taking a personal initiative.
I was pondering the futility of it all and thinking about how the repressive system of occupation that has been in operation for over forty years was now being sub-contracted and commercially exploited. This young man with the funny hat was merely an employee of a business, a security company that needs to show its muscle to win more contracts in Israel and elsewhere in the progressively more paranoid world. Israel’s domestic security technologies are now amongst the country’s biggest exports with more than four hundred Israeli companies exporting $1.5 billion annually in domestic security goods and technologies which are touted as field proven, tested on the nearly-human Palestinians.
I did not notice the other Palestinian who had been detained until he was standing next to me, whispering in my ear. ‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘I always go through here, it is never like this.’
I said I didn’t know. Perhaps they were testing a new security system on us, one that they were preparing to offer for sale to Western countries enamoured of Israel’s expertise in security matters. As we spoke I looked at the cars of the fortunate ones – the Jewish settlers – as they whizzed through.
WITH THE NEXT SUSPECT on hand, I realised my time would soon be up. Now they had another customer to keep them busy lest their employer should appear and find them idle. The man with the cowboy hat came towards me. Before he handed me our IDs I implored him one last time to think. I said: ‘Please, for my sake, think of what you’re doing. It is too dangerous to obey orders without thinking.’
He answered: ‘Give me your mobile number. When I do, I will call and tell you.’
I said: ‘I don’t want you to call me. I only want you to think.’
I was getting ready to get into my car when he approached, handed me our IDs, and, without taking his eyes off mine, a Swiss penknife that I was not aware had been in my backpack. It was a kind gesture on his part. I know of Palestinians who have been charged with possession of a knife while passing through an Israeli checkpoint. He nodded knowingly as though to let me know that sometimes he does think about what he is doing.
I was taking my time putting my ID back in my wallet when Penny cried: ‘For God’s sake, hurry up! I want to get out of here.’ I did and we were soon on our way through a Rift Valley that was now carved up by barbed wire in double rounds cutting through the hills, breaking their natural continuity. Tall cement blocks like gravestones were placed side by side, emblematic, I felt, that this has become a cemetery of a land.
As we drove away, I remembered a sculpture at the Kishon Gallery in Tel Aviv – a life-size, soft plastic replica of Ariel Sharon, with his eyes wide open and a stomach that moved up and down at regular intervals. It was the myopic Sharon as Prime Minister of Israel who was responsible for erecting over five hundred checkpoints throughout the West Bank and who began the construction of the abominable wall. For the past five years he has been lying in bed comatose after a massive stroke. The curator of the exhibition described the sculpture as an allegory of Israeli society that, like my young man, has wide open eyes that cannot always see.
