Before we left in the morning, we were on the phone with Zuzu (which means Joseph). He and a friend were going to pick us up in Jericho after our travel across The Bridge and take us to his home in Ramallah. He had gone to Bethlehem to get something done to his papers. The Israelis detained him. He was probably going to have to stay overnight and Suad, his wife was on her way down from Ramallah to try to help him. But he probably would not be able to pick us up to say the least. If we get through, we will go the long way…mini-bus to Jerusalem….then mini-bus to Al Qalandia checkpoint. Then a cab to The Office, where Zuzu and his assistant, Mohammed work. The taxi industry in Israel and Palestine will make a lot of money from us on this trip.
There is a crowd of people pushed up against a barricaded area. Most of them are Palestinians. As foreigners, they take our passports right away. The Arab men who have orange vests on our putting luggage onto carts to go through inspection. At first it is strange to me that these men are working for the Israeli government, but then I realize its work….and its hard for Palestinian men to find work anywhere these days.
A young woman is standing high on some sort of kiosk behind the barricade. The passports are carried over to her and she begins to scrutinize them while chatting with her friend. She too is very young. 19 or 20 years old, and this is a part of her required service. Most of those doing their service at the Allenby Bridge are women. At the checkpoints, there are no young women, only young men….with semi-automatic weapons.
There is alteration between giggling hysterics with her friend and deadpan seriousness when she calls our names to match them with our faces. She gets to Sama’s and whispers something to the young woman standing next to her. Sama is one of my dearest friends from grad. school. She is now Assistant Professor of Fine Art at the University of Arizona. She has an American Passport. However, her passport says she was born in Iraq. (her mother is Palestinian and her father is Iraqi). When I was far away from my own family in Denver, her mother, Muha, would invite me over to her house for many holidays such as Thanksgiving and Easter. She designs and makes the most beautiful clothes and delicious dolmas. Dr. Alshaibi, like his daughter, is also a professor and took care of us in Amman both going in and out. Sama has made the journey in and out of Israel a few times, and I am familiar with her stories of getting pulled out of line with varying degrees of harassment. I feel this sisterly need to protect her, which is so silly of me and probably irritating to her. I am naive to think I can protect her, and am sure she doesn’t need me to protect her. She has prepared us for all of the things that might happen to her in trying to get over The Bridge. We even had to make a Plan B for if she was denied entry. For some weird reason I don’t want to let her out of my eyesight. Ok…I probably can’t do anything for her, but there’s this big part of me that wants to see what is and what will happen. Maybe I am an American addicted to spectacle. Or maybe I just really want to see and attempt to understand.
We work hard to negotiate keeping our bags with our equipment on us. Sama hands me her bulky, complex bag with the 35mm and new 3-chip video camera. “It will be easier if you carry this in, because they’re going to question me and want to search it.” Of course it will be easier for me to carry it. I am a tall, fair American with a fresh passport with only a Jordan stamp. My parents are also educators, cook great holiday meals, and always host my friends with the same generosity. My father was born in Tennessee and my mother was born in Kansas.
When our names are read and passports handed back, we move to the left, bypassing the crowd of people still trying to get their bags taken. I am hot on Sama’s heels. She goes through the initial passport check first and is immediately pulled aside by another young woman with a walkie talkie. She is IDF. Sama is questioned about what we’re doing there and why would we go through Amman instead of Tel Aviv. We’ve rehearsed this speech, but I am glad that only one of us has to give it. We use the summer war in Lebanon to our favor instead of Rozalinda having problems with her visa. Sama says the IDF agent was really nice to her.
I’m pulled to the side having the camera bag searched by another young women. I stand as straight and tall as I can. A new young women is fumbling through the equipment. She can’t get it all back in and blushes. She seems afraid of damaging something. She says I can put it back in if I want. I sling the heavy blue bag back on my shoulder.
I’m confused on where to go next. This whole place seems so disorganized and disorienting. The next big room is for getting the Israel visa. We’re prepared to be questioned by another young woman, but we present our passports as a group (2 white Americans and 1 white Brit really help 1 Romanian and 1 Iraqi/Palestinian/American get through). We also have the letters from Jerusalem. We are through and stamped.
But there is one more final passport check. These lines are looooong. To the right is a mass of people who have been pulled to have their bags searched. The metal bars force us to go in single file. Wendy is up front and I am in the back. The young woman up front seems irritated.
I’ve taken great interest in watching these young women move around. They have so much power over everyone trying to get through. But they’re just teenagers. While waiting in the last line, I notice how the girls have made their uniforms trendy, with tight low-waisted pants and big belts. One walks around and talks on her walkie-talkie while listening to her ipod with one headphone in and one headphone hanging out. My photography students do this in class sometimes. It always irritates me. Another girl chats on her cell-phone while managing the chaotic mass of people in the back right. Another girl keeps walking by one of the few men working here. She giggles and flips her hair, he flirts back. Then he turns around and yells at someone in the crowd….then turns back around and keeps flirting with her. This is some weird kind of Twilight Zone stuck between the OC and One Tree Hill and any movie about persecution or people trying to flee their country, except these people are trying to get back into theirs. I know its such a strong (and maybe wrong) comparison…to think of persecuted people in places such as Rwanda, South Africa, or even during the Holocaust….but I can’t help it. There’s these lines and lines of desperate, marked people crying…..and then this flood of teenage hormones controlling it all. I’m getting overwhelmed and wide-eyed, standing in this line, surrounded by tense frustration and giggling flirtation.
We present our passports one-by-one. The young, exasperated, sighing woman looks through them and lets us go. She looks at Sama’s and with a big display of rude sarcasm says, “sorry, you must get searched.” So the 4 of us are technically in Israel now, and Sama is in the back with the crazed crowd still in No-Man’s Land. Neither in Israel, Palestine, or Jordan, just still in Customs. We need to weed through the stacks and stacks of suitcases to find ours, but I still don’t want to take my eyes off of Sama. I want to see her and what happens, even though there’s nothing I can do. My presence won’t change anything or hurry it along. I’m powerless. Wendy stands by the metal railing separating geographic Israel from No-Man’s Land, us from Sama, who has disappeared into the crowd of people in the back. The rest of us try to find our things.
Suitcases are everywhere. Its a room the size of a gymnasium full of suitcases. It takes 20 minutes to find everything including our precious art portfolios. Lucky we remembered to tie the same green ribbons on all of them. I’m surprised at how spread out they are.
I go stand by Wendy. We see Sama’s head bobbing up. She looks very calm. Her name is called and she stands in front of the table waiting for her bag to be searched. She and another young woman (who’s job is to search her things) stand there for 20 more minutes, face to face. Sama is still calm and stoic, even though she is being made to wait an unneccessary amount of time with people pressing at her back. Finally the young woman begins unzipping. It is done in 3 minutes. Sama exits, and is now on the other side of the metal rail in Israel/Palestine with us.
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