Day 3 - A Lot
I apologize ahead of time for the poor writing. I was in a rush.
Day 2 was more plane stuff. Boring.
Day 3, however, may be the longest and most eventful day of my life. I got off my plane around 12:30 a.m. in Amman, Jordan. I made my way through customs and passport control. Turns out the back page of my passport is a little torn, which the border agent seemed very suspicious of, but he let me through. I had been messaging someone from the organization who was also supposed to be arriving in Amman around the same time. My dumbass deleted the messaging app and the airport WiFi didn’t work, so I had to pay my Lord and Savior Verizon Wireless $12 to get Internet back.
Eventually I got in touch with A, who turned out to be sitting about 20 feet away from me in the baggage claim area. We introduced ourselves, got a taxi, and headed to the hostel in Amman where she had gotten us a room at. A is a young Marxist-Leninist with an impressive list of organizing accomplishments despite her only being a few years older than me (I wish I could say more but I don’t want to compromise anyone). She knows a number of people who have been in this organization, so she’s had answers to a lot of my questions. I learned a lot from her in the short time we’ve been together. Still, I get the impression she isn’t a huge fan of me on account of my astounding lack of preparedness and experience. At least she’s nice about it.
Amman as seen from the hostel A and I stayed at.
We got to bed at 2:30 a.m. and got up at 7:30. Everything since then has been a blur (probably because I’m still going through self-inflicted caffeine withdrawal and my adenosine receptors functioning properly is really fucking me up). We got ready, got an extraordinarily overpriced Uber that we had to walk a mile to find, and headed for the King Hussein Bridge border crossing between Jordan and the West Bank. My dumbass didn’t get any Jordanian dinar at the airport, so A paid for basically everything by herself (including our hostel room). An hour or so later, we were at the Jordanian side of the border. Passport control went smoothly, but A got lost and we almost missed our bus across the bridge because I left to go looking for her. The drive across the border was slow because of bad traffic—a recurring character in this story—and for some reason we kept getting stopped by Jordanian border guards who, as far as I could tell, stopped us just to stare and let us keep going 10 minutes later. During this whole process, there was a lot of confusion from the police regarding whether I was a girl. I understand why they thought that, but I find it funny that it was somehow relevant enough for four separate border guards to ask me four separate times. One of those times, the guard responsible for patting me down directed me into the private area where women were patted down, but I was sent back by the border guard in the women’s area. The original guard reluctantly patted me down, noticeably avoiding my groin and butt area, which sucks for him because of all the illegal shit going on down there.
After about 45 minutes, we made it the 200 meters to Israel’s border control, which is notably not in Israel but in Palestine. This was the part I was most nervous about. I felt fairly confident in my story and in the inconspicuousness of my luggage and phone. However, A’s phone had been taken by border police along her trip, meaning they definitely saw our correspondence (and therefore saw my U.S. phone number) and installed malware on her phone. As unrealistic as I know it is, somehow I was worried that my phone number would get flagged in the U.S. and that would get me stopped in Israel. Fortunately I was completely wrong. Despite the scary stories of 8-hour interrogations on the Israeli side of the border, A and I were both through in about 20 minutes. They barely asked us anything. My fears of failing before I even began vanished.
A and I caught a taxi with a French couple that cost 400 shekels ($126) and went straight through the West Bank to Jerusalem. We had to stop there first to get the only SIM card in the country that functions in the West Bank. A got a new phone and kept the compromised one as a burner in case the police ask for it (but she later chucked it against a wall and threw it in a street dumpster), and we both got shawarma while we waited for directions from our travel support people. After an hour or two, we were told to get on a bus to a Palestinian city I’ll call Flat (which we both snuck on without paying) and await further directions once we got there. Flat is a large city in the West Bank, and the site of the organization’s apartment they use for training and housing.
The bus ride was long and uncomfortable. It took about two hours because of traffic. As we approached Flat, the apartheid became unmistakeable to me. On our way, we went through a checkpoint. Checkpoints are one of many ways the IOF makes life intolerable for the Palestinians. Basically, they are booths set up within West Bank with a bunch of heavily armed IOF soldiers who stop and search every single person trying to leave—but no one trying to go in. Effectively, Palestinians have to wait in horribly long lines to go anywhere and they can be denied, detained, or beaten. But anyone can go in, including settlers.
A checkpoint, as seen from a bus window.
Immediately inside the checkpoint, there were innumerable cars lined up to try to leave. I saw a child by himself digging through a pile of rubble, and he pulled out what appeared to be a water bottle. There was a palpable difference in the quality of Flat’s streets and buildings and Jerusalem’s. I saw hollowed-out buildings and more piles of unidentifiable rubble than I could count. Despite all of this, city life carried on as it would anywhere. People smiling, laughing, going to and from school, giving elderly people their seats on the bus, selling things, going for walks. It’s a little shocking. Palestinians continue to live and be free how they can.
On the way into the West Bank, we were greeted by this red sign.
A and I got off at the last stop and were greeted by B, a friend of A’s who has been here for three months. We were brought into a flat hidden in the city’s boney infrastructure. Here I was introduced to the intriguing cast of characters I would be living with and working with. I’d really like to clarify, but I’m not going to give away details about these people’s lives. There’s about 10 of us, but people are staying and leaving at different times so the number is changing. The rest of the day was spent getting to know each. We ate together, during which I didn’t say much but I got to know the others a bit. After, I learned more Arabic than I expected to learn on day 1 by walking around with C, who has been here for a few months. We went around Flat together; I was looking for a towel and he was looking for soy sauce. Twice, we stopped to talk to random people on the street for half an hour each. Everyone was exceptionally kind and helpful. When we got back, I took a shower and the power went out twice, leaving me naked in the dark in an apartment with 10 people I just met in a country I’ve never been to, but it was surprisingly pleasant.
Later we went bar hopping, but we had to split into groups because 10 non-Palestinians walking around Flat screams “activist” to anyone who would care. The first place was more of a coffee shop that served beer and wine. In addition to talking with A and B more, I also met D. D and I seem to have someone similar views even though we identify with very different political ideologies, but I found him particularly interesting because of his history working very odd jobs. We got along really well. After an hour or so, we moved on to a different bar, where all 10 of us were together (not sure why we were allowed to break the rule here). We were at this bar for 5 hours. The first hour I spent listening to a Palestinian man who works with my organization tell his story, which I’ll come back to later. The last four hours I spent listening to A, D, and E (a Marxist-Leninist who has been here for 2 months) talk about communism and the Soviet Union while getting fucked up off tequila shots and a specific beer made at a women-owned microbrewery in a Christian village in Flat. I’ve never felt so outclassed and uneducated when talking about politics. They were all on another level with their knowledge of history and politics; it was humbling and I loved it. Every now and then they would all drunkenly drill me about my beliefs as an anarchist, but we never really got anywhere because they kept talking over me. I did not mind at all, because watching them talk was much more interesting than slowing their conversation down with my remedial questions and answers. A and I played two games of chess, and eventually we went home 30 minutes past midnight.
Returning to what I mentioned before, I got the chance to listen to a Palestinian speak about his experience of the genocide. He told a few stories, and showed us horrifying videos. The one that stuck with me the most was regarding a friend of his who lived in a refugee camp with him. During an armed conflict against Palestinian resistance fighters, this man’s friend was kidnapped and used as a human shield by IOF soldiers. After he had miraculously survived, they pretended they were done with him, and they led him back to his house. They beat him and brought him to the roof of his house, where they stuffed a grenade in his mouth, pulled the pin, and threw him off the roof. No one had anything to say for awhile. When the conversation picked back up, F, another trainee I’m living with, asked how could he and his people cope with their suffering. The Palestinian said, “Despite everything we keep laughing and joking about everything.” Someone asked how it’s possible to joke about this inhumanity. He told us stories about how Palestinians take used tear gas canisters and make coffee with them. He told us how some people chase after missiles that have already been fired so they can mount them on their cars just to look cool and brag. He told us he has multiple friends who, in order to prevent phone searches at checkpoints, save so much porn on their phone that the IOF officers don’t even bother to throughly search them. He said that he once went on a trip to Jordan where he brought dozens of pairs of socks but never washed any of them, and when he came back through the border his luggage smelled so badly that they opened it and immediately shut it and let him through. I can’t explain it, but it was beautiful.
There’s a lot more I could go on about, but I’m tired and my writing is not interesting enough to warrant your attention for this long. I’m sure the rest of my days will be less eventful, so I can probably write less shittily.