Diary of a Crossing
‘Diary of a Crossing’ is a two part narrative, written by a Palestinian artist and a curator under pseudonyms. Commissioned as part of the publishing strand ‘Towards Collective Study in Times of Emergency’ it recounts the story, and reflections of a 31-hour trip from Amsterdam to Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. The diary includes two voices and a series of images, presented in two layers superimposed over eachother. Please scroll down the page to see notes and photographs that relate to highlighted words.
By Baqiya and Yu’ad
5am: Although our flight is at 1pm, we are up at 5am. I didn't sleep well. We ordered the Uber for 10am and we are at the airport early. We have a bag full of food for the trip ahead.
At passport control the border police speak to us in Dutch and are surprised that we don't speak it. They ask us if we're going on holiday to Amman, we nod and smile and give each other a look.
We are grumpy, we snap at each other. We spend the first half hour on the plane deleting photos on our phones, changing our profile names and deleting stories on Instagram. At some point the pilot explains why the flight takes five hours instead of four – ‘because of the "situation in Israel"’ he says.
We arrive in Amman. I open my phone; my sister writes that she's on her way to take my mother to hospital in Jerusalem. The taxi driver who took us from Amman airport to the hotel is angry, he talks about Gaza all the way. He says ‘they've humiliated us, the world is conspiring against us, we're all broken’. At the hotel we are upgraded when we mention that we're leaving early for Palestine in the morning. A gesture of solidarity! We thank them. (Solidarity in the age of neoliberalism always takes the form of money, discounts, funding and donations. This time, money can't reach Gaza, and even if it did, there's hardly anything it could buy.) I venture out to get some sandwiches for dinner, the streets are empty, the air so fresh, I've missed it.
7am: I've slept very badly for the second night in a row. Breakfast is better than we thought. We eat quickly and rush to the taxi waiting outside the entrance. We're nervous. The streets are empty and we arrive in almost 50 minutes. I needed more time to prepare mentally – suddenly we're there, flies everywhere, people rushing with their bags, trying to be first in line. I'm directed to the women's search room. The guards are all having breakfast, I'm patted down randomly, we fill in the ‘white card’ with our details and queue again. I give the officer my travel document and my green card. He asks for my Israeli re-entry permit, looks at it, hands it back and tells me to go to the other window to get my passport. We go to the next queue for the bus. Turnstiles! These are new, they must be learning from each other! One of our bags is missing. It's still in their office for an extra check. A young man in front of us is pleading with the officers to let go of his dozen cigarettes, saying, ‘Come on, just let it go, can't you see how tough the situation is?’ They do indeed let go after reprimanding him. We get our bags and get on the bus. The bus stops at the exit gate of the Jordanian side and an officer gets in. He asks for our passports and white cards, he takes part of our white cards and checks everyone's passports.
We reach the Israeli side.
We argue about whether I should go in without my bags. We hate being separated, but we have different types of ID, so it's better that they don't see us together.
We put the bag stickers on all our documents. We go in, I have to pee, I mumble that I'm going to the toilet, Y takes the bags first, I hold them, take the bags from the machines, surprisingly they are not checked. A young 17-year-old Israeli soldier points to the document control window. Y whispers to me to go to the window far away, ‘but why is this one empty’ I whisper back. We end up at the windows next to each other. The officer looks at me and smiles. I'm breathing fast, nervous, he can see it, he takes his time. He asks me if I was alone, Y hears him, he looks at me. I reply ‘no, I'm with him’, ‘but he has a West Bank identity card’. Yes, I reply. ‘Where do you live?’ ‘In Jerusalem.’ ‘Where does he live?’ ‘In Ramallah.’ ‘Do you live separately?’ ‘We meet once a week in Ramallah.’ Yu’ad is whispering right next to me: ‘I told you to go to a window far away!’ I feel stupid. Our marriage is registered in Jerusalem anyway, they know. But not the details. Yu’ad says there's more to talk about when we're next to each other. Stupid, I feel stupid.
We go through the turnstiles into an area with more turnstiles, a guard scans the stickers, ‘your bags have passed security’, out of the turnstiles, we pick up our bags, we queue for another turnstile, a guard checks that our bags match our stickers, out of the turnstiles. We get on the bus to Jericho. The PA officers check our documents, they fill in the information on paper, I think they throw it in the rubbish afterwards, they give us pink slips, the next guard takes the empty slips. While all the guards stage a performance of power, the Palestinian Authority officers are the most blatant. They don't decide who enters, they can't ban or allow anyone in or out, we all know – our own public secret – that only the Israelis have the power to do that.
We hurry to find a van to take us to Ramallah. We ask the driver about the checkpoint. He says we should go on the Moa’arrajat road. The checkpoint shouldn’t be too bad. We are stuck there for an hour. I start writing this text on my phone while waiting. I have this urge to explain to friends abroad the absurdity of the situation, but also to somehow gain time (and labor) from the time they steal from us. The driver tells us how bad the roads are and that they’ve changed today. It’s taking much longer. The DCO checkpoint is closed; we have to pass through several villages instead. Not great news. I’m getting nauseous. But it is also nice to see the Palestinian countryside. I have a feeling that we won’t be traveling outside of Ramallah during this trip.
11:52: another checkpoint at Yabrud village.
12:25: still stuck at the checkpoint, a white butterfly passes by. We can’t manage to see the end of the traffic.
12:38: We can finally see the checkpoint. Yu’ad takes a photo of the soldiers, the driver tells him not to: they’ll see you, better not take a picture of them. Yu’ad returns his phone to his pocket. The soldiers are checking one blue car vehemently, its passengers have been made to squat on the ground while the soldiers points at them with their guns. We’re closer, one of the men can’t be older than 15, a child. I stop typing and put my phone in my pocket. The December sun warms my face.
1:05: We cross. We see a soldier tightening plastic handcuffs on one of the young men as we finally pass. While we’re passing through the narrow streets of Ein Yabrud village Y is discussing the rest of the route with the driver, and whether there’s going to be another checkpoint. They talk about how tough this road was back in 2002 when it first opened. It was during the second Intifada, checkpoints were everywhere and Palestinians couldn’t travel on the main roads. This road was originally a side road for donkeys to go up hill, taxi drivers began using it to move between villages and later it became a kind of official road with asphalt, it is still hard, very steep.
2:00: We arrive home. It's been 31 hours since we woke up in Amsterdam.
The views and opinions published here mirror the principles of academic freedom and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the L'Internationale confederation and its members.
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