scrapbooking II
More travel journal transcription:
We got to Saida in southern Lebanon, and half-heartedly wandered the souq. But after three weeks, we’ve had enough souqs, and since we have nothing to buy, we walk back to the center of town. Of course, when shopping fails, there’s always brutality for passing the time: we decide to try to make our way all the way south to Al Khiam, the former occupied prison on the Israeli border. So we find the gendarmerie and ask where to get the permissions we’ve read we’ll need in order to visit the southern border lands. There are eight policemen in the one cool, cement room, and our inquiry spurs all eight to action. We stand in the doorway, trying to look intelligent, while they discuss us as if we’re not there. It is decided that two officers will escort us to where we need to go. We are swept into an even larger than normal SUV and taken to the local army station outside of town. Several suspicious glances and two telephone calls later, the guard at the gate admits us and directs us to the powers that be—in this case, four uniformed men and one guy who just seems to be hanging out for the day. Again our passports must come out, their details transcribed, extraneous men with evidently no connection to our request must be invited to take tea and have their turn to inspect us. At last, we’re given a slip of paper with the army station’s telephone number on it; that is all—no stamp, no ticket, no note. We thank them and head back out to the street, where we hail a cab (yet another vintage Mercedes) and haggle with a young, slick- and sandy-haired taxi driver. But he and Ta don’t understand each other, and so he has us get in and drive with him back to town, where he pulls up outside a small café with a front garden full of old men smoking. For the third time that afternoon, we’re beset by men, this time pressing their faces into the car’s windows, brokering our request. One kind-eyed older man asks us in English what we want, and Ta answers in Arabic. He then “translates” for our driver, adding at the end (Ta would later tell me) “you realize she’s speaking Arabic, don’t you?” This broken conversation continues, punctuated by the commentating and correcting of five other men who’ve gathered around the car. We get him down from $70 to $45, and he lets his “brother” (“and take me, I’m your sister!” shouted one of the old men) come along for the ride. We’re off. Our driver drives like an angry man, or a young man trying to impress two foreign girls with his fearlessness of hairpin turns. Or both. We make it alive to the checkpoint, where we’re asked to step out of the car. My stomach lurches: there is no other house for miles, everyone has a weapon but us, and even our driver looks a little bit daunted. Without taking his eyes off of us, the head officer calls the number we’ve handed him. After a few words, he hangs up, and looks at us carefully in silence. He waves us on, on into what proves to be the most beautiful country I’d seen in Lebanon: steep mountains crisscrossed with goat tracks and sloping green fields. We are in the heart of Hezb’allah territory, against the recommendations of our State Department, and the only record of where we’ve gone are the photocopies of our passports beside the pot of tea at the army station. We pass the ruins of Beaufort Castle, another Crusader stronghold, crouched at the top of a sort of butte with just one razor-edge line of approach along a ridge, run like a starving spine from the valley floor. We shoot through another series of switchbacks, slow down through a small town, and arrive at Al Khiam. A stout man trundles out to greet us and takes us perfunctorily through the site: three complexes of buildings, whitewashed and low. First, without looking at us, he walks us past solitary confinement chambers, utterly bare; 8’x 8’ group cells for twelve men with a single, seatless toilet. Then the torture sites: here, a wind-arm telephone with two looped wires—for your fingers, he gestures, then looks hard at us, to make sure we’ve understood. Here, in this courtyard, a solitary wooden post for hanging prisoners, sometimes upside down, for days or, for two local boys, until death. There, in that corner, men made to kneel until their knees shredded, and then salt put in the wounds—yes, do we understand? We passed through these blank spaces quickly, trying to indicate that we understood, or wanted to—though there was nothing to see, unless you count this tracelessness that dead men leave. Our tour was over in ten minutes, and so, helplessly, we took pictures of the murals someone had painted on an exterior wall after the Israelis abandoned the prison. Ta bought a Hezb’allah keychain, and I bought a baseball hat. Our guide gave us a pamphlet with the names of the men who had been imprisoned there, and underlined his own name on the list. Our taxi driver and his brother met us outside and showed us where, on the hills across from us, Israeli soldiers looked at us, looking at them, from their observation post. Our driver was happy now, jaunty. He gave my camera to his “brother” and made him take a picture of the three of us against the backdrop of mountains and the soldiers watching our backs. Our driver in a good mood was more dangerous than before on the turns, but we made it back to Saida, and then Beirut, without a mark on us.
We got to Saida in southern Lebanon, and half-heartedly wandered the souq. But after three weeks, we’ve had enough souqs, and since we have nothing to buy, we walk back to the center of town. Of course, when shopping fails, there’s always brutality for passing the time: we decide to try to make our way all the way south to Al Khiam, the former occupied prison on the Israeli border. So we find the gendarmerie and ask where to get the permissions we’ve read we’ll need in order to visit the southern border lands. There are eight policemen in the one cool, cement room, and our inquiry spurs all eight to action. We stand in the doorway, trying to look intelligent, while they discuss us as if we’re not there. It is decided that two officers will escort us to where we need to go. We are swept into an even larger than normal SUV and taken to the local army station outside of town. Several suspicious glances and two telephone calls later, the guard at the gate admits us and directs us to the powers that be—in this case, four uniformed men and one guy who just seems to be hanging out for the day. Again our passports must come out, their details transcribed, extraneous men with evidently no connection to our request must be invited to take tea and have their turn to inspect us. At last, we’re given a slip of paper with the army station’s telephone number on it; that is all—no stamp, no ticket, no note. We thank them and head back out to the street, where we hail a cab (yet another vintage Mercedes) and haggle with a young, slick- and sandy-haired taxi driver. But he and Ta don’t understand each other, and so he has us get in and drive with him back to town, where he pulls up outside a small café with a front garden full of old men smoking. For the third time that afternoon, we’re beset by men, this time pressing their faces into the car’s windows, brokering our request. One kind-eyed older man asks us in English what we want, and Ta answers in Arabic. He then “translates” for our driver, adding at the end (Ta would later tell me) “you realize she’s speaking Arabic, don’t you?” This broken conversation continues, punctuated by the commentating and correcting of five other men who’ve gathered around the car. We get him down from $70 to $45, and he lets his “brother” (“and take me, I’m your sister!” shouted one of the old men) come along for the ride. We’re off. Our driver drives like an angry man, or a young man trying to impress two foreign girls with his fearlessness of hairpin turns. Or both. We make it alive to the checkpoint, where we’re asked to step out of the car. My stomach lurches: there is no other house for miles, everyone has a weapon but us, and even our driver looks a little bit daunted. Without taking his eyes off of us, the head officer calls the number we’ve handed him. After a few words, he hangs up, and looks at us carefully in silence. He waves us on, on into what proves to be the most beautiful country I’d seen in Lebanon: steep mountains crisscrossed with goat tracks and sloping green fields. We are in the heart of Hezb’allah territory, against the recommendations of our State Department, and the only record of where we’ve gone are the photocopies of our passports beside the pot of tea at the army station. We pass the ruins of Beaufort Castle, another Crusader stronghold, crouched at the top of a sort of butte with just one razor-edge line of approach along a ridge, run like a starving spine from the valley floor. We shoot through another series of switchbacks, slow down through a small town, and arrive at Al Khiam. A stout man trundles out to greet us and takes us perfunctorily through the site: three complexes of buildings, whitewashed and low. First, without looking at us, he walks us past solitary confinement chambers, utterly bare; 8’x 8’ group cells for twelve men with a single, seatless toilet. Then the torture sites: here, a wind-arm telephone with two looped wires—for your fingers, he gestures, then looks hard at us, to make sure we’ve understood. Here, in this courtyard, a solitary wooden post for hanging prisoners, sometimes upside down, for days or, for two local boys, until death. There, in that corner, men made to kneel until their knees shredded, and then salt put in the wounds—yes, do we understand? We passed through these blank spaces quickly, trying to indicate that we understood, or wanted to—though there was nothing to see, unless you count this tracelessness that dead men leave. Our tour was over in ten minutes, and so, helplessly, we took pictures of the murals someone had painted on an exterior wall after the Israelis abandoned the prison. Ta bought a Hezb’allah keychain, and I bought a baseball hat. Our guide gave us a pamphlet with the names of the men who had been imprisoned there, and underlined his own name on the list. Our taxi driver and his brother met us outside and showed us where, on the hills across from us, Israeli soldiers looked at us, looking at them, from their observation post. Our driver was happy now, jaunty. He gave my camera to his “brother” and made him take a picture of the three of us against the backdrop of mountains and the soldiers watching our backs. Our driver in a good mood was more dangerous than before on the turns, but we made it back to Saida, and then Beirut, without a mark on us.
posted by cele at 11:18 PM
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