under the bench was a cat that walked away the minute i sat down – email from Adania Shibli visiting Tel Aviv…
Dear all,With a sense of shame, I send you below the details of a personal encounter I came across few days ago, which as much as it is unworthy of speaking about compared to the lives of people terminated constantly. And as the daily series of horrors, are leaving me truly speechlesss, all I can write about a marginal personal ordeal, where I was arrested in Tel Aviv for suspicions of spying for a group, probably Hezbu al-Llah.Best-adania Few days ago, on the 25th of July 2006, at 6:15 pm, a policeman stormed the room I was detained in and said: ‘You are released.’ This was after being held for 6 hours by the Israeli security forces and Israeli police at a police station in Tel Aviv, for the suspicion of ‘collecting intelligence data,’ and for whom? One of the policemen escorting me murmured while passing next to a curios group of policemen, ‘Hezbu- al-Llah.’SuspensionOn that morning I headed to Yafa/Tel Aviv on my own, as part of my research for the novel I’ve been working on for a couple of years.At 10:45 am, I got a ticket to get into ‘The Collection Houses’ museum located on
35 Eilat St
in Yafa.
Quoting from the museum’s English prospect: “In 1959, while serving as defense minister, David Ben Gurion decided to establish the IDF museum to Portray the emergence of the Jewish fighting forces and the ensuing struggle by the Jewish people for their existence in their homeland.”The museum had as many as 22 pavilions and I had to go through most of them looking for information and details on the Israeli army’s occupation and administration of the south of
Palestine, from the Nakba in 1948 through the mid 1950s. Also I need details on the various accessories used during that period, such as uniforms, bags, guns, tents, plates, vehicles, etc.The tour went well. The only unease I felt was because of the damn air conditions. The place, though empty of any living soul other than me, was packed with the air conditions, or ACs, and their monotonous din.The site brought to me another site I left yesterday evening, the southern Israeli borders. Empty of people, but packed with the din of tanks firing rockets at the Gaza Strip, Rafah and Khan Younes in particular. Then when I entered a number of the archives I visited in the surrounding settlements, I noticed that the din of ACs set inside miraculously drowned out the din of tanks and planes bombing
Gaza.Only in the 17th pavilion- ‘The Rifles and Machine-guns’, I came across three other visitors. They did not spend much time in the room as I did, trying to select, then draw some rifles and submachine guns from the endless ones exhibited in the room, which my characters would carry.Upon leaving the 19th pavilion I saw a security guard walking around the area. Then I realized that he was in fact walking towards me. After saying hello he asked what was that I was holding in my hand. I answered: “My wallet and my notebook”. That was all I had with me, as I had to leave my bags at the entrance. He asked whether I was writing down notes on what I saw in the museum in that notebook and I said yes. He asked why and I told him, then he requested to see these notes. I showed him. There were various drawings of clothes, hats, tents, guns, cars, bags, plates and so on, with notes in Arabic and English. He then asked me for my ID. I only had my driving license and I handed it to him. He left with it and I continued my tour to the 20th pavilion, ‘The Armoured Vehicles’, where another security guard suddenly appeared and kept me company. Few minutes later, a second guard came and joined us. I asked them what was going and one of them answered that they phoned the ministry of defense and someone is on his way to the museum and they will explain me everything. The guards then asked me to sit down on a nearby bench, under an olive tree. Under the bench was a cat that walked away the minute I sat down.At 1:13 pm, some 40 minutes since the whole episode had started, a white car pulled in and two guys stepped out from it. One was tall and thin and bald, and the other short and fat and had lots of hair. They first talked to the security guards then went to the entrance room, without turning to me. A couple of minutes later one of the museum’s guards who received those two guys came and whispered in the ears of the guard standing near me. I then realized what was going on. I tried to enter the room, but that guard blocked my way. I said they were searching my bags without my presence or permission. The guard said no one was searching my bags and that I should not worry. Well, it felt unpleasant not to believe him, but I rushed to a corner where I could see the inside of the entrance room and I saw that one of my bags was not where I had left it. I tried to get into that room, while saying in a high pitch ‘You are searching my bag without my permission. You are not allowed to do so.’ Another guard came and blocked my way, but I just ran underneath his stretched arms. The third to block my way was the tall, bald, thin security officer who came out and told me no one was searching my bag. I said: ‘You are a liar,’ as I was very close to the door and could see the short, fat, hairy guy searching my handbag in the corner. They finally let me in. I asked why they were doing that hiding in the corner like thieves. They could have asked me and I’d open it for them. They ignored me and the short guy simply kept searching my bag. I then pulled away from his hands a pile of papers written in Arabic and in English that belong to the research I’m working on as a PhD student at theUniversity of
East London. The research deals with the role of the media in the ‘War On Terror.’I said what he was doing was illegal. He replied he was the law. The taller guy then interfered and asked the short guy to stop. They exchanged few words outside, then the short guy came inside and said he wanted to speak to me on the side, I said OK. He showed me the way to another inner room, then directed me to a kind of a wall-closet in that room, and he wanted me to get into it. I started shouting in disbelief: “What, do you intend to lock me up in a closet!” I rushed back to the entrance room and said I wouldn’t move till they call the police. They said they wouldn’t, but as they saw I was about to shout for help, the taller guy called the police. I again asked for the reasons behind keeping me there. “The museum is intended to the wider public; the stuff exhibited in it date back 40 years ago; and I was not taking photographs”, I said, “Or is it because I’m not an Israeli Jew, I’m being treated this way?”. They simply ignored all I said. The taller guy again said they wanted to ask me some questions and I said again OK. They asked where I had been in the last few days. I replied I would only answer questions that related to my visit at the museum and the notes I’d jotted down in my notebook. I also did not want to involve in this ugly episode my friend L., whom I’d spent the night with in North Tel Aviv. Once more, I asked why they were suspending me and what were my offenses, if any. They said it was they who were to pose questions and not I. So I said I would only speak in front of the police and with the presence of a lawyer.After some 20 minutes the police showed up, but no one, including the police, allowed me to contact a lawyer. The police, upon arriving, exchanged few words with the security guys, then turned to me. ‘Why am I suspended? I asked the police. Their answer was similar to that of the security – ‘We ask the questions here not you.’ They said they want to search my bags. I then complained that the security guards had searched my bags without my presence or permission, but the police ignored my complaint and a policewoman started searching my bags. In the bigger bag I had my clothes, most of which were in black. Then she came across my green summer nightgown, a present from a friend. The policewoman pulled this nightgown out of the bag in astonishment. Its color was olive-green, similar to that of military uniforms. In fact, I never thought much about the color of this nightgown, but suddenly it appeared like another evidence of a crime I would be accused of committing in less than an hour. The policewoman continued searching. Then she got to something wrapped in a tissue. That was a green cylindrical object, a shell of a 30mm fired bullet. Everybody in the room froze, including me. The policewoman asked what was that, I said ‘The remains of a fired bullet I found in the South. They can be found everywhere there.’ ‘Why is it with you?’ I answered “A souvenir that I wanted to turn into a vase. A better function than that of killing people. Plus, there is no legal prohibition on keeping these once they were shot.”I picked up this bullet yesterday, very close to Khan Younes, where the sight of the city stretched before me, in some parts scratched by barbed wires and in others concealed by a Wall. The tanks were orchestrating the sounds of the desert there, with strangling heavy bombardments. I stopped the car to listen to this sound in full volume, without the din of my car’s engine. Then suddenly, in one of the dunes, I saw five deers jumping or maybe this how they would run usually. They, upon seeing me, froze in their places. I got out of the car and kneeled to their eye-level, and tried to tell them with my eyes that I was not a killer. “I’m not a hunter.” They kept staring at me.Suddenly the curious eyes turned around and walked away slowly, toward Khan Younes. Then when I tried to stand, I saw that shell of a 30 mm bullet lying on the sand. I picked it up and went back to my car. “This ex-bullet will from now on gain a new life, a life of a vase. A reminder of a moment of life in a death zone.”The policewoman kept searching my bags and found two maps that helped me through my tour in the south. She in turn, announced: ‘And there are some maps.’ The way she said it felt like a sentence of 15 years in prison. The police called another police car that arrived in few minutes and I was led to the police station. In the way out from the museum, I saw guards spread out in the area guarding the parking of the museum.In the police station, tens of policemen poured to the various rooms I was led to, and I could no longer guess who was there to interrogate me, or came out of sheer curiosity; to have a glimpse of the ‘ Hezbu- al-Llah spy,’ the colloquial for ‘a suspect of collecting intelligence data’: a suspicion I was informed of by two policewomen in the ladies’ toilets. After that I was asked to take off all my clothes, twice in fact, to check if I was carrying any concealed weapons.Time was passing unhurriedly. Four hours and still no one informed me of the offense I had committed. Policemen guarding me finished their shifts and fresh ones replaced them, and I’m still there. The chief interrogator said he did not want to interrogate me until the intelligence services, the Shabak, have gone through all the notes I had with me, not only those I wrote in the museum. He said there were 32 pages he needed to fax to the Shabak before he started the interrogation. And I sensed he was annoyed with the fact that he had to fax 32 pages. I had asked this same interrogator earlier, again, for the reasons behind holding me there. All that he said was: “Because you are eccentric.” “How?” He replied: “Well, I do not know of any Arab women walking around like this on their own, carrying a laptop and interested in guns. And are you doing something about the media and the ‘War On Terror’?”So I was kept because I did not fit the stereotypes held by Israelis on how an Arab woman should be.At 6:15 a policeman gushed to the last room I was led to, saying: “You are released” and disappeared. I was released. I started to collect my things, accompanied by a policewoman, who at the explained to me how to get out and she remained in her office. But I was completely disoriented and found my way out with some difficulty, and suddenly I could not find any one in the police station to help me get to the exit, let alone to apologize. The whole station suddenly seemed so empty.As I reached the exit, a wave of the city’s heat wrapped me up. It seems I forgot all about the heat, staying for so many hours under the influence of ACs. And to imagine that this ‘stay’ could have lasted even for much longer, as it is the case with a number of others, still held by the Israeli police and security forces without being indicted.
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