Less than ten minutes go by before the same soldier calls over to me to say that he has located my mother’s ID number and address. I start to walk over to his desk, thinking that he is about to stamp an entry visa into my passport. But with a wave of his hand, he stops me in my tracks and motions for me to return to my seat. When he opens his mouth, he speaks the language of order and command: ‘Don’t move. Stay right where you are until I tell you to move. Understand?’
He tosses my passport to a co-worker sitting at the other end of the desk. The man turns it over and inspects the cover. He opens it up and leisurely flips through the pages before tossing it onto the desk as if it were nothing.
A Hebrew-language song suddenly comes over the loudspeaker. Nearby, a girl begins to sway back and forth to the rhythm. As her swaying turns into dance, the M16 slung across her back begins to swing back and forth like a pendulum. The girl disappears down a side corridor only to reappear from the other side. She walks right past me, looking down at me as she goes by. Then she goes out of the door.
New arrivals pour in all the time. They begin by presenting their documentation, then take their seats wherever they can. While this is going on, the people who were here before me begin to retrieve their documents, now with the visa stamp on them. No one hesitates. They depart for Gaza immediately.
An entire hour goes by. It is approaching 3 pm now and I have not heard my name called yet. Nor has anyone come to get me. I decide to test how very important my person is, and walk over to the soldier on whose desk my passport is sitting. ‘I’ve been waiting here for over an hour now. Will it take much longer?’
He pretends not to know who I am. He even acts as if it was not he who, just an hour ago, was inspecting my passport as if it were a dangerous contagion. He lifts his head. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Walid Ahmad Dahman.’
He takes a piece of paper from a file on his desk and hands it to me. ‘Fill out this form and sign it, Mr. Walid.’
I take it and glance at it then object, ‘But I already filled out a form like this and gave it to your colleague.’
‘This copy is for me.’
Since I do not want to make things worse, I follow his orders like a conscript. I even flash him a salute. ‘Yes, sir! Here you go — another form, all filled out for you. Complete with my signature and everything.’
‘Sit back down. Don’t come over here again unless someone calls out your name.’
I go back to my seat, but find that a large man has taken my place. He sits there flirting in Hebrew with a girl soldier who is standing next to him. The dark-skinned janitor reappears and winks at me. The man never stops moving as he cleans the place. I step back while he joins their jokey circle. The entire time, he continues to sweep the ground in front of my feet.
The boredom and weariness of the scene finally get to me. My chest tightens and I can feel the tension inside. It intensifies when a young woman suddenly appears from behind the office and says something to her colleague sitting inside. Someone turns up the volume of the music, and the girl starts to dance again, this time like she was in a disco. She is staring at me the whole time, and I try to look the other way. She gives me strange looks as she sings along with the song. Suddenly, I realize she is not singing lyrics — she is singing to me. ‘Hey! Hey you! Hey you over there! Hey there — Walid Dahman!’
I turn to look at her, ‘Yes?’
‘Stay …! Stay right …! Stay right where you are! We …! We are …! We are working on your case!’
She starts to dance again. I decide to get away from her and walk across the room, where I begin to pace back and forth. When I get bored with that, I stand in the middle of the room. As soon as the song stops, another one starts — yet the girl never takes a break from her dancing. I turn to look as far away from her as I can and my eyes catch sight of a small family sitting in a corner at the other end of the building. I see a man in his thirties, shaking an empty plastic water bottle. Next to him, a woman who is a bit younger, a girl maybe five years old, and a boy who is even younger. As they wait, they entertain each other by talking. Whatever they are talking about, it is clearly very Palestinian. When a soldier walks by, the man asks him if he might fill the bottle with water for the children. The politeness in his voice is embarrassing. The soldier agrees. The man’s request awakens my own thirst. My thirst — it has been asleep all day and only now does it decide to wake up. My throat is as dry as a bone. My tongue sits like a hot stone in my mouth. The soldier comes back after filling the bottle with water and he gives it to the little girl who snatches it from his hands. I sit there watching the water pour into the girl’s mouth. To me, it looks like a river flowing over a parched land. I try to swallow, but the only thing that goes down my throat is dryness. When the girl finishes drinking, she sets the bottle on the table in front of them. By now, I have lost my ability to go on looking without asking.
I walk over to the family and ask the man: ‘How long have you all been waiting?’
‘About two hours.’
He asks me to sit down and join them and I do not hesitate, since this was the very thing I was hoping he would ask. I learn from the man that he and his family live in Australia and have citizenship there. It took two days for them to fly here and this is their third day of travel. ‘The trip from Sydney was not as exhausting as the wait at this crossing.’
I tell them a little about my trip, and a fleeting kind of friendship sparks between us — each of us a source of consolation for the VIP treatment we are now receiving. In a paradoxical way, the mistreatment of VIPs is a central strategy in the playbook by which the Israelis abuse all Palestinians, important or not. It is a special form of cruelty since its purpose is to puncture the delusion that the Oslo Accords could protect the importance of anybody.
I ask the man if I can have a drink and he hands me the bottle. What pours down my throat is the first liquid to pass through my lips since midnight yesterday.
My phone rings. It is my cousin, Abdelfettah. He tells me that he called Majda and that she has gone to get my mother’s ID number. He also says that he contacted a Palestinian liaison officer on the other side of the crossing who promised that he would do everything he could to speed up my entry visa. I thank him for everything. Abdelfettah mentions that my mother has been calling him all day long, worrying about me. This last piece of news sends me into a tailspin — since I have no control over whether I will get through today. I tell Abdelfettah to tell my mother what he just told me, since it might reassure her to know that the PA is working on my behalf. I thank Abdelfettah and hang up.
Half an hour later, an Israeli soldier comes up to us and hands the family their documents. Ecstatic, they jump to their feet, not believing their good luck. The man and his wife wish me a speedy exit from this detention centre.
But my release does not arrive for a few more hours. At precisely 5.30 pm, the same first soldier to whom I had presented my papers now informs me that my visa will be ready in five minutes.
Precisely five minutes later, he brings me my passport. For some reason, he apologizes when he hands it to me. Without thinking about it, I thank him and leave.
I see three Palestinian workers walking toward a corridor of some sort and stop one to ask where I go to reach the Palestinian side. He tells me to follow them. I pull my suitcase behind me and struggle to keep up. We enter a wide tunnel whose end I cannot exactly see. The ceiling is arched, like a distant cement sky. The sound of our footsteps echoes back at us like the clomping of horses’ hooves.