They went, "Organising of youth units; throwing stones at soldiers; throwing stones at settlers; encouraging young people to throw stones; putting barricades on the streets; making ambushes against Israelis; burning the Israeli flag; raising the Palestinian flag; enforcing strikes on the Palestinians; distributing leaflets; writing slogans in graffiti; and refusing to obey a military order to appear at the headquarters." I forget the last one.
These were stupid charges. Throwing stones at soldiers and settlers were listed as separate charges. Another time - much later - when I was arrested again, one of the charges I was given was, "organising popular education classes"! At the time of this arrest, no one was talking about education. It was war, man! Ha! Fuck education! We were talking about war, man, about recruiting them for the Intifada army!
Among those who confessed against me was a guy who is a really good friend of mine today. He was just a kid, knee-high to a grasshopper. I was 21 years old and he was 15. All the confessions were from people his age. They used to follow me around like flies at that age.
In the interrogation, they were speaking to me in excellent Arabic, even in the accent of someone from Hebron.
Inte shartar, masbuut? ("You're clever, right?")
La la, ana mish sharter. ("No, no, I'm not clever.")
La la, inte sharter ikteer! ("No, no, you're very clever.")
La, ana mish sharter. ("No, I'm not clever.")
Inte shuu? ("What are you then?")
Ana ghabi. ("I'm stupid.")
Laish ghabi? ("Why 'stupid'?")
Ashan ana ghabi. ("Because I'm stupid.")
I knew that they wanted to reach a point where they got me to admit that I am smart so they could say we've got you. But I wanted to stop it, to mess up their concentration, their focus. That's the best way to deal with interrogation.
"What grades did you get in the high school leaving exam?" they asked.
"I got eighty-eight," I told them.
"Oh, so you are smart?"
"Yeah, academically-wise, I am okay. I guess I am okay."
"So, we got you," they said.
"Got what? I still don't know what you are talking about."
One of them cut in, "I'm talking about the thirteen fucking charges."
"Who told you that? Who told you those things?"
"Listen, we have names."
"Who?"
"Why do you want to know? You are going to kill them."
"No, I am not going to kill them," I said, "but I have lots of enemies. People hate me." Tongue in cheek, I told them, "Maybe I fucked someone's sister, their mother, and they confessed against me but I have nothing to do with the things you are saying."
"Okay," they said, "Where have you been for a month? You have been wanted for a month. Why didn't you come?"
I told them, "I didn't know that I was wanted. When your soldiers caught me I was just coming from Jerusalem."
"From Jerusalem?!"
"Yeah! I was working in Jerusalem."
"Where were you working in Jerusalem?"
"In Musarah. I was working as cheap labour." [note: Musarah is a courtyard in front of Damascus Gate where day labours queue up very early in the morning hoping they get chosen to work on building sites or as other manual labourers.]
They searched me a little and found three packs of red Marlboro cigarettes, a relatively expensive brand here.
"Oh, you are a labourer that smokes Marlboro and you have three packs on you!" they said.
"It's a mood thing," I told him, "My mood tells me to buy Marlboro. Is this forbidden as well? Is this illegal?" and started to smile at them.
One of them was sitting on the table in front of me. I was wearing a scarf, a normal one not a Palestinian keffieh, and he began to choke me with it, twisting the two ends of it. Then he used it to pull my face down hard, repeatedly smashing it off his knee. He lifted me up, and punched me in the balls while carrying me. I felt the blood rushing into my head, like it was going to explode. My eyes were bulging out, I couldn't breathe. Then he pushed me against the wall and punched me in the stomach. I fell onto the floor. He came and sat on my stomach. I couldn't move anymore. I thought I was going to die. I was paralysed. He started punching me in the stomach and balls. Then, with one last kick to the stomach, I started to vomit.
As I started vomiting, he closed my mouth and nose. I had to swallow it to stop suffocating. Then he stood over me saying, "Euuch! Look at your face. You look like shit. You smell like shit" and began to spit in my face. I was fucked, man, covered in blood and vomit, with bruises everywhere.
I looked up at him and smiled, "So, this is all that you have got? This is your democracy? This is your humanity that you boast about? This is the way you deal with human beings?"
He said, "You are not a human being. You are an animal."
I said, "I didn't do anything to you. Look what you did to me. Who would do such a thing to a human being except an animal?"
He started to kick me and beat me, but this time he was spitting in face and mouth. There was no way to avoid it, man. You are in such pain, your body isn't in control anymore. My mouth was full of his spit.
You know, there is no way to forgive this. No fucking way. Once you are made to feel that you are dying, you're dead....Khalas! You know?! I thought okay, I want to die here. I am not going to give anything, I'm not going to give them anything.
They said, "Why don't you want to confess, because I might kill you or your brother?"
I said, "I don't care. Listen, I don't interfere in politics. Do whatever you want. Say whatever you want. I have no answers to tell you. There are no answers to give you."
"Look at your face!" he said, "Shall I get you a mirror to see your face? You look like a dog, a donkey, an animal."
Then he started saying to me, "I want to fuck your sister, your mother." They do this to try to make religious and traditional prisoners angry. I was neither.
I told him, again with my tongue in cheek, "Look, it's none of my business. You want to fuck them, ask them. If they want to fuck you, fuck them. It's their choice, why do I have to care? If they agree and you agree, it's fine."
This made them really angry, very angry. They asked me about a friend of mine, who was in the car with me. "Yeah, I know him," I said, "he's a neighbour of ours."
"He was with you?" he demanded.
I said, "No. I was driving my car and he put his hand out and I picked him up."
"Did you charge him money?"
"No, I did not charge him. He is a neighbour."
"So why did you stop for him?"
"Because, I tell you, I don't work in my car. I am not a taxi driver. He is a neighbour. If I don't stop he will think I am arrogant. He was with me because I wanted to give him a lift," I said. Of course, he had been with me. I didn't want him to be interrogated or put in prison. Fortunately, the guy had said the same thing, exactly the same story.
When they interrogated him, they asked him, "Do you know this guy 'Odai?"
"Yes, I know him. He's from my neighbourhood." I see him."
"Did he charge you any money for the ride?"
"No, but I wanted to give him money."
"Did you know he was wanted?"
"How could I know?" he said, "I put my hand out for a car and this car stopped. The taxis are the same kind of car. How would I know that the driver of this car was wanted?"
It turned out that he was interrogated, but not as badly as me. They found his file and gave him six months of administrative detention. I had thought he was released the same day but I saw him two months later when he was transferred to my section in the desert prison camp, Ansar III.
Then I was put on the ground outside the room, like a dog. Everyone who passed kicked me. An hour later I was taken downstairs and put in this room like a barrack with another 35 people. I was blindfolded and, of course, still bound with the plastic wire. Everyone gasped at how I looked. The interrogator told them, "Listen! If anyone cuts his handcuffs or takes off his blindfold, they will be in big shit. I don't want anyone to talk to this man. I don't want anyone to be closer than three metres to him."
My brothers and friends were there. When he closed the door and left, they came and took the blindfold off. "What the fuck?!" I told them, "Not the blindfold! Cut my hands free!" They went and got me a cigarette and a towel and washed my face. "What happened?" they said.
"Oh, nothing," I said. I started to laugh and make jokes because I wanted to raise the spirits of the young people there, who made up most of those there. When they see someone bleeding like this, they think they themselves might die, so they might confess. Just to give them support, I was telling them. "They beat me, but not this badly. I started to hit my head against a wall to get them to leave me alone."
You have to be aware of even this. If they think you were really beaten badly, then they might tell the interrogators, "Don't beat me. I'll tell you anything you want." And then they'd be in big shit when they were released. This is one of the reasons they had put me in the room.
I was there for the rest of that day and at 2:00am, they moved all of us to another prison.
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Photo by George Azar, Ramallah, 1991, from his excellent book Palestine: A Photographic Journey. Check out the Intifada Diary index for information on how to order the book.
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