Trapped
Extract from 'On the Road to Jericho: A Novel', by Sue Meredith Mann
I am delighted to bring to you the second guest instalment of
’s historical fiction serial, (you can read the first extract, Readings and Beatings, HERE but as ‘Trapped’ is written so beautifully you don’t need to have read any previous extracts to join in here).
Sue is a former South African diplomat, adventurer, and author who draws on her own experiences during a key time of political movement and deconstruction to fuel her fiction writing. Not one to shy away from difficult topics, she brings out the richness and texture of the real-life events that inspired her words, showing the humanity of the individuals who lived them.
‘Trapped’ is an extract shared exclusively with members of the Society of History Writers ahead of its publication with her own community.
Make sure that you check out Sue’s profile HERE and subscribe to ensure you don’t miss out on any future instalments of On The Road To Jericho: A Novel.
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Trapped
Sue Mann
Qalandia, 2000
Eleanor
“Miss Eleanor, ma’am, we should go,” says Wissam anxiously.
“I just need to finish sending this report through to Head Office. We still have time, don’t we?”
We’ve been able to resume coming to the office—the only place where I have secure communications back to Pretoria. But the Unix computer is being a bear today. I’ve already had to restart the connection three times. And it’s only two o’ clock, usually we have until three before we expect the clashes to start up.
“Yes, ma’am, but I’ve been hearing the schools may let out a bit earlier today. It’s the one month anniversary of the start of the Intifada.”
“Ok, Wissam,” I sigh. “I’ll be as quick as I can. But I’ve got to get this report through. I’m guessing another ten minutes maybe? Tell Nagla to get ready. We can leave as soon as I’m done and the system is shut down.”
It’s an anxious few minutes. The data connection is unstable. I hate the old Unix system that we use to send reports through. I can’t understand why we don’t use more modern systems. But, we’re stuck with what we have. I continue anxiously watching the transmit progress bar from the back office. It’s a pokey, dark little office, with the shutters drawn. It’s a bathroom that was converted to be the secure communications center. It’s tiled all in black: floors, walls, even the ceiling is painted dark. It’s not a happy place to be in. But it’s the only room in the office from which we can send and receive secure communications with Pretoria.
Lately, we’ve mostly been able to miss the clashes that start up every afternoon after school gets out. Wissam, in his anxious, planning way, is always keeping an eye out for us, listening to the radio, watching the television or checking in with his own wide network of contacts and friends that tell him what’s happening and where. We generally get through fine. There have been rocks, and burning tyres, and tear-gas. We’ve had a few close calls. But I trust Wissam with my life. He’s an excellent driver. And he takes his job to keep us all safe very seriously.
Finally the transmission is done. “Wissam,” I call out, “It’s done. I’m just shutting down. Five more minutes.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says anxiously, “But please do hurry. We should be going.”
This whole transition from what was to what is has been hard on all of us. Nagla and Wissam have lived through this before. But for me it's an entirely new thing. The peace process evaporated. All the gains lost in a matter of weeks. I shut down the system, hurry through to my office, and pick up my hand bag and other things I need to carry on working from home. We only ever manage to get about four, five hours at the most, in the office these days. And there is so much work to be done, to keep Head Office updated, and to try to understand what is going on.
I head to the door. Wissam and Nagla are anxiously waiting. We lock the double doors behind us and go down the stairs. The Canadian offices are already deserted—seems like they’ve left early today too.
Wissam has the car ready and waiting for us. We hop in. It’s a black car. We have the diplomatic number plates and the magnetic diplomatic decals on the sides of the car. Wissam always has the flag flying from the bonnet these days too. But it’s not bullet proof. He’s done everything he can to make the car as identifiably non-Palestinian as possible, but in the midst of the crush of the checkpoints, it doesn’t seem like the Israeli soldiers or the Palestinian protesters really care.
We drive through Ramallah. It's eerily quiet. No-one is on the streets or out shopping. We wind through the back roads and come out on the main road, just a mile or so from the check-point at Qalandia. We catch a whiff of tear-gas. We hear some pops in the distance. We look at each other anxiously. Further down the road we start seeing more rocks. They are always there, but today there are more. Suddenly, we’re in the middle of it. The traffic is backed up on either side of the checkpoint, more cars coming in from behind us. We sense the mood: angry, tense, surging.
Up ahead the Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint are checking cars, surly, abrupt, demanding identification. Always holding their guns, their fingers never off the trigger. Up on the hill to the left I see a tank, its gun turret pointing down at the checkpoint. It looks ominous, sinister. Horrors waiting to be unleashed from its dark hole. To our right the fence that demarcates the end of the runway of the long disused Qalandia airport. Behind us, in front of us, all around us, milling through the cars are young Palestinians, keffiyehs pulled up over their noses to try and reduce the effects of the tear gas, rocks in their hands. There are tyres burning off on one side of the road. Cars edge and weave around the rocks, everyone trying to get that one foot further forward. Everyone anxious. Everyone just wants to get through, past this flashpoint, home to the relative safety and sanity of East Jerusalem. No-one wants to be caught up like this, trapped like chickens in a cage between the soldiers and the protesters.
Behind us we hear shouts.
“Duck, they’re coming!” Wissam suddenly urges.
Nagla and I get our heads down below the dashboard and windows, her in front, me in the back.
There are shouts, noise, confusion. We hear explosions. We hear the thud, thud, thud of rocks hitting cars. We hear the stutter of machine guns as the Israelis respond. We smell flames, fuel, and tires burning. There is a crash and an explosion near us. An improvised Molotov cocktail or something? Who knows. There are more. It’s chaos. The young Israeli soldiers are screaming and shouting, shooting at anything that moves. The gun turret on the hill is swiveling, aiming, looking for a target. We’re stuck, trapped. We can’t move forward, we can’t move back. We’ve got cars in front of us, behind us, on either side of us.
Everyone’s terrified.
We just want to get through the checkpoint. We just want to get home to safety. And we are caught up in this nightmare world of noise and guns and smoke and fire. The soldiers surge forward, pushing the protesters back. A few more cars get through the checkpoint. We inch forward.
“Please god,” I pray, “please god.” Why did I push it? We should have left earlier. I curse myself for wanting to get that report through. Wissam had warned me. He always tries to get us out early. Sometimes his anxiety is annoying. But today, I should have listened to him. Oh, that damn report. It wasn’t that important. Nagla and I sit there, cowering down, desperately hoping that our car doesn’t get hit. It catches a few stones. But, miraculously, it seems like the flag and decals do create some sort of perimeter. Nothing hits the windows, nothing smashes the glass.
A few more cars get through the checkpoint. We inch forward again. We are getting closer, closer. But still there is chaos all around us. We’ve been lucky so many times. We’ve always managed to make it through before. Did we get it wrong today? The timing is always so uncertain. The mood can crack in an instant, turning from protest to ugly horror in seconds. It can go from being just a bunch of young kids, school kids mostly, throwing stones idly, uselessly at fully geared up soldiers, to something else entirely. You never know when, you never know where. This time it's mostly older teenagers, young adults. Wound up, angry, spoiling for a fight, trying to draw the soldiers out, irritate them, anger them, force them into doing something wrong, force them into creating another incident, force them into killing some of them.
How can this be? How can young men, in the prime of their life, be willing to throw it all away? But such are the choices before them. The boot of Israeli occupation on their neck, forever controlled, their movements limited, everything about their lives circumscribed. Or death. Death seems like a kind of freedom here. They can be martyrs. They will be revered. Their families will say “They were fighting the occupation”. But the mothers will grieve and mourn another child lost, another son claimed in this endless cycle of violence.1
Wissam’s knuckles are white on the steering wheel. He is unnaturally still and quiet. His normal chatter is gone. His eyes are everywhere. He’s tense, ready to spring like a tiger. He wasn’t trained for this. None of us were. We’re all civilians, caught up in this madness. He keeps the front bumper inches away from the car in front. We move forward another few feet. I can see the soldiers at the checkpoint now. They are just as young as the protesters. Their faces are drawn, haggard, tired, scared. They feel just as trapped as we do, and they’re the ones with weapons and full body armor. No-one is winning here. No-one is safe here. Everyone is fighting for their lives, for freedom, to be recognized, to be heard.
The smoke billows around, a mixture of tyres, Molotov cocktails, other nameless things burning. I want to feel sorry for the soldiers, but I can’t. They’re the ones with the power. They’re the ones with the weapons. Whatever the protesters are doing, they just have rocks and bottles and tyres. They’re improvising, trying, trying to defeat an occupying power that has overwhelming might on its side.
We hear the wail of an ambulance come up behind us. But the traffic can’t move, it has nowhere to go.
Finally it’s just one car in front of us. We’re almost through. It’s surreal and bizarre that in the middle of this chaos, this battle that isn’t, the checkpoint keeps running, soldiers keep on checking cars and letting them through. It’s one of those absolutely inexplicable aspects to this conflict: how somehow some things keep going on as “normal”, even as all around there is screaming, shots, fire, tear-gas.
Wissam’s face is white. He is drenched with sweat. Nagla’s too, crouched down below the dashboard.
A soldier aggressively waves Wissam to roll down the window. He says something I don’t understand. Wissam responds in rapid fire Hebrew. I hear “Drom Afrika”. I hear “shag’riyrut”. He reaches back for my diplomatic passport. I give it to him. The soldier looks at it, scowling. It seems like he’s reluctant to let us through. Why do we get the privilege? What am I doing in this land as a foreigner? What am I here to report on? With a surly gesture he shoves the papers back to Wissam, who rolls up the window. We get the command to go forward. Wissam wants to race through, but we can’t. There are rocks on the other side and we have to thread our way between them, navigating our way through the debris and wreckage of weeks of clashes.
Finally we get through. We are on clear road. We all sigh with relief. The air in the car lightens. We all start breathing again. It’s as if we have held our breath for an eternity. Nagla turns around to look at me, her big dark eyes questioning.
“Are you okay?”, she asks.
“I think so, you?” She nods, shakily.
“Thanks, Wissam,” I say, “You got us through.”
“We couldn’t have left any later, ma’am. It’s getting worse. I think we will have casualties before this day is done.” His voice is cracked, broken, his usual upbeat, cheery manner gone. He is clearly shaken.
He drops each of us at home. I walk quietly up the stairs, unlock the door. I am greeted by the cats. My hands are shaking, my breath is shallow. I go make myself a cup of tea and come and sit down on the sofa, facing the windows. The windows face north, towards Qalandia, towards Ramallah. I see the smoke billowing up into the sky. Three, four columns of it. I hear a helicopter coming up from the south, speeding up to Ramallah. I shudder. What building is going to be bombed today? How many people will be in it? The insanity of it all rocks me. I break into great, shuddering, heaving sobs. My whole body shaking. Relieved to be alive, safe, back in my apartment.
And yet, feeling as if somehow I don’t deserve it. I’m a diplomat. I’m protected. I can leave. I have rights. But the people out there, the scared young people, fighting to protect themselves, fighting to protect their land, fighting to protect their existence—what do they have? They have nothing to lose. They’d rather give their lives than carry on experiencing the humiliation that is occupation. It’s unwinnable. The more force that Israel applies, the greater it builds up the animosity against it. And if they don’t apply force, then they are accused of being weak and the government is threatened with yet another take over. It’s a mess. It’s a mess that’s been going on fifty years. It’s a mess that will go on for another fifty years.
I sip my tea. The cats come and snuggle on my lap. This moment, here, this is sanity, this is real.
Tomorrow we will get up and do it all again. We will cross the lines in the morning, if we can, and again in the afternoon.
How long can we carry on doing this? How long will our luck hold out? How long will the Israelis continue to let us access our offices? How long can I carry on being brave?
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
I note in my journal, We got our timing wrong today, hitting clashes in Qalandia. Not pleasant—but you get through.
I cannot write more.
We’d love to hear about your experiences and connections to the piece!
Though Sue’s writing is fiction, she draws on her wealth of experience as a diplomat and adventurer to create her stories.
Where were you in 2000? Do you remember how you felt as you heard and saw the news emerging around the world? How did reading Sue’s novel extract make you feel? Have you already been reading her serial as it’s published on Substack?
Author’s note: With time, distance and greater depth of understanding, I feel myself wince at the flawed thinking in these paragraphs. Again, I let them stand, as they reflect what I was thinking at the time, and illustrate how, even with the best of intentions, one can still fall easily into victim blaming, moral equivalency, and black and white thinking, to name a few of the cognitive biases on display here.
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I practically choked up reading Holly's kind cover note.
This is moment in time that marks a before and an after. My entire life trajectory changed because of this one moment. It took me two decades to be able to write it.
Funnily enough, it was lying on the couch, broken by another bout of PTSD, listening to Krista Tippet's 2016 interview of Bessel van Der Kolk, that opened up this story. While listening to Bessel's calm voice, I suddenly found myself back in the car, back at this moment of time, reliving something I had steadfastly refused to revisit for decades.
And as I reached for my journal and frantically just started writing, letting the story pour out of me, I experienced a release that had eluded me for decades. It was exactly as Bessel described it: telling the story of this day - with a beginning, a middle, and an end - allowed me to get out of a terrifying repeating loop of feeling so trapped that I had not being willing to ever talk about this experience with anyone. Not even my therapist.
I'm reading along (listening, actually) as Sue's novel is published on Substack, and am thrilled to read this section is advance of it's release date there.
I love how each piece stands on it's own.
In 2000, I was struggling to function as a recently emancipated 19-year-old laboratory science student with my first ever flat-mate showing me what receiving "the silent treatment" can do to one's nervous system. Hearing her come home to talk to her rabbit about me, my homework must have been affected: my hands were shaking from a lot less than gunfire.
One could say I was learning how frustratingly intractable standoffs can feel, but in the context of dissociated/local peace, in the Netherlands.