how do you get to work?

“Kahoua, kahoua, kahoua,” the coffee man walked outside the metal bars, his mantra competing only with shuffles and grunts. It was 3:56am and the Entrance line was already full of men on their way to work. A few minutes earlier the line had been moving, but with the flick of a switch the Israeli soldier had stopped the turn-style from spinning for a 10ish minute pause.

There was one florescent light by which I could make out boot, jeans, and, looking down the long lane, sweater sleeves peeping through the bars. I was sitting in the top of the Exit lane, empty, of course, and extending down to my right, with al-jidar (Apartheid Wall) to my back, and the Entrance lane before me. I kept my eyes on the ground.

Amir handed me a steaming cup of sweet coffee. The cold had begun to set in.

Red dots lit up the night, nicotine to make the minutes pass. By 4:09 the line started moving, but only for a few quick minutes, maybe 3, tops.  These were all Palestinian West Bank residents heading to Jerusalem and other areas on the other side of al-jidar for work, where wages are somewhere around 3 times higher (at least for legal workers. There are thousands more who cross the wall illegally and work without any guarantee of their rights).  This was the first of two ID/permit checks with an airport-like scan in between, in their daily journey through Checkpoint 300, which severs the historical Jerusalem-Bethlehem-Hebron (Al-Quds – Beit Lahem – Al-Khalil) road.

 

At 4:15 the cutting began. Amir took me half way down the Exit lane to where a puddle of men were squeezing one-by-one through a space in the bars into the middle of the Entrance lane.  Like a backwards leak. Men who had been waiting diligently for 10, 20, 30 minutes protested loudly, and when they saw I had a camera they yelled “soura, soura, soura” as though me taking a picture would somehow shame the cheaters into retreating.

By 4:30 the real chaos started. Men began climbing on top of the Entrance lane’s metal roof, almost to the top of the line, then slipping into where the lane opened up into a larger metal cage, and monkey along the bars, their feet at the level of the standing men’s heads, until they got as far up as possible, then dropping into the sea of waiters. Each time the gate opened to allow some 50 or 100 men through a fierce hustle would commence, as everyone pushed and squeezed, the cheaters rushing to be swept up by the current, the waiters yelling at the cheaters, and then the gate would close and the hustle would subside.

Amir led me down the Exit line, we squeezed past the backwards bleeding vein and got to the bottom of the lanes, where the men extended across the street in puddle of bodies. We walked up along the outside. “Jawal, Cellcom, Wataniya, Orange” Amir repeated. He is from south of Hebron, but he came up here to work, selling cellphone credit at the checkpoint all day. Amir is 18 and he lives alone, visiting his family for a day each weekend. He knows everyone who crosses the checkpoint regularly, which is how we got talking the first time, managing to tie together my broken Arabic and his broken English into a neat bow of pseudo-understanding.

At the top of the lane I realized there was a third, very short line. The “humanitarian” line, for women, tourists, and men over 60. It had a steady trickle of women and older men, though it was not open for most of the morning.  

A few of the braver line cutters would walk up the Exit lane, wait for the hustle to begin- so that the solider would be busy looking at permit papers- then slip behind the soldier’s box and go through the Exit turnstile, which moves backwards just enough to allow a body through. I also saw women doing this when in the ‘humanitarian’ lane when the bars were not moving.

Suddenly at 7am there was just a thin flow. I left Amir at the top of the Exit isle, and headed to work: a 10 minute walk. How do you get to work? 

Photos and post by Jesse