Interview with Sarah by AC ’23, HH ’23, and KW ’23.
Sarah is a documentary film student entering graduate school. She grew up in Jericho in the West Bank of Palestine, and in this audio interview, she explains her experience with aggressive Israeli border patrol as she attempts to cross the border into Jerusalem with her aunt in preparation for the Eid holiday. Checkpoints and borders, which Sarah collectively refers to as “borders,” are a large part of her life living in the West Bank, and they remind her of the oppressive occupation.
Transcript:
I’m Sarah Abushusheh, a Palestinian girl, I’m from Jericho. It’s the oldest city in the whole world. They say this, Wikipedia says this.
To go from city to city, it’s the hardest thing. Each 200 meters, you can see a border [checkpoint]. So this is the thing that I hate here. You know, if you don’t see the border, you have an imaginary border. When I go to the street, when I go to the city from another, when I am at home just like reading a book about Palestine. Like, it can come to me in anytime, in anytime that I feel free and I’m just thinking about something, like realistic thing, it comes to me. They can stop your car and can start asking you questions. And if you don’t have an answer, they can take you.
My aunt told me that she knows that we can enter Jerusalem without permission because it’s the last day of Ramadan. I said, “Please take me with you! Take me!” And she said “No! Like she felt something wrong would happen. But I told her, “No, I can enter without a permission because they said that girls can enter.” So my aunt said, “Okay, come.”
So I went there, we’re almost like, ten hundred meters to the border where we were going through. I pretended that I was sleeping. I’ve heard him doing this [knocking] on the glass, like knocking on the door. And another [knock]. When I opened my eyes and I saw him holding a gun and said, “Give me your ID.” And I said, “I don’t have an ID.” He said, “Why you don’t have an ID? What’s the color of your ID?” I said, “Green.” And then he went, and he came after half an hour and said, “You told me that you have a blue ID. You lied to me.” I said, “No, I swear to God I said green.” He said, “No, you told me you have a blue ID. You lied to me. You lied to me.” He started shouting and yelling.
People who have the blue ID live in Jerusalem and the green ID, we live in the West Bank. So many blue ID people think they are privileged because they have the blue ID and they can travel easily.
Like it’s easier for them – life easier.
So he took me with the two girls, they went to check me that I don’t have anything.
They took my pants, they took everything. But when they came to my hijab, I couldn’t take it off. So I said, “No, my hijab? No. You can take everything from me. But my hijab, no!” And I was like, half-naked, and I cared about my hijab. I refused to take it off. So a girl went around me with her gun, not the front, the back of it, she hit me on my head like she wants to know that nothing is here.
They gave me a paper and I was crying harder than ever and no one cared. My aunt, because she has the blue ID, so they were taking care of her differently. They were saying “No, please don’t cry. Bring her water.” These things. But me, I was crying and no one cared about me.
When I talk about it I feel so proud of myself. This story is my story which is the most thing that I like. I’m going to study documentary films to document many moments in Palestine. I want to show them how we live by documenting these moments.
https://soundcloud.com/nancy-kalow/interview-with-sarah
