The Power of Fear
by Sharad Venkat on June 25, 2008 in Blog, Live from Beirut
I had a genuinely frightening experience earlier today. I was walking home from Achrafiyya in East Beirut back to my room in Hamra, West Beirut, and crossed past a few checkpoints on the road. These guys always look at me funny but don’t often give me trouble. But at about the third checkpoint the soldier walks up to me and starts speaking in quick Arabic. I have a general idea that he wants to search my bag but I’m a little bit annoyed with his attitude so I pretend not to understand. He eventually starts using his hands and grabbing at my bag so I concede and give it to him.
This is no big deal- I’ve had my bag searched a number of times on the street by soldiers. I’m watching this guy and quietly appreciating how meticulous he is. Usually they’ll look in one or two pockets and call it a day. But this one went through every pocket, looked in every corner, took out and examined every object. I have a little squeeze blower that I use to clean my camera. He stared at it and then asked me what it was, so I squeezed it for him and he was satisfied.
Then he asked for my passport. I felt in my pocket and knew it wasn’t there…it was sitting in my desk drawer in the hotel room. I explained this to him. Then I did what I did once before at a checkpoint- I handed him my visa atm card. He looked over it, bending it, turning it, just like the soldier had done at the other checkpoint. But instead of laughing and giving it back, he laughed and said something in Arabic that I interpreted to be ‘do you really think you’re getting off with this?’
At this point I handed him a Daily Star business card to show where I worked. Now I’m in uncharted waters and frankly I’m getting a little bit annoyed. In retrospect I was not approaching this with the right attitude, but I doubt the result would have been any different. One of the other soldiers snapped something in Arabic and my soldier went into the guard shack and got his gun, which apparently he’d left there and wasn’t supposed to.
I watched as he tried to get the gun strap around his head and shoulder. It was obviously too short and needed some slack, but he wriggled it around in what was sort of an absurd sight: him staring me down, trying to be intimidating while sheepishly trying to figure out how to put his gun on. I took a step back, afraid he was accidentally going to let off a round in all the frenetic wrigging. Then he then took me back down the block to an earlier checkpoint, which I’d successfully walked past without any trouble just a few minutes earlier. There I went through another meticulous bag search, more questions about my passport… ‘where is your passport, where is your passport?’. I put on my best American accent as I repeated over and over again, ‘Its in my hotel room, I left it in my hotel room. I live in Hamra.’
Then this guard takes me and we head to the first checkpoint I’d passed. At this point I’m thinking ‘this is really fucking ridiculous.’ At the first checkpoint the routine is repeated…bag search, questions about my passport. The guards are alternating between laughing between themselves and giving me stern looks so I don’t really understand what is going on except that I’m moving slowly up the chain of command. Then the soldier who initially stopped me waves me to follow him down a side street.
Here’s where I decide enough is enough. When I worked in Sudan aid workers and foreigners were often harassed by government troops. One of the most effective techniques was to act upset and offended- the solider usually backed off a little bit and showed you a little more respect. So when this guy wants me to follow him down this empty, darkish street without explanation, I stand my ground and raise my voice…’what is this?! Where are you taking me?! What do you want?! I told you I left my passport in my hotel room! We can go get it if you want!’
Bad idea. The guy is surprised and looks at me sternly. He rubs his gun and waves me over again. The other soldiers standing around me also gently nudge me to follow him. It’s clear that the best course of action is to go along with it but in my mind, I’m starting to imagine unsavory scenarios. As I walk down this street with the soldier, who is still holding my atm and business card and using it like a leash, knowing that I’m going to follow after it, I start imagining worst case scenarios and begin to look for civilians - in my mind, witnesses to anything that might happen.
The soldier stops and looks to the right. There is an abandoned lot with lots of rubble and no people. I decide right then and there, there’s no fucking way I’m going in there. Thankfully he then continues down the road as I take note of the open shops and any civilians I see. I look at their faces to see if I can discern any fear, to see if there might be any clue to what is going to happen. The few people around do not look frightened and that reassures me a little bit.
I continue behind the solder and we get to another checkpoint. There the routine is repeated by an older and obviously more senior person. The questions are the same and I answer them in a clear, friendly, measured tone. I admit to myself that I am scared, and I notice myself becoming more compliant, more willing to tell them whatever they want, the longer I am there. I remembered a documentary I watched in which a prison interrogator in iraq said that generally people who are rounded up are very talkative and willing to answer questions in the first hour or two after being brought in, out of panic and fear brought on by the confusion and uncertainty of being ripped from their comfort zones.
At this point, more people are brought in behind me and we’re made to stand in a line on the sidewalk. An old man comes out of a building across the street and examines each person’s ID cards. He takes their phones and looks at them. I’m not sure why they didn’t take mine.
Standing next to me is a man who, from what he is saying, is from Iraq. He also doesn’t have his passport and says he was walking around. He shows his Iraqi ID and his hotel keycard. It read ‘Palm Beach Hotel’, the same place I was staying a few weeks earlier. The Iraqi man switches from English to speaking Arabic with the soldier, his tone is also becoming less insubordinate and more friendly, more passive. I look at him for a second and wonder if he’s telling the truth. Why wouldn’t he be? What could he possibly be doing? One of a hundred different things I guess, probably not all of them legit.
I can feel the soldiers spending more and more time on him and I’m slowly being ignored, though still standing there sweating, hot, a little bit shaky. They’re not happy with his story. Then they search him and find a camera… look through a few of his pictures (I can’t see them) and they start asking him about them. He raises his hands in frustration and indicates that they’re innocent pictures. A few of the soldiers gather around and look through them again. My guess is that he was a victim of bad composition- he probably caught some part of a government building, maybe a soldier or two or a tank on the street, in a few of his pictures. The two highest ranking soldiers there tell him to follow them into an building across the street. He doesn’t want to but he is well past the point of trying to argue.
The guard that first brought me in tries to take me by the arm and lead me in too but his superior looks at me and waves me off, setting me free. The guard argues for a second but to no avail. I stand there without moving just to make sure. He waves me off again. I pick up my bag and begin walking away, turning back to see them take the Iraqi man into the building. Poor guy…but then maybe he did do something. I guess the point is that you never know, especially here - I think paranoia runs high.
I’m glad it was the army and not one of the various faction’s militias that stopped me. I was a little bit rattled but in the end they didn’t touch me. I’m also glad that I didn’t have my camera and video camera in my bag. I had taken them both out a few days earlier. Things would have been much more complicated if I had been carrying either one. I’m sure I also have a number of ‘badly composed’ pictures. As I passed by the first checkpoint at the main road, the same soldiers who had stared me down and pushed me down the street laughed and called me over. One of them said ‘they just asked you questions right?’, slapping me on the back. ‘So what do you think about Lebanon? What do you think about our women?’
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