Three blind women at a checkpoint

Three blind women at a checkpoint, notes by Rana Qumsiyeh, April 13, 2008

[While reading this remember that a) all here are the lucky 0.1% of the population of Bethlehem who have a "permit" to get to Jerusalem and b) that this is the mild forms, many died at checkpoints while refused to get to medical facilities and many are starving because their lands and jobs are on the other side of the Apartheid wall. Mazin Q]

Yesterday was not the first time I see those three blind women at the checkpoint. They are familiar to many who cross the Bethlehem checkpoint on daily basis to get to Jerusalem. Two middle-aged Palestinian women and one elderly woman who seems to be a foreigner; could be German, as I have heard them talk to each other in German at times. I have always wondered how they manage to make their way through this maze, being blind, when most people with perfect eye sight struggle to find their way through, when crossing this checkpoint for the first time, and have to ask for directions.

So, yesterday, despite that it was a Saturday, there was a long line forming when those three blind women walked in, and it was taking too long for the door to open and let people in one by one. As usual, they were let through ahead of everyone because of their situation. A few minutes later, they got inside and it seems two of them got through the metal-detector door and the third one “beeped”. The female soldier on duty screamed at her in Hebrew to take her shoes off. This female soldier is known to all of us, the crowds who go through everyday, we call her the screamer. We know she is on duty before we even get into the terminal, because her yelling reaches outside the Wall! Of course, standing in line outside, we barely can see anything of what is happening inside, we just hear and try to understand what is going on. Thus, we assumed that the blind woman took off her shoes and passed again and she still “beeped”, the soldier screamed again, now louder, in Hebrew, ordering her to take her jacket off. One more time, we hear beeping, then we hear crying. Apparently, the blind woman started to cry at that point. The soldier screamed louder, and this time, I didn’t understand what she was saying.

Half an hour had passed since I got in line and I was still there, and the line was not moving. People started complaining, calling, so a male soldier’s voice came through the loud speaker saying “You have to wait, we have ‘problems’ inside”. We heard more beeping and then a loud laugh from the “screamer”.

Eventually, they opened the door and I got to the ID and permit inspection point, there were the two other blind women, apparently still waiting for their companion, who had been forced into one of the “further investigation” rooms. I went outside and got on the bus, and soon after the three women followed. The third one was very stressed out and in tears. It turns out; her skirt zipper was the problem. I am not sure if she was forced to take her skirt off in that closed 'cell', no one dared ask. As the bus drove off, I watched her cry all the way from the checkpoint to Jerusalem…