Tourist With A Blogwriter

Last Days

2008-04-07T22:54:00.004+01:00

My time here is almost up. But I know I'll be back. Zlatko has already asked me to come back in August for another film. There's still a lot to be done, still many refugees, rebels still hiding in the jungle, crouching over their ancient Kalashnikovs in the rain, still political prisoners like Hussein Radjabu serving 13 years in prison, still a parliament paralysed by confusion.

There's one last thing tomorrow. One final scene to film before I leave. It is, perhaps, the most obvious scene, in a film about landmine clearance. But as yet, it hasn't happened. It almost happened today, but it was delayed. I'm talking about an explosion. Yes, I still haven't seen an explosion. It should be the highlight of the trip, but so far - maybe because there aren't so many landmines even remaining in Burundi - I still haven't seen it. I'm talking about an intentional explosion, not an accidental explosion - that would be terrible. No, controlled demolition of abandoned mines, one electrical spark setting off a chain reaction that takes, Zlatko tells me, one hundred-thousandth of a second to complete.

This is, incidentally, about the same amount of sleep I get every night. Pure coincidence.

Dancing at Archipel

2008-04-03T22:59:00.000+01:00

Alain and I leave the base at around 1am, we’re driving to Archipel, a club that Zlatko recommended to me while laughing, embarrassed, to himself. “It’s ridiculous,” he said “you just look at a girl and she’s all over you. It’s really...what’s the word...indiscrete. She’s touching herself and rubbing herself all over you.”

As we turn out of the FSD compound, the headlights of the car catch rows of long horn cattle in the road. Dozens of cows, trudging slowly up the main road towards us, in complete darkness and silence. “Oh my goodness, what is happening?” Alain says aloud. I can only laugh.

“At this time?” He’s already a bit drunk. I didn’t realise when I first got in the car with him, but he soon explains he’s been drinking whiskey with his parents. He stops to wind down the window and ask the farmer what’s going on. Further ahead, we see a heard of sheep, also heads bobbing, feet clicking on the asphalt. “They’re going to the Vice President’s house,” Alain explains, “because they heard that the FNL was going to steal their animals. They came from Ruigi, they started walking here at 3pm.”

For ten hours, they’ve been walking on the road, moving their animals to the only safe place they can think of – the Vice President’s house in the capital. I picture them camped outside this door, exhausted, pleading for protection.

At Archipel, men are stumbling outside drunk and aggressive. Alain’s been talking about money on the drive here, that someone was offering him 200 dollars a month to work for them. He can make that much in a week, he says. He writes one article for a hundred dollars, he says. I can’t help wondering if this is his drunken way of telling me how much money he expects when it comes time to pay him at the end of our three weeks together. “I’m not doing this for the money” he said at the time, when I asked him what his rate was. “Give me what you can,” and I told him I didn’t have much money.

There is one dimly lit dance floor in the centre of the club, everything else is so dark I can only see vague shapes moving around. Some of the shapes are couples dancing energetically, others are just stumbling around drunk. Alain points out several Burundian celebrities and government ministers. There’s an older French man in the corner, leaning on a tiny, thin Burundian girl who laughs and touches him on the shoulder. Outside, there are hookers lining the walls and talking to anyone who walks by. Inside, they’re girlfriends for hire, Alain explains. They’re not prostitutes, but they’ll ask you for money. I don't understand the difference. It reminds me of the girlfriends for hire in Morocco, and the old, French men in bars, also leaning on thin little girls.

Alain and I are moving lazily to the music with a friend of his, when a girl who looks only 16 or 17 walks over and puts her arms around me, says her name is Melissa. “It’s okay,” Alain tells me.
"French or English?" she asks
"Uh...English."
She smells of alcohol, asks me to buy her a beer. This is uncomfortable. She pulls me close and puts her legs between mine, grinding to the music. She rubs her hands hard over my chest and strokes my beard and keeps trying to pull my head to hers to kiss me. It's fun for a while - and even funny - and I’m dancing, doing my best to enjoy it. But after a few minutes it just become depressing. It's too much. I try to push away from Melissa, but it’s literally impossible. She's wrapped around me tightly, and without aggressively shoving her across the room, there's nothing I can do but play this game of trying to keep my distance and looking anywhere but at her face. She tries again to rub up against me and grabs my hand to move them over her body, I'm fighting against it, and we're wrestling like that in the corner of the dance floor. She’s asks me to buy her a drink again, she tries to hold my hand again. This is getting tedious now. Finally she tells me "I'm going home" - and I just say okay, and feel relieved that she's gone. I look at Alain and laugh.

This is what Zlatko was talking about.

Soon after, one of Alain’s friends is dancing with us. She’s very beautiful and seems to know Alain well - she's not young and desperate like Melissa. I never got her name. She looks elegant in a tight black and white dress, and she isn’t afraid to dance with Alain and I. All around me, people are crushing against each other, sweating in the humid and hot night. Men are pulling young girls closer, women are rubbing themselves against their boys. No one is embarrassed. If you want to dance with someone, pull them closer and put your arms around them. If they like it, they’ll stay. If not, they’ll move away. No one pretends that they're not looking, or not interested, or that they don't want to touch.

At first, I’m uncomfortable holding Alain’s friend so close, I think if I put my hand here, or move like this, she’ll think I’m a pervert and slap me. But, quickly, I understand what’s going on here. It’s something we should all understand, it’s something so simple. Everyone’s enjoying themselves. The girl may not know me, but she knows Alain, so maybe she trusts me, and if it feels good to have a stranger hold you close and move his hips with yours, then why not do it. She smells of sweat and shampoo. Her dress is soaked in sweat, but it doesn’t bother me tonight. I like it. The whole club smells like this, and it’s a hot and sexual smell.

Sometimes, I move away but Alain’s friend pulls me closer. Other times, she moves away and I pull her closer.

My Lungs About to Burst

2008-04-03T22:49:00.002+01:00

I wake up early this morning, after very little sleep last night from editing. I’m ready to fall asleep in the car, but the drive to Bubanza is so beautiful I don’t want to miss it. Green, smooth hills and mountains. All lush countryside. A warm breeze brushes my eyes. For a moment I forget how exhausted I am that I’m so tired. On the hike down to the site – a suspected unexploded rocket - my legs are shaking. I haven’t been hiking in years, and carrying my equipment every day I feel like I’ve been working out regularly, so all my muscles are already tired. The ground is loose and very steep, sometimes I have to jump over a few rocks or slide down a few feet of mud.

We stop, Didier tells me looking at his GPS, only 650m from the car, but the hike down makes it feel more like a few kilometres. The team sets up their base near a collection of stone houses, a few metres above the suspected field. I haul a fragmentation protection jacket over my head, strap it around my waist and through my legs with the help of Pontien. I pull a helmet and mask over my face.

Digging through the field, following the squeals of their metal detectors, the team finds fragments of the rocket, already exploded, so they can now declare the field as safe.

In this case, the farmer decided to use his land anyway, even before knowing whether it was safe or not. In many other cases, though, the fear of a mine or unexploded ordnance is enough to keep people away from their precious land. Burundi is one of the most densely populated countries in Africa, and every square inch of land is used. Yesterday, I saw a family collecting plants from in between the stones in the perking area of the FSD base.

After several hours in the sun, my skin is burning, and I’m sweating heavily under all the protective clothing. Now we have to hike back up. I didn’t expect it to be so hard. I’m immediately out of breath and my lungs are in pain, they feel like they’re about to burst. Several times, I feel like I might actually collapse. I’m dehydrated, and not in shape, my lungs burning painfully. At over 2000m, a deep breath feels like I’m just wheezing, barely getting enough oxygen. I keep repeating to myself “smooth...calm...“ with each step, just to stop me from getting frustrated and tense and losing hope. I look at the ground, watching my feet with each step, rather than looking at the steep, loose path ahead. I can hear local children laughing and running around behind me. They’re wearing only flip-flops or barefoot. I remember when I was climbing mount Toubkal in crampons, having to kick every step into the thick snow, and thinking that was the hardest thing I’d ever done. I think this beats Toubkal. At least in Toubkal I could rest when I wanted, I was climbing alone, but here I had to keep up with the rest of the group. I have to stop myself from looking up, because I knew as soon as I see the vehicles, my legs will collapse.

Stumbling to our jeep, I sit in the shade, sweat covering my face and hair, I can’t even sit down I’m so exhausted and short of breath. I’m sipping air through a straw. I suck sugar water from the strands of a chunk of sugar cane that Gabriel hands me, just to get some hydration and energy back.

From Bugume, we drive to Kayanaga where Pontien and Aaron talk to locals who say they discovered several unexploded mines. With their white Jeeps, equipment, walkie-talkies, and my two cameras, the group attracts a large crowd. Soon, kids are screaming and running around us so fiercely Dider has to ask them all to shut up so we can hear the old man describing the mines he says he found. Joseph is short, wearing a ripped tank top that barely hangs over his bony frame. He wears a rough grisly beard. I can’t understand him as he describes the mine to Theo in Kirundi, but he moves around so energetically, acting out the shape of the mine, and the accident that happened in December. At one point, after one of his short stories, everyone around him laughs. Didier and I look at Theo for an explanation, and he tells us “he was describing an accident where a man lost his testicles.”

Theo and Didier follow their incident map closer to the site of the suspected mines, and along the way they meet the local army commander, Seargent Major Theodore Ndikumana. Several accidents have already been reported here, with old and forgotten fragmentation mines surrounding the military base.

I’m so tired and hungry I want to cry. We stop in a room, a store room, with one bulb in the centre, sacks of grain stacked in the corner. I eat fried Makaki fish and friend banana, all wrapped in banana leaves and heated over open coals outside, as I watch the eight police men – our security escort – getting drunk on local Primus beer.

We Never Thought It Could Happen To Us

2008-03-31T00:19:00.000+01:00

Zlatko reads the daily incident report from the UN, reading about Bubanza province where we’re supposed to be travelling tomorrow. He’s been waiting for the UN to promise at least one open-top pickup truck full of police to, at the least, make any armed bandits think twice before attacking us. So far, they haven’t agreed, so his project in Bubanza has been delayed.
He reads down the list of attacks.
“8pm. This one’s in Bubanza. A group of armed bandits broke into a family home, throwing a grenade and killing three members. 6am, armed bandits stop a bus on the road and rob the occupants of mobile phones and wallets.”

I continue reading down the list over his shoulder. One family was attacked and killed, in another grenade attack, because the bandits suspected a member of the family of “witchcraft”. The violence seems completely unpredictable, and illogical.

Zlatko cross-checks each report with a map of Bubanza province, to see how close each attack is to his team’s proposed route and area of operations.

The violence is unpredictable, but one thing remains consistent. Even after the horrors of genocide that this country has been through, even after the sickening associations with the names “Hutu” and “Tutsi” that make me cringe to hear them, the division remains. People still refer to one or the other. I remember David Niyonzima writing “Unlocking the Horns” about reconciliation in Burundi, when he said that before Belgian colonisation, no one here knew what it meant to be Hutu or Tutsi.

Last night, Zlatko and I were discussing the war in Bosnia again (I still have a lot to learn about it). He explained that when the war started and reports would come in that the Serbs had attacked here, or the Croats had attacked there, him and his friends would listen in confusion. He comes from Tusla, a town famously well integrated between Serbs, Croats and Muslim. The town’s mayor was even nominated for a Nobel Peace prize for his efforts in keeping his community together during the worst violence. But when they heard the news during the day, Zlatko and his friends would meet later that night in a bar to ask each other,
“’What are you? Are you a Serb?’ Are you a Croat?” We didn’t know,” he explains to me, “We had no idea what it meant to be a Serb or a Croat or even Muslim. Today, when I think about it, maybe 95 percent of my friend in Tusla are Muslims, but I didn’t even think about it at the time. I didn’t even know what it meant! And my friend would go ask his parents, and he would come back the next day saying ‘Well, my parents told me that we’re Serbs.’ If we heard on the radio that the Serbs had just attacked somewhere, he would be embarrassed. If you were in a mixed marriage - and my wife is from a mixed marriage but it didn’t mean anything before – suddenly your wife’s family would look at you suspiciously. We never thought it could happen to us. Especially in Tusla. We never believed it could happen, but it happened.”

I thought about this today, as Alain was explaining to me the news that morning. The President, a Hutu, had ordered the demobilisation of a number of army officers, all Tutsi. The President being a Hutu, people saw it as an attempt to either rebalance the army (if you’re a Hutu) or imbalance the army (if you’re a Tutsi). For years, the army has been dominated by Tutsis. After all, the 1993 coup - and the subsequent vengeful killing of Hutus by the army and their proxies - was made possible because of the Tutsi control over the army. The Vice President, a Tutsi, disagreed with the President’s decree, but here it looks like that doesn’t count for much.

At the same time, FNL leaders – Hutus - are in Tanzanian preparing to meet with the government – dominated by a Hutu party - to finalise a peace deal. Today, they’re still waiting for the government to guarantee them immunity from arrest and prosecution before they set foot in Burundian soil.

Over in Zimbabwe, “the people have won” they said.

We Are All God's Children

2008-03-28T19:22:00.004Z

Early morning, and we leave the hotel at 8am. The air is cold up here at 2000m as we drive through the pine mountains of Bururi. The mist is still seeping along the road. Zlatko is analysing the convoy, because this is the area where a previous FSD convoy was attacked three weeks ago.
“Tell the first car to move forward a bit,” he tells Mathius in the back seat, who is communicating with the rest of the team by radio. “And tell the next two vehicles to move closer together.”
The first two cars are carrying armed policemen. To be honest, they don’t look to me like highly trained soldiers, but they’re better than nothing. Usually, just the sight of a group of police with AK-47s is enough to scare bandits off, many of whom may have only one gun between them, the rest just carrying machetes.

At some point, around half way through the journey, we turn off the main road and onto a bright red dirt track that brings is straight through tiny, straw hut villages and town markets. People stare as the convoy of five white vehicles, antennas waving, sprints past. We are heading this morning to a series of electricity pylons to do a final visual check of FSD’s work. They've already cleared the pylons of several fragmentation mines, originally planted by the Burundian Army to keep FNL rebels from sabotaging the power lines. But since the start of the war 13 years ago, the mines have been forgotten, abandoned, and eventually the national electricity company Regideso called FSD to clear the area and allow their workers to get back to essential maintenance work.

We park the jeeps on the tarmac road and the team collects their equipment, as children nearby sit and stare in amazement. The policemen just hang around, disinterested.

With everything in hand, the team steps off the road, onto a dirt track, into the bush. At such high altitude, even this little hike, with all my gear, leaves me gasping for breath and dripping in sweat. At the top of the path, the team sets up a camp and gets dressed in their protective gear, flak jacket and protective helmet. They tune their metal detectors, and return to the paths around the pylons.

I ask Gabriel why he does this dangerous work. “Because I want to help my brothers and sisters in Burundi,” he tells me.

When the work is finished, and we’re all back down on tarmac with the Land Rovers, it starts to rain. Just a trickle, at first, but then the warm, thick rain of the tropics. Some of the team stand under it, it’s so relaxing, rather than take shelter in the jeeps. Gabriel shares around some Kasava that he found while working, and we all take bites. The team is laughing and relaxed after a tough day. I practice more words in Kurundi.

As Gabriel offers me another piece of Kasava, he asks “Where are you from originally?” in his very specific and clipped vocabulary.
“Palestine.”
“Ah, Palestine!” he says knowingly. “We hear about Palestinians fighting with the Israelis every day here. Whey can’t they live together in peace? I have heard that they say that this conflict is in the Bible. Is it true? And that it will end when Jesus returns to earth?”
“No. There are stories about it in the Bible, but the real conflict is political.”
“Ah, okay. I have heard also that the Israelis and the Palestinians are brothers, is this true?”
“Yes, I think so.” I want to compare the situation to this country - The FNL, a Hutu military group, is fighting the government, now also run by Hutus – but I’m not sure that the analogy is right and I don’t want to say anything insensitive.

Later that night, Gabriel tells me 23 members of his family were killed in the violence of 1993, including his father, his brother and his uncle. He sees the look of shock on my face, and answers as only someone who has been saturated by such violence can: “But this is normal! This is just something that happened...” He was at the University of Kibima in Kitanga when around 150 of his classmates were burned in a petrol station.

But even Gabriel, a well-educated and sensible man, has his own version of history. Everyone here has their own version of history. The violence of 1993 was sparked after the country’s first democratically elected president – a Hutu - was assassinated by the Tutsi-led army. Hutus took revenge on a mass scale against any Tutsi they could find. In return, the Tutsi-dominated army, with proxy Tutsi killers of their own, slaughtered tens of thousands of Hutus in further revenge. But Gabriel still tells the same story those Tutsi killers told 15 years ago – those were only a few deaths, regrettable accidents that occurred during military operations in response to Hutu violence around the country. It was not a policy of killing, he insists, there were not tens of thousands of Hutus murdered, he tells me.

When I ask if he is a Tutsi or a Hutu, he laughs, just as Alain laughed when I asked him casually over lunch a few days ago. It’s still an awkward question to ask, and I think Alain and Gabriel were only laughing out of politeness. “ I will tell you,” he said, “but I also want to say that I don’t like to make these divisions. I believe in God, and I believe we are all in God’s image so we should not make these ethnic divisions between us...”

The Mountains

2008-03-27T18:58:00.002Z

In the afternoon, I finally leave the centre of Bujumbura as we drive in convoy to the province of Bururi. Some areas there are still threatened by FNL, the last armed rebel group holding out for a separate peace. Zltko spent the morning meeting with the UN, trying to arrange a security convoy for the group after one of his teams was attacked by an armed ambush two weeks ago on a similar route. That time, a bullet pierced the vehicle’s radiator and skimmed one of the de-miners’ skulls. He went to hospital with only slight injuries – that time he was lucky, but Zlatko was furious. The UN wasn’t offering his team daily incident reports, so he had no idea that route was dangerous, and now the UN was refusing to arrange a security convoy for the next trip. Maybe they couldn’t be bothered, maybe they didn’t like giving the impression that the country wasn’t safe.

As soon as we leave the Bujumbura city limits, we climb into the mountains of Burundi. I soon understand why they used to call this country “the Switzerland of Africa.” It’s high altitude pine forests, and thin cool mountain air. I remember my family holidays in Switzerland when I was 12 or 13. The air is thin, it gets harder to breathe as we approach 2000m. The roads are lined with coffee plants, piles of wood burning for charcoal, papaya plants. It’s hot, despite the cold mountain air. Rain comes in for a few seconds, then dissipates.

We pass crowds of Burundians, walking through markets, stacked between the dirt road and the soaring mountains behind them. There are misty green forests all around us, and crowds of excitable children staring at the convoy, waving passionately and yelling “Muzungo! Muzungo!”. Zlatko laughs every time. “Yes, here I am. I am the Muzungo!”
I practice my Kirundi with Mathias in the back seat. “I learned this the other day: ‘sin do Muzungo. Do Muarabo!” I am not a white man, I’m an Arab. Mathias laughs with approval.
“What’s the difference?” Zlatko asks. He puts his arm next to mine as he holds the steering wheel. His skin is tanned, and darker than mine.

I tried to convince a nurse the other day that I was half African. “My mother is Egyptian,” I told her. But she laughed off my explanation. If you’re not black, you’re a Muzungo.

The drive is long – we son get bored. I ask Zlatko to give me a brief history – once again – of the Balkan wars. “Don’t worry,” he reassures me, “Even Bosnian’s find it complicated,” and he tells me the story of the day his city of Tusla came under attack from the Serbs. Despite being a Bosnian Serb himself, he joined the local militia to defend the Muslims, and defend his town. For months, they didn’t trust him, he says, “I knew there was always someone at my back with a gun, ready to kill me.” But he soon proved himself, and he rose through the ranks of the once-guerrilla army to become a counter-intelligence officer. When he would return home from the front every few months, his villagers would throw him a welcome party, offering what little they had as gifts.

We reach Bururi by 5:30pm, here to do quality assurance on the latest phase of FSD’s mine clearance operation. We order brochettes for dinner, and I have to accept that I’ll be eating meat for the first time in maybe 18 months. There’s nothing else available. With a local Primus beer, I sit with Zlatko and his Burundian team in the tin-roofed back room of the restaurant, one naked light bulb above our heads and a tropical rain splashing down outside the glassless window. Near the end of the night, an older man leans over to Gabriel, one of the team members, and says something as he motions to Zlatko. Gabriel translates in very polite, accented English.
“He says he is surprised to see a white man sitting with him and drinking and eating normally.”
“Tell him,” Zlatko replies, “there is no difference between him and me except for a little more pigment in his skin.” Gabriel translates. The older man nods in agreement, and stands up to shake Gabriel’s hand, then Zlatko’s hand, with a smile.

“You know,” Gabriel continues, “because we had colonialism here and it was very bad. It meant white men would sit alone and separate from black men. So for this man to see you sitting here with us and sharing food with us is very special.”

Burundi

2008-03-24T21:10:00.005Z

It's been five days so far in Bujumbura. This is my first experience of Central Africa, and the first time I've been south of the Sahara since South Africa, when I was still only a little boy (now a big boy), in 1994.

The nights are hot and humid, geckos are climbing the walls. In the mornings, I look out of my window and see mist over the mountains. I can hear the sound of tropical birds. It's already warm by 8am, and I climb out from under my mosquito net, still drowsy after some very vivid dreams brought on, I think, by malaria medication.

I'm here to cover a landmine clearance operation, one that - when completed within the next two months - will make Burundi the first 100% landmine free country in the world. Burundi, as tiny and internationally obscure as it is, has its own horrific past of genocide and civil war. One thing it doesn't need now is landmines and unexploded ordnance littering the country. Violence continues despite a 2000 ceasefire and the parliament has been paralysed for over two months after Alice Nzumokunda - the head of the ruling party CNDD-FDD - was dismissed for "undisclosed" reasons.

I interviewed the new head of CNDD-FDD, Colonel Jeremie Ngendakumana, and asked him directly why Alice was removed from office.

He smiled and said "This is internal party matters, I don't think it is right to discuss it with people outside of the party."

The Colonel had, so far, refused to discuss his party's reasons with anyone in Burundi, neither journalist or non-party member. "But everyone in the party knows why," he assured me. This wasn't a good answer from a Colonel, in a country accustomed to military coups, who is now being accused of being a dictator.

Christmas Songs

2007-12-28T01:02:00.000Z

We are invited to Campbell's for Christmas dinner. His entire family is there, all 21 of them (with Robert and I added as last-minute guests), too big to fit in their home, so they rent out an entire bed-and-breakfast for themselves. They are, on the surface, a typical mid-west family: sweet, polite, apple pie and gingham shirts. Campbell's grandparents introduce themselves: "I'm grandma," his grandmother chirps and shakes my hand. "And I'm grandpa!" his grandfather chimes excitedly. It's all so sweet and bible-belt looking it's easy to forget these people are actually fairly radical pacifists, many of them willing to break federal law to help "fugitives" escape from the U.S. military.

My first impression of the sweet, harmless family is quickly shattered when we start talking about international politics. There aren't many Mid-west Christian families who can talk confidently about Palestine and Israel, some of them from first-hand experience having worked there in peace-making and human rights teams.
"What do you think of this Annapolis Conference?" Campbell's uncle asks, smiling deviously and sarcastically fishing for a reaction. "They've never tried that before have they? It looks like it'll be sorted within a year..."

When Campbell's grandfather bows his head to say grace before our meal, he asks if anyone would like to sing a song before we start. Dara, one of the younger granddaughters, requests "Joy to the World," and I expect (as I'm used to hearing at impromptu family sing-a-longs) a half-hearted, off-key rendition. But I'd forgotten the Menonite tradition, explained to me earlier by a proud Campbell, for spontaneous group singing in harmony. In Campbell's family, they take this tradition particularly seriously.

"Joy to the World" was a rousing, beautiful ode in four-part harmony, with everyone knowing their part perfectly. I struggled to choose a key. Robert was hopeless. As the family finished the meal and moved into the living room to read the Christmas story and sing more hymns and carols, it became increasingly clear that Robert had absolutely no hope of singing anything in key. He couldn't even follow the melody. I tried to throw in a few harmonies to impress the family (no one noticed) but as I filmed Robert, I started to feel bad, slightly embarrassed for him. He really was terrible. At times when he did actually make a sound, it was way off. Not even close to the tune. I was filming him closely for the documentary, but it ended up looking like an exercise in humiliate him, and getting it all on tape for future humiliations, possibly broadcast around the work on Al-Jazeera International.

No one said peace-loving, Christian army deserters had to be able to sing.

A Few Days Waiting

2007-12-27T15:56:00.000Z

The next few days pass slowly. Robert and I have little to do, except wait for something else to happen. The weather is well below zero in Northern Indiana, and the hotel room's heater barely works. I watch cheap tv at night because I can find little inspiration to do anything else. I go for short runs while the sun is still up, slipping on ice in the road and running straight into snow and oncoming car headlights (there are no pavements in this part of the city).

Because Robert has no plan of his own - he is working based on Campbell's advice - he's often left waiting for Campbell before making any real decisions. He's very much alone in this - without family or friends to support him. On the days Campbell spends away from us, with his family, Robert is lost. He often asks me about the process, about how military law treats people like him (what should we call them? Conscientious objectors? Deserters? Criminals? Patriots? It depends on who you ask) Robert asks me about turning himself in, about protocol and procedures. I know only what I've been reading lately about it, but I try to put his mind at ease as best as I can. He switches quickly and constantly between acting very confident, and showing his true vulnerable self.

Most of the time, he considers everything he wants to say very carefully. Listening to his reasoning, his intelligent speech, you would never guess he was only 19. Most of the time he presents himself as a very relaxed, but angry kid.

But one night he gets a little drunk and I finally see the angry teenager. He vents his anger at the military, yelling at me in the deserted hotel bar as though I was the military.
"You just degrade me like that, trying to make me feel less than human! Everything is designed so that the men who were once soldiers being picked on and beaten up then become officer, and they pick on you and bear up the soldiers under their command because that's how they were treated. You de-humanise everyone! How can you ask me to respect when you treat me like shit!"

It goes on like this for almost an hour - occasionally looking up at the television above his head to distract myself - before I have to ask Robert to calm down, and I leave for my room to watch more cheap television and fall asleep.

This Small Town

2007-12-26T00:24:00.000Z

As Campbell drives us through this small town in Northern Indiana, Robert and I slump into exhaustion. He jokes with Campbell about the experience, about the state Trooper who was only interested in questions about videos on YouTube, the moment we thought he would surely be arrested. I laugh with him, somewhat reveling in the fact that we're finally safe. I'm tired and hungry, looking out the window, into the freezing night, watching the quintessential American signs pass us by: the glowing MacDonalds logo, petrol stations, green road signs, stick on lettering in front of Churches wishing me a Merry Christmas and reminding me that Jesus loves me.

As he drives, Campbell calls his father asking where he recommends as a safe house for Robert. We pull into a Motel where we'll be staying for two nights until the safe house is confirmed. We pay in cash just in case the FBI are looking out for credit card transactions. After dumping our bags into our rooms, Robert and Campbell sit on opposite beds, eating the pizza we ordered for dinner (everywhere else was closed...) and falling into theological debates. They're not arguments, though Robert enjoys being combative, perhaps knowing that his knowledge of the Bible and its interpretations is immense. They discuss drinking, is it written in the Bible that Christians shouldn't drink, or just that they shouldn't get drunk? Robert's Chaplain in the army who - amongst other things - advocated hitting your children believes the Bible instructs Christians not to drink at all. He also believes the war in Iraq to be one battle in a major Christian-Muslim Holy War, so I wouldn't take his opinion as gospel. Anyone whose job it is to provide religious justification for war should be suspect...

Pizzas finished, we head to the bar downstairs for a drink. It was closed when we checked in, and the receptionist told us that Christmas Day it wouldn't be open. But the bar-tender agreed to open it just for a few drinks for his friends. Then we found it open so he could hardly refuse to serve us (though he did demand exact change). We sit in the cold bar, right beside the speaker churning out loud hip-hop, with the dance floor empty beside us. On the tvs above our heads various sports games are playing. The Patriots are set to be the first team in history to finish a 16-game season undefeated. I don't care about American football, but Robert seems excited.

Two flights

2007-12-25T06:00:00.000Z

These are the worst flights of my life. I want to get them over with as quickly as possible, my stomach permanently tense. I want to bang my fist against the airplane window. I want to be in Indiana instantly, can't stand to wait for one take off and landing, another wait in another airport, another take-off and landing. It's just dragging out the inevitable, that's how I feel.

Robert, too, is certain that, any minute now, the Troopers would be back, having spoken to his platoon, with orders to detain him. We wait by the gate before we board in Connecticut. Our names are called again at the gate, but this time only to re-issue us with boarding passes. I want to run on to the plane as fast as possible, yell at the pilot "Don't you know what's happening? We need to get out of here as soon as possible!"

Once on the plane, I'm waiting anxiously for them to close the cabin doors as quickly as possible. I hope for the wheels to run quickly over the tarmac until we lift off and can at last see the airport shrink below us, and feel safe for the two hours it takes us to reach Chicago.

There, we expect the police to be waiting for Robert on the tarmac. Surely, by this point, they would have contacted the platoon and get orders to arrest him.

"This is where the black SUVs pull up" Robert laughs as we hit the runway at O'Hare. Throughout the flight, he keeps repeating as much to himself as anyone else:
"I can't believe this, it could have been so easy. I can't believe my sister would do this. My own flesh and blood. Merry Christmas, you know!" And he laughs nervously.

He had called his sister from the airport in Connecticut, as soon as the Troopers were done questioning him, but she denied she had called the FBI.
"They called me" she told him, but of course he didn't believe her.

At O'Hare, we sit in Chilis to get something to eat. We're both damn hungry, more from tension thank anything else. All I had today was a small muffin from Dunkin' Donuts. There are servicemen all over the airport. Whenever we pass one, I expect him to turn to Robert and ask his name, hold up a photograph, ask for his ID, and radio it in. I eat because I'm hungry, but my stomach was still turning.

At every gate, with each member of staff, I expect to be found out. Everywhere I look, everyone I looked at, I expect they know what Robert's doing, and every announcement over the loudspeaker makes me cringe with the thought of hearing our names read out again. I had expected there would be descriptions of Robert sent to O'Hare airport, since the FBI knew all our flight details by this point.

But none of this happens. Campbell would later describe it as a Christmas Miracle...

State Troopers: The Conclusion

2007-12-25T03:00:00.000Z

I'm standing still for about an hour, as I try to humour the bomb-disposal Trooper and Robert's interrogation continues with the Sergeant. Finally the Sergeant lets Robert walk outside for another cigarette, and asks me over for some questions. He doesn't make small talk like the Trooper, he gets straight to the point, definitely someone who wants to assert his authority. But he's also fair enough to answer me with respect when I ask him questions.

He wears a round hat that makes him look like a Canadian Mountie.
"The situation is," he tells me "we got a call from Robert's sister saying she was concerned that he was planing on deserting the army,"
"Oh," I reply, saying as little as possible. I don't t want to let on that I know, but I also don't want to deny that I know in case he finds out eventually that I'm lying. One thing I've learned from interrogation at Israeli airports: if you don't know what they know, it's always safer to tell the truth - as incriminating as it may be - than to be caught lying.

I tell the Sergeant as little as I can get away with. I always feel, in situations like this, that I have a certain degree of immunity as a journalist. It may not be true, but at least it gives me the confidence to look the Sergeant in the eye and tell him what he wants to know. He radios in my information to another officer, and I lean in to overhear pieces of the conversation.

"I've got this journalist with me from Britain. I heard something about Al-Jazeera, he says he's doing a documentary."

As relaxed as I feel, and as calm as Robert looks, I'm still convinced that it's all over, that they're here to arrest Robert and as soon as they hear from his unit, they'll take him away in handcuffs.

But this doesn't happen. To my surprise, when the Sergeant finally lets me outside to talk to Robert, he's enjoying a cigarette with the bomb-disposal officer. They're discussing Robert's position as a conscientious objector.
"We're not holding you, you're free to fly now, we're just trying to clear this up," he tells Robert.

Inside, bomb-disposal officer wants to ask me a few questions, so I turn the camera to him.
"Oh, they have nothing to do with this," he explains "I just want to know how I can put my own videos on YouTube. I don't get it. I'm not good with technology. You got three wires; red, yellow and black and I don't know what to do with them!"

State Troopers: The Interrogation

2007-12-25T02:00:00.000Z

The first trooper that approaches us asks Robert's name to confirm his identity. He asks for ID. He looks into the camera and says "hello to anyone watching this on YouTube". It's only the beginning our conversations about YouTube with this feckless cop. He explains to Robert that they were just checking up on him based on a phone call. We still have no idea, at that point, that his own sister had called the FBI to turn him in.

A Sergeant eventually comes over and takes control. It's clear he's in charge, he doesn't joke with us the way the bomb disposal expert does, the Sergeant doesn't wave at the camera. The bomb-disposal trooper deferrs everything to him as the Sergeant put his hand in front of the camera and asked me to turn it off. He took Robert aside and interrogated him separately.

I was left with the feckless trooper. He seemed to have no idea what was going on around him
"We're not holding him, we're just checking up on him"
He wanted to talk about college football, he talked about the riots in London but he was thinking of Paris. "Oh, there all over there" he said, waving his hand to indicate the Atlantic between the United States and everything over there.

I was sure that Robert was being arrested. It would be a quick and possibly easier end to his plans, saving him being on the run for 30 days, saving him the fear and tension of knowing, over the next month, that the military was looking for him. I was doing my best to follow his interrogation with the Sergeant while humouring the Trooper in front of me, now asking me questions about the reason for this film.

I made up a story about filming a documentary on the regeneration of small American towns. It was all I could think of after I looked up the name of Robert's town online and found it contained a "traditional" Main Street, and an old cinema opened by the original Warner Brothers themselves.

"But what about your friend in the military, what are you doing with him?"
"Uh...well, with these small towns, when a lot of guys go to the military, they lose a lot of their work force, so that has a lot of influence on how they have to re-generate their cities."

He seemed happy with that, and threw in his own opinion.
"Yeah, I know Torrington pretty well, it's a pretty - I don't want to be insulting - but it's a pretty lower class place where there aren't many opportunities for guys."

While trying to pretend I was keeping up a conversation with the Trooper, I kept looking over my shoulder to see what was happening with Robert and the Sergeant. Barely concentrating, I kept talking with the Trooper about sports, music, college...

State Troopers: The Introduction

2007-12-25T01:00:00.000Z

This is the story of our narrow escape:

Robert and I headed to Bradley Airport, Connecticut, on the morning of December 25th, Christmas morning. It was quite a depressing way to spend Christmas morning, but I got the feeling from Robert that he never had a particularly good experience at home anyway, so perhaps he wasn't missing much.

Our first Chicago flight is canceled because of bad weather, so we have four hours to kill. We buy breakfast at Dunkin' Donuts and sit with our coffees to wait, discussing what foods contain trans-fats. Robert laughs to himself because he's eating a bacon croissant, full of trans-fats, and he'd spent the past few days telling me how unhealthy they were.

Later, we sit by the giant window, overlooking the runway, filming a few questions before we fly. It was supposed to be a very simple journey, connect through Chicago to a smaller town, then get our ride from there to the safe house. He would be underground before the military even realised he was missing. But something went wrong.

While we're sitting and talking, Robert's name is called over the loudspeaker, asking him to go to the ticket counter. Robert suddenly looks up, at the speakers, scared. He asks me what he should do. After a few moments of deliberation, he decides that hs has to go to the counter, it might just be a question about our changed tickets.

We picked up our bags and walk back through security, Robert is worried that this is it. Somehow they had found him, and they were here to arrest him. He walked outside the airport first for a cigarette,
"If I'm going to be arrested, I want a last cigarette" he chuckles.
"Alright,"he sighs, as he stubs out his cigarette, "I guess this is it. I was going to get arrested anyway, so this just makes it a really short journey."

The plan was for him to wait in hiding for 30 days, then his name would be struck from the active duty roster, then he could turn himself in and do his time in prison, but without the danger of being sent - in handcuffs if necessary - back to serve in Iraq.

He walks back inside, approaching the ticket counter. Surprisingly, the guy behind the counter doesn't seem to know why Robert's been called:
"No, I didn't call you. Hey!" he turns to the other man at the counter behind him and calls out "did any of you call this gentleman? No?"

Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe they just wanted to check that he had picked up his new boarding pass. Relieved, we walk back to security and start to take of our shoes, our jackets, our belts to slide them through the x-ray machine again. Half way through, with my shoes and belt off, we hear his name again over the load speaker.

This time, as we quickly collect our things and walk out to the departure lounge for the second time, we finally see what we were expecting: two state troopers, standing in front of the airport exit.

"Yep, this is it" Robert says to me, without too much regret.

Indiana

2007-12-25T00:43:00.000Z

Our flights take us to Northern Indiana, where Robert has arranged to meet the man who's going to help him go into hiding. "Campbell" has done this before, helping unsuccessful conscientious objector applicants to hide from the military police until they're ready to turn themselves in. Usually, they wait 31 days until their names are struck from their unit roll to ensure that, when they do finally turn themselves in, their unit doesn't simply try to send them back into combat in handcuffs. It happened to another conscientious objector, Agustin Aguayo, but he didn't stop running. He eventually served time in prison, but he believed he was doing the right thing, and now he campaigns against others joining the military.

Talking to Campbell on my mobile as soon as we touch down, he tells me to let Robert walk out first, alone, while I wait to collect his bags in case the military police have finally been alerted to his flight path and are expecting him to walk out with a journalist. With Robert safely outside the airport, Campbell joins me beside the luggage carousel, joking comfortably about our situation. He points to a sign above the exit: "Michiana welcomes back its service men and women". Despite people like Campbell, this is a red state, the home of the Hummer, and heavily invested in defence spending.

On the drive through the freezing night, Robert and I tell the story of our narrow escape from the state troopers. Campbell, like the rest of us, still finds it hard to be believe that Robert's own sister would turn him in. "I don't know, it doesn't surprise me that much," Robert adds. That only makes it worse...

We can finally rest for a moment, finally joke about our situation. The interrogation, the flights, that certainty that Robert was going to be arrested - possibly with me - was exhausting, draining.

We weren't expecting it, of course.

"Usually," Campbell explains, "We don't have to deal with anything like this until a few weeks into it when their unit realises they're missing..." But we got it out of the way sooner. I watch the city lights reflecting off the car window, the air outside sharp with snow and ice. I listen to Robert and Campbell laughing together, discussing the next 31 days during which Robert will be in hiding, waiting for the right time to turn himself in and, if necessary, serve his time in prison.

We drive in to the Travelodge where Robert and I check in for two nights until Campbell can arrange for a safe house. I leave a London address, a combination of several of my old addresses which the receptionist misspells anyway. I don't want to be able to traced in case the police come looking for us. They already know we were flying in to here, it wouldn't take much for them to search the hotels closest to the airport for our names.

Campbell has some good news a little later that night. The hotel bar, which we were told was closed for Christmas, was open for a few hours. They didn't plan to serve anyone except a few friends, but we ordered anyway and sat in the freezing bar, music hammering on an empty dance floor, and talked about the journey so far.

AWOL

2007-12-22T19:43:00.000Z

From the stories we've heard so far about people who enlist in the military - and people who try to get out as conscientious objectors - Robert is fairly typical. He enlisted when he was only 17, and needed his parents to sign a consent form. He says he didn't know what else to do - he had nowhere else to go, no idea what he wanted to do with his life. His mother had also joined the military under similar circumstances when she was younger. His older sister is now in the National Guard.

Robert is from a fairly typical "broken home." His parents are divorced, his father took his mother Anne to court, and now she lives on welfare in government housing.
She has two other kids from another man, a man with eleven kids himself who broke her nose in a fight once. She also has another daughter from another man whom she doesn't seem to know very well. Her brother, Robert's uncle, is in prison after being arrested for drunk driving for the fifth time, but even Robert doesn't know this. Robert joined the military when he literally had no other choice, after his mother kicked him out of the house and, later, the friend whom he was living with was also kicked out of his house. With no job, and nowhere to live, Robert finished high-school a year early and enlisted at 17.

We at Tourist have been following the story of Robert closely for several months now, since before we started filming in Germany, because he seemed like such a sincere and eloquent conscientious objector. He was in email contact with Michael at the Military Counseling Network once every few weeks, explaining that he wanted out of the military as a conscientious objector, and saying he was willing to go AWOL. We were very eager to follow Robert's story, and film the process of getting out with him, so when we heard his application had been rejected, and he was planning to go AWOL, we decided to fly to the US immediately to join him on the run.

His mother, Anne, picks me up from the airport. She doesn't seem to trust me, and she's not afraid to say it.
I realise it's very strange me just showing up from out of nowhere and recording her son's life, but sometimes Anne takes it a little too far.
"I don't know who you are, I don't know what your agenda is."
"Well, I don't have an agenda."
"Yeah, well, you say that, but I don't know you."
"Okay, uhh...but I guess you just have to trust me,"
"I mean, you could be a terrorist or something, I don't know,"
"Yeah...uhh...well I guess you just need to trust me that I want to tell your son's story."

Later, she confronts me again in front of Robert,
"This film isn't going to be unAmerican, is it?"
"Well, no, I don't have that in mind,"
"Robert, it's not going to be unAmerican is it?"

But, despite all this, she still seems to have a lot of - perhaps begrudging - respect for me. She doesn't mind telling it straight, but she also doesn't mind me telling it straight.

I get the feeling she's been through too much already to waste time bullshitting. Or, if I take Robert's word for it, she's just crazy.

Robert, too, isn’t afraid to tell it straight. He has a lot in common with his mother, though he might not like to hear that. They both say “I don’t care” a lot. They both say “I don’t know” and then go on to explain that they actually do know. Robert isn’t afraid to talk about everything he’s been through, and everything he’s planning. I appreciate that it’s a surreal situation for him to suddenly find a cameraman following him, “I don’t know what to expect,” he told me on the phone before I left London.

“I don’t know what to expect, either,” I told him.

The Path of Even More Resistance

2007-12-20T22:17:00.000Z

After a successful week filming in Bammental, Germany with the Military Counseling Network, we thought our latest film was going well. We had principal photography done, we were on schedule and under budget, and - surprisingly - the war in Iraq was not yet over, ensuring our film wasn't suddenly redundant.

All we had left was a quick return trip to Germany to film a prize-giving ceremony with a well-known Iraq War conscientious objector-turned-deserter, followed by an interview with said objector-turned-deserter. It was to be a touching and beautiful end to the film, a plucking of the heart-strings as this shy but determined man told the story of his transformation from gun-toting medic to lover of humanity.

But no. It wasn't to be so easy. The man (whose name I won't mention for his own sake) had changed his mind. After two months of contact, he suddenly went quiet. He went from expressing his support for the project to completely ignoring us. We finally tracked him down to the house of a gynecologist in Heidelberg (the association is, I'm told, immaterial) where he explained that he didn't want to be associated with Al-Jazeera.

Or, to be more accurate, he first he said he was too busy and tired to be interviewed, which sounded a little suspect coming from a man who was willing to go to prison for his ideals, and who has dedicated his life - since being discharged - to highlighting the inequalities and brutalities of the US military in Iraq. He's been doing interviews, marches and protests since his release from prison - this guy doesn't get "too busy and tired." Eventually Gareth called him (I was too afraid to push it...) and arrived at the truth. He was scared.

"I already get enough hate mail and abuse from Americans," he explained timidly. "I don't want to get any more." He was worried about the heartland of American, the Bible-belters: precisely the kind of people who would NEVER WATCH AL-JAZEERA. Especially since, as we explained to him, Al-Jazeera doesn't even broadcast in the US unless you specifically subscribe.

"Everyone who will hate you already hates you!" I wanted to say to him. But I didn't. "The Bible-belters already thing you're a traitor! They couldn't possibly hate you any more!"

We did all we could, we called his friends whom we had already filmed with for a week and asked them to convince him. No luck. We tried to pressure him. We tried to emotionally blackmail him (note to Gareth: you tried emotional blackmail, right?) No luck.

It was clear by the end of the conversation that there was no chance we were going to get this man to talk to us. We were not happy. I was afraid the whole film was ruined. We had wasted money on tickets, our schedule was out the window, we were pissed.

But then something even better came along...

The Path of Most Resistance

2007-10-12T17:22:00.000+01:00

With major operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and enlistment at its lowest level for decades, the United States military is desperate for new recruits. At the same time, the military is seeing unprecedented numbers of deserters and Conscientious Objectors refusing to be re-deployed.

Tourist With A Typewriter's latest production, THE PATH OF MOST RESISTANCE, tells the story of US soldiers who - while awaiting redeployment in American’s war zones – dared to challenged the military machine by deserting or applying for Conscientious Objector status, and joined the growing movement of anti-war veterans.

We are currently filming THE PATH OF MOST RESISTANCE in the southern Germany town of Bammental, where the Military Counseling Network - an organisation dedicated to helping US soldiers get out of the army - is based. We will be back in London on November 16th for the first cut of the film, and returning to Germany in December for an additional two or three days of shooting.

Look out for daily updates of the production from director Gareth Keogh and producer Saeed Taji Farouky.

Screenings & Broadcasts

2007-08-28T23:48:00.001+01:00

Following the successful premier screening of Tunnel Trade (an investigation into Gaza's underground smuggling economy) and A Midsummer Night's War (asking if culture and art can survive the ravages of war), the two films will be broadcast on Al-Jazeera English.

Tunnel Trade will screen on People & Power at these times:
Monday, September 3 (0130 GMT)
Tuesday, September 4 (0630 and 1330 GMT)
Saturday, September 8 (0300 and 2030 GMT)

Film screenings

2007-08-07T12:18:00.000+01:00

With the broadcast of Tunnel Trade on Al-Jazeera International fast approaching, we will be screening our two most recent films - Tunnel Trade and A Midsummer Night's War - at London's Frontline Club on August 26th, 2007.

Find details of the screening, including how to purchase tickets, here.

Visit our website for more details about the films.

Trailer online

2007-07-29T14:04:00.000+01:00

The trailer for Tourist's first documentary, I See The Stars At Noon, is finally available online, thanks to the wonder of YouTube. Watch the trailer here

You can also now buy copies of the 57-minute DVD directly from us.

I See The Stars At Noon is the story of a Moroccan man's attempt to illegally immigrate to Spain. In January of 2004, in the northern Moroccan city of Tangiers, Saeed Taji Farouky met a 26-year old Moroccan named Abdlfattah. He was a clandestine, one of many Africans who try to cross the narrow Straits of Gibraltar - stowing away on cargo ships or boarding inflatable rafts - and illegally enter Spain. By the end of their first meeting, Abdlfattah had agreed to let Saeed follow him to film every aspect of his journey, including his dealings with people-smugglers, his struggle to raise the 750 Euro fee, and his final days with his family before leaving

The End Is Near

2007-07-25T23:01:00.000+01:00

Finally, A Midsummer Night's War is complete. We thought we had missed our chance, having taken nearly a year to finish it, but now it seems it was well-timed for the year anniversary of the summer 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon.

We submitted the film to the Canary Wharf Film Festival, and are also in negotiations with Al-Jazeera International to broadcast the film as part of the programming for the anniversary of the war.

Work continues with Tunnel Trade, a 21-minute documentary about smuggling through tunnels under the border between Gaza Strip and Egypt, also for Al-Jazeera International. The rough cut is complete, and will be delivered tomorrow for comments.

Soundtrack

2007-06-13T21:24:00.001+01:00

Work is ongoing, if a little slow, with the film. We've shot another three films since the production of A Midsummer Night's War, but this will be our next next finished project.

At the moment, we're just putting the finishing touches to the picture edit, and moving into sound edit and music composition. The process is being slowed down by the fact that we're editing remotely, but hopefully it'll be done before too long. Out goal now is to have it ready by the end of June in order to submit it to the Canary Wharf Film Festival, and then arrange a series of screenings in London and (hopefully, in the future) in Lebanon.

I'm reading the news now about Lebanon, it seemed at the time of filming (and when I returned again in February 2007) that the country was trying to pick itself up and put itself together again. There was some optimism then, despite the bus bombing of February 13, there was still that spirit of moving on. Now Nahr El Bard, and more bombings on the streets of Beirut. The worst violence since the end of the civil war. It seems, perhaps, the cycle is starting again, and it makes me wonder if the film is still relevant now. Maybe too much has happened since the summer war to make a film about reconstruction valid...

It Is Happening Again

2007-05-31T22:04:00.000+01:00

I thought it would happen again. In the lobby of Al-Deera hotel, a man working at the reception came in through the front door looking nervous.
“They just killed the leader of Hamas in Gaza.”
“When?”
“Just now.”
“Where? Where did the Israeli’s bomb.”
He paused just for a breath, “No, it wasn’t the Israelis. Palestinians…”

I thought it would happen again. The story was that Abu Hamza Abu Gaines was killed and taken to El-Shifa hospital, not far from the hotel. He said there were clashes there, but I still couldn’t hear anything.

I thought everything would start again, the killings and kidnappings and executions. The explosions and midnight gunfights.

But it was only a rumour. Abu Hamza hadn’t been killed, he was merely injured, and the injury itself happened outside El-Shifa’. That night passed quietly. The Palestinians had other things to worry about. The Israeli bombings continued.

A Tunnel and Two Chickens

2007-05-30T22:03:00.000+01:00

Ahmed is a tunnel digger. He says he’s 19, but doesn’t look much older than 16. We walk with him through the wreckage of a demolished house in Rafah, within site of the Egyptian border, asking questions about his work. Unlike Abu Anfaq, he’s not afraid to admit what he really does:
“I bring in weapons for the resistance, to fight Israel. And to make money.”
But the occupation is over. Like Youssef Siam said, the weapons are now just arming Palestinians to kill other Palestinians.
“No, it’s not like that,” Ahmed maintains. “I don’t get involved in that. They’re fighting the Israelis.”
Like everyone else we’ve spoken to so far about the tunnels, he says he does it because there’s no other work available. It’s only partly true – the other reason is that there’s no other work available that can make you as much money as trading through the tunnels.
“I want a car, a nice house, to get married eventually…”

Later, he takes me to a tunnels he and his friends are working on. Their all 19, perhaps early 20’s. One of them carries a Kalashnikov, unloaded. He lets me hold it, and shows me how to cock the gun. I quickly give it back, admitting I’m not comfortable with guns. I’m also just trying to read these kids, to see if I can trust them with their offer to let me down into the tunnel to film.

I climb down the chute, four metres deep, gripping the walls with my hands and feet to lower myself down slowly. They pass the camera down carefully. Ahmed crouches down and slides into the tunnel’s opening, telling me to follow him. The opening is barely wide enough for me to fit through, and I have to scrape my elbows against the rough, sandy ground to hold the camera in front of me at the same time. It’s hot down there, I can hardly breath for the first five or six metres, the walls so close I can taste sand. Ahmed moves much more easily down here, scurrying in ahead of me like a rabbit. My knees are scraping against the floor, my head against the roof. My trousers fill with sand every time I brush against the tunnel’s roof.

At one point, still early on, I have to pause to ask myself if I can continue. Slowly, it becomes easier to breath as I get used to the staleness of the air. I’m already breathing heavily only a few minutes into the crawl, a combination of the physical effort and my own nerves.

Perhaps ten metres in, Ahmed points to the right, showing me a breathing hole used to allow fresh air into the tunnel. Then he asks if I want to go on.
“How much further is it?”
“It goes all the way to Egypt, but there’s just ahead where we can rest and turn around.
I decide not to go all the way to Egypt. Another five metres ahead, and the tunnel suddenly opens widely as it hits an underground spring. The kids call it the rest stop. They spend time here relaxing, sometimes having dinner.

Ahmed sits in complete darkness, but I’m filming with an infrared light. Every time I point the camera at his asked face, his eyes glow green. I scan the room, feeling only slightly more comfortable now that I have room to stand up straight. The truth is, I want to get out of there as fast as possible, but that means going back through the narrow tunnel.

It feels so vulnerable crawling through there. Anything could happen, and I would have no way to run. I imagine the tunnel filling with poisonous gas, the gas the Egyptian authorities throw down when they find smugglers under their border. I couldn’t even turn around. People sometimes die down here just from panic.

Half way back down the tunnel, and my muscles are in pain. I’m breathing more heavily now, as though exercising. My muscles aren’t used to this. Crawling is painful now, my knees and elbows scraping raw against the dirt. I can see the light ahead, but it’s still an effort, those last five metres. I emerge, looking up to see the others looking down at me. I’m covered in sand, under my clothes, filing my hair.
“how was in,” one of them asks.
“difficult…” I mumble.

Earlier, we went to buy two chickens for Ibrahim, the creepy man who welcomes guests into a tent amidst the row of destroyed houses that directly face the wall. He took us down into the opening of a disused tunnel, showed us around, told us the story of his brother who was killed by an Israeli sniper when he approached a house here suspected of holding a tunnel.

Ibrahim wants money, but Laila and Fida are certain he’s going to use it to buy cigarettes or drugs while his children run around barefoot, so we agree to barter. He wants a pair of trousers. Laila and Fida are afraid he could sell the trousers, so we suggest a chicken. He wants two chickens – fresh - so he gets in the car with us, driving around the market of Rafah until we find a man selling fresh chickens.

He slits their throats, drains the blood, boils the body, pulls out the feathers, and guts the two birds in a few brief minutes. All on the porch of his shop. From living chicken on my right to cleaned and gutted meals on my left. Ibrahim takes the bag, satisfied, and we drive him back to his house.