Written by: Jawad Boulos
I needed a dose of pure and true hope that would restore some of my lost balance before, during, and after the election battle for the Israeli Knesset. I did not think long; I submitted a request to the Ofer prison administration to visit the administrative prisoner, Nidal Abu Akar, after his family contacted me and requested that I visit him to check on him.
I spent my nights, as I have lately, battling the darkness to inhale my need of air from its belly; Trying to get anxiety off my pillow. I did not notice when I fell asleep, but I remember hearing the sound of the dawn call to prayer announcing, from the mosques in the Dahiyat Al-Bareed and Beit Hanina neighborhoods, that Jerusalem is waking up to face its unknown another day. I did not sleep as well as an old man who was tired of traveling behind the mirage of justice and perverting the truth deserved. I was afraid that I would not get up before nine o'clock and miss my prison visit.
At nine, a prison service vehicle was waiting for me at the entrance to Ofer Prison; Her driver asked me to follow him in my car. We reached a spacious yard, with high concrete walls behind and in front of us. The jailer pointed to a place in the yard, and I parked my car there in front of a small iron door. Moments later, they opened the door, and I realized that I was close to the room we used to come for visits from the main prison gate, crossing its inner courtyards on foot. The warden asked me to take off my watch and my belt, to take out all metal objects from my pockets, and to pass through the electric inspection gate. I entered the gate confidently and made it through successfully. After my long years of experience, I know how to come without "excesses" or "appetizers" for these visits. I choose well-fitted "cashier" shoes, the soles of which do not provoke the sensitive gates' sensors, and I carry with me only a few white papers and a clear-cut pen so that the jailer can see the ink in his stomach.
I entered the visiting room with the eagerness of a boy looking for a place to go to in order to grow up. It was cold, but I paid no attention to it, and the concrete bench and the chair I was about to sit on were covered in dust. I did not try to remove the dust, as it is a necessity of the atmosphere.
The place was buzzing with silence and loneliness. I tried to draw the features of Nidal as I remember him and from his recent photos in the media; His face was like a dark orange camp dawn emerging from the universe's enlightenment. His hair is dark, flowing slightly forward at the temples and receding at the ends of his head. On the forehead is what looks like a fringe that makes the beholder see a smiling heart.
I tried to remember when I first began visiting prisoners of liberty in this place, but the barking of the guard dogs interrupted my focus. When I heard her barking, I remembered what my escort, the warden, said when we passed her: These dogs are wild and can only be left locked up in the corridors. I didn't ask her about the dogs job there.
I heard the clatter of keys, so I was pleased. Nidal entered and looked at me, and I felt his relief. They removed the handcuffs from his hands, so he came forward, calmly, and sat across from me. I placed my palm on the thick glass partition between us, and his palm met it on the other side. We picked up our phones and headed towards our destination. The features of his face were the color of longing and more beautiful than I imagined; His broad black eyebrows, like two right-hand daggers, crouched above two deep black eyes that insisted on speaking to me in the language of pride and joy.
Nidal was arrested for the first time while he was in the second year of middle school, and from that time he was arrested repeatedly until he reached a total of sixteen years, of which he spent a total of fourteen years as an administrative prisoner on suspicion that he was an activist in the ranks of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and because the Israeli intelligence officer told him before his arrest once. He does not sleep comfortably if Nidal is outside the prison.
We talked for a long time, and I did not hear any complaint or hesitation from him, but rather insistence and conviction of the motives and meanings of his sacrifice. He and his fellow prisoners are striving for their people to achieve their human dreams, which are simple: to live in peace with their children and rejoice as humans rejoice, if their child enters kindergarten, or their son graduates from school or university, and that they share a daughter with whom she is betrothed or married. He said this in a flute voice and with the melody of a reed, as his daughter Dalia recently got engaged while he was a prisoner.
Nidal did not seem to have reached fifty-five years of age. Perhaps this is how, with present freshness and lofty spirit, the Palestinian resists the oppression of the occupier and tames the harshness of time. Nidal and his ilk know that administrative detention is one of the harshest means of deterrence and torture practiced by the occupation against the Palestinians. And they know that the occupation, by resorting to this compelling means, wants to create Palestinian models who are helpless, submissive, weak, and desperate, so that their experiences may be examples of terrorizing the new Palestinian generations. Or as he said to me: “They want to raise the costs of those who work in national and community work in order to intimidate activists and other fighters through us.” But he added reassuringly: “I am convinced that the prisoner lives in the conscience of our society, despite the decline of many values and attempts to strike concepts True patriotism, goodness still exists with us. I interrupted him to ask him what he was doing, and he answered me seriously and with surprising spontaneity, “I work as a prisoner.” Then he added: “When I am out of prison, I work in journalism and the media as well.”
I try to catch my breath from the clarity of this conviction, especially when he told me that the occupation authorities prevented and mostly prevented him from visiting his family members, except for a painful paradox when they also arrested his son Muhammad administratively, for a period of four years, and since 2015 he began to meet him in prison; This is how it happened with his twin brother, Raafat, who also spent seven years in administrative prison.
I quietly wondered: Or maybe this is the way to reunite the angels in heaven, or at least the angels who protect Palestine?
I asked him about his dreams and the meaning of his longing behind bars? He advanced his chest a little towards the glass, as if he wanted no one to hear what he was saying, then raised his forehead and it shone like a star, and said: “My dreams are simple. I want to live with my wife and children, and to be by my mother’s side. I want to kiss my mother’s hand and her forehead and to eat together, as a simple family.” It is generous and that we rejoice and grieve together.. It is too much for a person to dream of living with his children, his mother and his family in peace and freedom?
He was silent.. I asked him: Do you regret these years? He turned his head back a little and leaned on a beam of light that was creeping in from a high window behind him, and he put his hand on the glass as if he wanted to feel his heartbeat jump out of his chest and said: “Never, never, there is no heartbreak or regret; we walk on legs of hope, and we sleep On our pillows, so that we can nurture the breath of the homeland only on it, and join our dreams with ribs in our chests and plant them as daggers in the flanks of defeats and despair.We, our teacher, have led us from eternal love and longing, and we know, with tragic certainty, that our suffering is fleeting and will one day become a mere scattering in memory, and we know Our coming days are the most beautiful, so our souls are the guarantees of our future, and it has promises, covenants, light and light.” We heard footsteps approaching us. One of the jailers opened the door and asked me if I had finished the visit? So I made him understand that I am here on a journey of spiritual healing, not on a visit to a prisoner; He went out as he entered.
Don't you suffer from this dimension? Nidal asked. Without hesitation, his voice rushed through the phone like a heavenly torrent, and he answered: “Of course I am in pain, but not from the same distance. My administrative detentions, that I suffer in pain to be deterred.. It pains me when the occupation soldiers storm our house to arrest me and handcuff me in front of my household, and they tie the hands of my two daughters, Karmal and Dalia, so I had to say goodbye to them while we were all handcuffed, then I looked at my wife, who was injured in the events of the first intifada, and I saw her tears flowing She is jostling with the soldiers to protect me. It hurts me when they deliberately hit me in front of family members while I am completely handcuffed..” He was silent for a while and continued in the rhythm of pain and said: "It is a physical impotence, but my will and theirs are steel and stronger than their arrogance." I did not raise my eyes to him, for the pictures of my household filled my eyeballs like water.
One article will not suffice to talk about a visit that I wished would not end; If I come to prison as a supporter, I will come out of it while I am full of dignity, hope and dignity.
Nidal Abu Aker - who told me that his family was expelled from a village located west of Jerusalem, called "Ras Abu Ammar" - before they settled in Dheisheh camp - represents a large Palestinian segment whose members keep, under their skin, the seed/gene of Palestinian survival; Despite the severity of their suffering from being repeatedly targeted as administrative prisoners (the number of administrative prisoners these days is about eight hundred), most of them live without regret or heartbreak. Yet they wish to sleep and wake as the sons of men do: to the cooing of dahlias, to the crowing of cocks, to the calls of peddlers in the dust of their camps, and to the bleating of sheep; To drink coffee with their wives and to call Carmel in the morning while she pampered her father on his birthday and greeted him with the phrase “I love you, Baba.” These are all the highest degrees of happiness for them.
Nidal and his comrades do not regret; But, as I understood from him before my departure, they fear that they and their children will be filled with hatred against their enemies, for hatred is not in the nature of loyal nobles and honorable freemen.
I left prison knowing that I would face the truth, feel free, and be full of hope. In the car were radio stations broadcasting news after the Israeli elections. I only heard the end of the newsletter, and it was a fleeting talk about the Arabs' quarrels and quarrels over the meanings of patriotism, dignity, and influence.
