Don’t Go There: From Chernobyl to North Korea—one man’s quest to lose himself and find everyone else in the world’s strangest places

by Adam Fletcher

  Elijah played the dog-eared “we were here first” card often. I found it hard not to roll my eyes each time. If you move the needle of history back far enough, aren’t we all invaders, all foreigners, all squatting on what was once someone else’s land? The first ape’s climbing down from the trees was a dick move that condemned hundreds of thousands of other animals to extinction at our hands. Their sacred rights have counted for very little, thus far.

  At the checkpoint, I was happy to leave Elijah behind. He was a nice person, and a good guide, but it was time to hear about the conflict from another perspective, even if that perspective turned out to be just as biased as I’d found Elijah’s. The security at the crossing was actually far less invasive than that offered by EL AL in Berlin. After we emptied our pockets, and a soldier took a cursory look inside our bags, we were through to Palestinian Hebron.

  On the other side, our Palestinian guide waited with his hands in his pockets. He was a student called Jamal and in his late twenties. He had thick wavy hair brushed back from his face—a face framed by a neat, narrow goatee. He wore blue jeans, a black T-shirt, and a green zip-up hoodie. His movements were careful and precise. He was more soft-spoken than Elijah. The only time he got really animated was when he talked about his trips abroad. As a peace activist, he’d been invited to visit the UK, Switzerland, the USA, and France to give talks for UNESCO and the UN about the conflict. He’d just returned from six months in the UK. “It was shocking to return. I told my parents that I wanted to go back to the UK and have a normal life. But they said no,” he said, then frowned. “Well, in the Middle East, you can’t say anything against your parents, so, I’m still here…”

  The streets on the other side of the barrier were just as devoid of life as those on the Israeli side. A few people passed on their way to the mosque. No one lingered. We stopped for lunch at a local family’s home, just a couple of hundred metres from the border. The group was still on edge as we tore enthusiastically into a distracting, delicious lunch of lamb, hummus, vegetables, and flatbread. Since I come from England, a country with really disappointing cuisine, one of my favourite things about travelling, and globalisation in general, is how rarely I now have to eat British food. After lunch we walked through what was once Hebron’s central market, which abutted the border. The single-storey market was flanked by higher buildings on the Israeli side of the city. This means that if they wanted, Israeli settlers could throw things down from their windows onto the Palestinians.

  Jamal informed us that some of the Israeli settlers really did want to do this, and regularly threw trash, rocks, acid, and even their own waste at the Palestinians. It was an awful situation of utter cruelty. To stop this, the Palestinians had erected their own mesh roof the length of the market to try to protect themselves. You could see evidence of home-made missiles scattered atop it.

  Because of its location, and the loss of almost all tourism, just four or five brave stall owners still came and opened up their wood-fronted shops cut into rock, reminiscent of Jerusalem’s old city. There used to be hundreds.

  “Just two weeks ago,” said Jamal, as we walked through the market, “I was doing this tour, and a young Palestinian girl was murdered right in front of the group, at the checkpoint we just passed. We were all in shock. We didn’t say anything to each other for the rest of the tour. The checkpoints here are crazy. You have no idea what’s going to happen to you. It depends on the mood of the person. As long as they say you had a knife, they can do what they want with you. I believe they planted it on her.”

  A female judge in the popular American TV show The Good Wife always requires the lawyers to strictly demarcate opinion from fact. If they don’t, she adds, “In your opinion” and “You believe” to the things they say. Hearing Jamal say “I believe” reminded me of how rarely we’d heard such softeners since arriving in Israel. His trustworthiness skyrocketed. Maybe it was okay that I was suddenly so uncertain about everything in my life. Perhaps uncertainty is a good trait, in line with the complexity of the world in which we live.

  Jamal then took us to visit a Palestinian family’s home for tea. As we sat on cushions in the living room, their young son played at our feet. Jamal told us their story. “Eleven generations of this family have lived here, in this house. The neighbours on the one side are Israeli settlers, and now they’re locked in a bitter feud with them. The man offered them four million dollars to leave so he could extend his house into this one.”

  Sipping our tea, looking at the crumbling plaster of the bare, cracked walls, it seemed implausible. Jamal had already told us that a wage of a thousand shekels a month was good in Hebron. It would take very strong principles not to sell this home for four million dollars. I tried to imagine what it might be like to have such principles, or really any principles at all. It was difficult. I felt like an otter asked to split the atom. Fortunately, Jamal distracted me with another story. Unfortunately, it was even more harrowing than all the others.

  “This is actually his second wife,” he said, gesturing to the woman sitting with us. She sat wide-legged on a blue computer chair. “His first wife was nine months pregnant when she went up to the top floor of the house to get something. The neighbour shot her five times. She died almost instantly. They were able to save the unborn child.”

  All eyes dropped to the cute little kid rolling around on the floor in the centre of the room. He sat up on his knees, perhaps detecting he now had our full attention. “No. It’s not him,” Jamal said, leaning forward to ruffle his hair. “That child is eleven or twelve now.”

  “Where is he?” a Canadian woman asked.

  “That’s also a sad story,” he said, lowering his head. “Usually they made him stay inside, right, so he’d be safe. But then, one time, when he was five or six, he was playing outside on the street. The settlers from next door threw acid at him and blinded him. He was sent away to a special centre for the blind.”

  The group sat silently, our patience frayed by the insanity of this place. The stupidity of it. The ugliness of it. What can you say about something like this? The woman dabbed quietly at a tear on her cheek. Jamal tried to brush off the sadness that had befallen the room. “Oh, come on. I can tell you many stories like this,” he said, jovially. “Everyone here has these stories. We live them every day.”

  We’d reached the end of the tour. “So…” Jamal said, as our tiny glass teacups were collected, “you’ve heard from both sides. I’m interested to know your opinions. What do you think the solution might be? One state or two?” He asked this nonchalantly, as if we were discussing the best way to mend a broken chair. About half of us said one state; the rest, two. I was for two. Someone asked Jamal his opinion. “One state is completely possible,” he replied, without hesitation, “but this is the dream solution. The realistic solution is two states, protected by the UN. I don’t think we really care about land any more. We just want to live freely. There is already a two-state solution. Already recognised by the UN, even. But will Israel let us have it? No.”

  We put on our shoes and walked down the stairs and back out into the market. “The truth is that war is useful to governments. In wartime, all the attention is on that and not on the government. Corruption is easiest during wartime. In reality, the people in power don’t want a solution, because they are the ones benefiting from war. We Palestinians need peace, the Israelis merely ask for it. That’s a big difference. That’s why it never happens.”

  In his opinion.

  At the border we said our goodbyes, and the group passed back through. I looked to Annett. “I’m going to stay,” I said.

  She chewed the inside of her cheek. “Do you definitely know how to get to Anwar’s?”

  “Yeah, he gave me instructions. I’ll take a cab.”

  Annett looked to the gate, then back at me. Then to the gate, then back at me. “Okay, I’m coming as well,” she said, “but if something happens to me, know that I’m going to haunt your soul in the afterlife, fore
ver. You will not get one minute of peace from me. It’ll be a constant stream of ‘I told you so’ for all eternity.”

  Jamal squeezed my shoulder in condolence. Annett and I never had to worry whether we were soulmates, since neither of us believed in souls. Similarly, it’s hard to curse someone in an afterlife you know neither of you believe in. I gave her points for effort.

  By now, the group had worked out that we weren’t going back with them. I told them, through the gate, about Anwar’s kind offer. One or two reacted with something like jealousy; the others seemed to think this was an idiotic idea. A weird thing was happening. Everywhere we went, people told us not to go to the next place because it wasn’t safe. Then we went to that place, and it was fine, but the people there gave us the same warnings about the next place, and so on, possibly forever, across all of the Earth.

  We said a final goodbye through the railings, turned, and headed back towards the dusking market. The remaining few shops were closing up for the night. We headed towards the new city centre, and the bustling market that had replaced this dejected one. We heard chanting and shouting. Jamal flagged down a taxi for us. Some tyres were on fire nearby, the remnants of a recent skirmish. A smell of tear gas hung in the air. We knew that smell now. It was not welcome.

  Away from the border, Palestinian Hebron is a functional, albeit chaotic, city. So chaotic it hasn’t gotten around to introducing simple things like street names and house numbers just yet. Anwar’s instructions were that we should follow an ominous white wall from the edge of the university compound, keeping it on our left-hand side, until we reached a bakery with a purple sign, next to a shoe shop with a black sign. So, when I’d told Annett that I did definitely know how to get to Anwar’s, that was technically true in the slippery, wet-soap definition of truth. Conspiracy Larry’s definition. I knew we had to find that wall. What I wasn’t sure about was if we’d know when we’d found that wall. That part I’d left out. Quite a risk what with eternal damnation at stake.

  In Arabic, Jamal relayed Anwar’s instructions to the taxi driver. He did so as if they made perfect sense, which they might well have. Perhaps they regularly used walls as landmarks here. We climbed into the back of the taxi. The ride took about ten minutes, with other passengers getting in and out as we went. Taxis here were communal; you paid a set fare of 2.5 shekels per seat. People would wave the taxi down, say where they wanted to go, and the driver would either nod and stop or shake his head before driving off.

  After five minutes, the taxi drew to a halt. The driver looked at me in the rear-view mirror. I made what I hoped was a we’re here? expression, but his eyebrows dropped in incomprehension. Since I didn’t speak Arabic and he didn’t speak English, we were at an impasse. I repeated my facial expression. He repeated his. We got out. What else could we do? We shared no languages, not even Face.

  We found ourselves on the right-hand side of a busy four-lane road. There were some walls nearby, which was nice, since they’re useful for holding up roofs and whatnot. We compared these walls against the description offered by Anwar. None of them seemed like the wall we were looking for. I tried to call him, but he didn’t answer. I sent an SMS, which also went unanswered. So we picked a direction using Total Guesswork™.

  Annett stomped two steps behind me. She had expected Annett-level planning. I’d responded with Adam-level planning. We didn’t talk much. It was dark. We were lost. We passed several shoe shops and bakeries.

  “This is classic you.”

  I was busy looking at a shoe-shop sign, trying to convince myself its blue was really more of an ocean black. “You like classic me though, right? You spend a lot of time with that me. Or helping that me not get run over.”

  She cocked her head. “Yeah, but aren’t you trying to change? Isn’t that part of why we’re here?” I threw my hands up in the air. We walked a few more laboured steps down the road towards an intersection. I stopped and turned to her. “And I am changing! Not this part of myself, maybe, but other parts.”

  She let out a heavy sigh. “Well, do you think you can prioritise change in the parts that don’t respect my time, plans, or need for a heightened state of organisation?”

  My phone beeped. Anwar. I let out a long breath. How had people travelled before phones? It’s a wonder anyone has ever dared get far enough away from others to become lost, and that humanity doesn’t just live in a big herd, like buffalo. Anwar was asking where we were. We told him we didn’t know, that this was really the crux of the issue.

  What about the wall?

  Yeah, what about the wall, Anwar? There were so many walls. We sent him the name of some nearby shops. He told us to stay put. We stayed put. We sat on a wall. A small wall. It wasn’t white.

  A few minutes later, a lanky man with a long beard approached, held out his hand, and knew our names. “You made it!” he said, hugging us both. He seemed really genuinely happy about this.

  “Did we?” I asked. “Are we anywhere near your place?”

  “Sure. You didn’t see the wall?”

  We’d seen a lot of walls. This land was defined by walls.

  He bounced from foot to foot. “I can’t believe you’re here,” he said. “That’s so great.” His enthusiasm was a bit disconcerting. He was supposed to be reassuring us that what we were doing was spectacularly ordinary. We walked, relieved and light-footed, back down the road to his apartment. “How often do you host Couchsurfers, Anwar?”

  He stopped and scratched his cheek. Something about his face shape reminded me of a piece of a toast. “I’ve had maybe four hundred over the years. Now it’s more like one a month. And that’s with me accepting every request. It’s too much trouble now, I guess. You’re brave, braver than most.” Annett grimaced in a way that suggested maybe we were actually stupid, stupider than most. We found the shoe shop. We found the bakery. We found the white wall. It was simple, all so simple. Not as simple as having street names and house numbers, though. Behind the bakery, as promised, or at least strongly rumoured, was Anwar’s building. The first thing we noticed upon entering his modest two-bedroom apartment was that previous guests had written on nearly every bit of wall space. Hostel Anwar put its guestbook directly onto its surfaces. “I don’t need sex, the government fucks me every day” and “Think big, talk low, act loud!!!” were just a couple of the highlights. A guitar hung with them. I scanned instinctively for a picture of Bob Marley.

  We opened the gin we’d brought with us. Anwar’s eyes lit up, like only the eyes of a reggae-loving, alcohol enthusiast stuck in a dry city would. He quickly made up for lost time. I’ve noticed that people who are often in the company of strangers develop an ability to make those strangers forget that they are, in fact, strangers. It looks effortless, which is how everything complicated and requiring a huge amount of practice always looks. Anwar was good at it. Still, despite his warm, easy-going nature, there was a certain sadness hanging over him. He told us about a conversation he’d had on the phone that day, with his father. “Oh man. It was the usual shit,” he said, swigging enthusiastically from his gin tonic. ‘You should get married. Why are you not married yet? Why can’t you just be like everyone else? People are talking about you…’” He sighed. “Just that sentence: ‘People are talking about you.’ That tells you everything you need to know about Arabic culture, man. Fuck, people will do anything not to stand out here.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, with no idea why I was apologising. It didn’t seem to be my fault, yet. Annett poured more drinks. Anwar sighed. “So I said to him, Father, I’m happy. I like my life.” I raised my glass. We toasted. “Do you know what he said? ‘This way you’ll be even happier!’ Can you believe that?”

  We couldn’t.

  Anwar took another sip. “Crazy, man. Living here, it’s like I always need to have my guard up. I don’t fit in. I consider myself atheist, right? Well, agnostic, maybe. Anyway, can I tell people that here? No chance.” He scoffed. “I’d get attacked. And that’s why I need to ha
ve Couchsurfers around. I can’t be open with anyone else.”

  The more we drank, the more Anwar acquainted us with his strong beliefs. I tried to not judge him for them, since I had no idea what he’d suffered to generate them. There are certainly facets of English culture that irritate me—it’s part of why I left—but they’re trivial compared to having to hide your agnosticism, or to being told people are talking about you because you dared to remain unmarried into your thirties.

  “The occupation is a punishment for the way we are,” he said, as we were two-and-a-half gins in. A gin is the same unit of time as a wine, which is three-quarters of a beer. “There are consequences for everything,” he continued. “We are not organised. We might be four million, but we’re not united. We fight amongst ourselves, man. All the time. If we can’t free our minds, how do we expect to free our lands? I’d rather be anything else, even Jewish. Look at them… They’re a small group, right? Yet they pretty much run the world. They work hard.”

  He put some dance music on, and some more gins passed. “I don’t want to be depressing,” he said, “just real with you. It’s real here, I’m living it. I can’t drink, can’t date a girl. But at the same time, I don’t want to waste my life, you know? This is not an enlightened place yet, and that’s hard to fix with religion in the way. Just a week ago, two German women came to visit. We were walking around in the old town. They were speaking German with each other and a car pulled up. The driver lowered his window, spat at them, and said, ‘Fuck you, you stupid Nazis.’ It was heartbreaking. I cried with them. I simply couldn’t believe it. People willing to come here and see what our lives are like. People who want to experience our culture, and what do we show them? We spit at them and blame them for the mistakes of their ancestors. It’s like being in jail here, man. Couchsurfing is my window.”