Two True Stories

Sometimes you hear stories of those years of war that scared the first half of the twentieth century that you cannot let pass because they stick with you, they say too much, paint too strong a picture. In this last year I have heard two such stories, one from the Ukraine, one from China.

First a story from the Ukraine. This was told by a lecturer at the university in L’viv who had been a little more than a child herself at the time of the German occupation. She included this in one of the lectures she gave.

After the first shock wave of the German conquest the two sides, the occupiers and their subjected peoples, had to set about living together. The occupiers gave themselves full licence to demonstrate their superiority in all sorts of ways, in this case over the two carriage trams that ran in the city. The Ukrainians had to travel in the rear carriage of the trams leaving the front carriage for Germans. Perhaps there might be only one or two Germans in the front - the rear one would be crammed to overflowing. Sometimes one of the Germans might call a child forward into the front to come and sit with them as a treat. If you were called you dare not refuse but went and sat dutifully as you were told. No one dared to interfere.

Neither did people dare to be in the front carriages even if they were completely empty, even if there were no signs of any Germans being about - it was just never safe.

Such a simple story, but one telling so much about power and fear, about oppression and the oppressed, about division and separation. One no doubt duplicated in a thousand subtle ways across the world - in segregated America, in racially divided South Africa, or by division of wealth and class in Britain, or by caste as in India - repeated in so many place, in so many ways. in so many times.

The second story is from China, from Shanghai just at the point when it had been occupied by the Japanese in November 1937. Many, if not most, of the Europeans left the city on whatever ships they could find as soon as the fighting subsided . My friends mother was working as a governess to one such European family. She had done well for a village girl from the South to have a job like that. For whatever reason the family decided to take her with them when they left. Who knows, perhaps the children she cared for were too attached to her to make leaving her easy? Getting her out through the Japanese check points would be a very risky thing to do. Europeans were given passes so that they could go to the harbour and board whatever ships they could find passage on. Chinese were forbidden. The Japanese expected absolute obedience. If they even considered that a Chinese had not bowed quickly enough or low enough they were executed there and then.

The family put my friend’s mother into the middle between them all and there she sat petrified in case she was spotted. For trying to escape the city she would have been beheaded immediately. Somehow, and my friend has no idea how, the family were not challenged at the check points. At each one their papers were meticulously inspected, but other than a cursory glance, no check was made on exactly who was in the car. They were crowded and perhaps a small Chinese woman somewhere in the middle of many faces was simply not noticed.

They left on the last boat out of the harbour.

Where Borders are Real Borders

Where borders are real borders, borders that remember that they are there to control people, to prevent people, to dominate and diminish them. “The state”, the border says, “is all. You are nothing”.  The suspicion is all enveloping. “You are but a supplicant who may, if we feel inclined - may, let me stress - may, with our permission, be allowed to pass – but it is doubtful, very doubtful”. 

There is a knowing with absolute clarity that you are unfit, untrustworthy, suspect, someone who should not be tolerated. You are a danger. Your very presence will contaminate, will corrupt. You should be barred, turned back, driven off. You are like an unwanted virus, a contaminant, a disease. The border is here to prevent such infections spreading.

It is dark, night, a chill has settled and this is my first experience of the border. The bus slows. There is a jolt where the smooth road surface ends and the concrete blocking starts. The bus makes a right angle turn and then another. The first stop light and the wire towers over, looming in the glow of the arc lights.  Everything is seen in stark contrast. The glare of lights or deep shadow. Colours are drained as if they are illegal migrants. This is a place of wire, concrete, dark and suspicions. 

A long wait and then a green light. The bus bumps forwards, following the right angle turns in the road. No chance for speed or for turning back. The road is only just the width of the vehicle. The wire has it trapped. And when the wire passes the dark spaces of grit and gravel that fill between - barren places that plants dare not grow in. This is not a place of one, but of many fences. The bus halts in a queue. Long times elapse. There is a silence that is not friendly - it is the middle of the night and no-one on the bus wants to talk in this place. We are awake because we know that it is the border; that we have to be awake; that not to be awake is to commit an offence. 

After a while of edging forward one vehicle’s length at a time, followed by a long wait after each move, the bus finally reaches the next fence and its control post where another red light holds us until we are allowed to pass into the next compound. Eventually the light changes and we bump and jolt across that space towards a distant yawning shed. We get nearer and it grows larger, its harshly lit interior a chasm opening between concrete buildings. The bus slowly makes a last sharp turn and lines up with the entrance. It stops and waits once more. 

It is signalled forward and comes to a halt inside the shed. The driver opens the doors and sits and waits. He and the other crew know that that is all they can do. The border guard will come when they are ready. When they choose. If they choose. May be now. May be in an hour. Whenever. You know the bus is being watched, carefully watched. The bus is not to be trusted. We are warned to have our passports ready. 

A guard enters the bus. Takes each passport in turn, looking long and hard at each and then at its owner. There is not a flicker on his face. The passport is then added to the growing stack that he holds, open at the photo page. Not a word is spoken. We all know our parts. Sit very still. Do not talk. Look past, not at, the guard. There will be no questions here. They may come later. 

Eventually all of the passports are collected. The guard gets off the bus taking one of the crew with him - the one to be held responsible. The waiting begins again. The time is slow. It is ponderous. It knows not to take risks.

Eventually the driver returns. He looks heavy with worry. He hands back each passport to its owner and returns to the front, attentive, waiting for the next instruction. 

The bus moves forward once more, out of the shed into another darker wasteland  between more fences. Stops. Moves. Stops again. We wait. Another shed. More bleak buildings ahead of us. Once more we are summoned forward. The bus stops in the lane it has been directed to. The same sinister ballet is taking place in the parallel lanes under the arching roof of the border control shed – the stopping, the waiting, the silence. The driver gets off and opens the hatches under the bus where all the baggage is. In other lanes vehicles stand with all their doors and hatches open; stand waiting as if in some strange ballet of exposure. 

The driver return to the bus and signals to us that we must all get off. We are told to get our bags from the hold and take them to the benches that line the side of the lane. We obey. We lift out bags on to the long benches and stand behind them, waiting. It is getting cold and a steady wind is blowing chill through the shed. Nothing happens. No voices are heard. No one moves more than just to shuffle in a effort to keep warm and to keep awake. Time feels manacled. It dare not protest by moving forward. 

A guard appears and points at the bags. We are to understand that they should be open. He goes away. A delay for our impudence at not having the bags open ready? The night cold begins to get past our clothing. We wait.

The guard returns and looks into each bag. Not at us. He has a pen with which he occasionally pokes at something, or uses to hold the bags more open. He goes away. Nothing happens. Nothing happens for quite some time. Another guard climbs on to the bus. He has a torch and a dog. He takes quite a while.

The building in front of us has big halls with benches and tables under cold lights. You are aware of places where questions are asked. Questions that are asked very slowly. Questions the answers to which could lead you to smaller rooms where even more questions are asked - to rooms with bare lights and hard chairs. Rooms which are there to protect that which lies beyond. Rooms from which some people do not return. Rooms where the state sanitises itself of those of whom it does not approve: entrances to years of questions and cells. 

We are told to get back on the bus. We do up our bags and carry them to the hold. We climb back on. We sit and wait, not quite daring to rest or relax. The driver does not start the engine. We sit and wait. It is the middle of the night but no-one risks sleep. The engine starts. We lurch forward bumping our way across more concrete blocks, following the roadway between yet more fences, round more sharp twists and chicanes, the customs shed receding behind us diminishing into remoteness, a place of bright light in a growing gloom of half lit roadways and fences. 

Once more the bus stops at a red light. The final guard post in the last line of wire. The light changes and we bump through and onto a normal road. The night embraces us as we slide away from our place of trial and suspicion, many hours after first having entered it.  

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Ukrainian Polish boarder, autumn 2011; echoes of the Soviet era and mindset still strongly present. The guard that know their importance and their power. Their boots still shine.