Posted on 11/12/2001
Beating
From The Beaten
by Robert Fisk
Published on Monday, December 10, 2001 by ZNet.
They started by shaking hands. We said "Salaam aleikum" - peace
be upon you
- then the first pebbles flew past my face. A small boy tried
to grab my
bag. Then another. Then someone punched me in the back. Then
young men
broke my glasses, began smashing stones into my face and head.
I couldn't
see for the blood pouring down my forehead and swamping my eyes.
And even
then, I understood. I couldn't blame them for what they were
doing. In
fact, if I were the Afghan refugees of Kila Abdullah, close
to the
Afghan-Pakistan border, I would have done just the same to Robert
Fisk. Or
any other Westerner I could find. So why record my few minutes
of terror
and self-disgust under assault near the Afghan border, bleeding
and crying
like an animal, when hundreds - let us be frank and say thousands
- of
innocent civilians are dying under American air strikes in Afghanistan,
when the "War of Civilization" is burning and maiming the Pashtuns
of
Kandahar and destroying their homes because "good" must triumph
over "evil"?
Some of the Afghans in the little village had been there for
years, others
had arrived - desperate and angry and mourning their slaughtered
loved ones
- over the past two weeks. It was a bad place for a car to break
down. A
bad time, just before the Iftar, the end of the daily fast of
Ramadan. But
what happened to us was symbolic of the hatred and fury and
hypocrisy of
this filthy war, a growing band of destitute Afghan men, young
and old, who
saw foreigners - enemies - in their midst and tried to destroy
at least one
of them. Many of these Afghans, so we were to learn, were outraged
by what
they had seen on television of the Mazar-i-Sharif massacres,
of the
prisoners killed with their hands tied behind their backs. A
villager later
told one of our drivers that they had seen the videotape of
CIA officers
"Mike" and "Dave" threatening death to a kneeling prisoner at
Mazar. They
were uneducated - I doubt if many could read - but you don't
have to have a
schooling to respond to the death of loved ones under a B-52's
bombs. At
one point a screaming teenager had turned to my driver and asked,
in all
sincerity: "Is that Mr Bush?"
It must have been about 4.30pm that we reached Kila Abdullah,
halfway
between the Pakistani city of Quetta and the border town of
Chaman;
Amanullah, our driver, Fayyaz Ahmed, our translator, Justin
Huggler of The
Independent - fresh from covering the Mazar massacre - and myself.
The
first we knew that something was wrong was when the car stopped
in the
middle of the narrow, crowded street. A film of white steam
was rising from
the bonnet of our jeep, a constant shriek of car horns and buses
and trucks
and rickshaws protesting at the road-block we had created. All
four of us
got out of the car and pushed it to the side of the road. I
muttered
something to Justin about this being "a bad place to break down".
Kila
Abdulla was home to thousands of Afghan refugees, the poor and
huddled
masses that the war has produced in Pakistan.
Amanullah went off to find another car - there is only one thing
worse than
a crowd of angry men and that's a crowd of angry men after dark
- and
Justin and I smiled at the initially friendly crowd that had
already
gathered round our steaming vehicle. I shook a lot of hands
- perhaps I
should have thought of Mr Bush - and uttered a lot of "Salaam
aleikums". I
knew what could happen if the smiling stopped. The crowd grew
larger and I
suggested to Justin that we move away from the jeep, walk into
the open
road. A child had flicked his finger hard against my wrist and
I persuaded
myself that it was an accident, a childish moment of contempt.
Then a
pebble whisked past my head and bounced off Justin's shoulder.
Justin
turned round. His eyes spoke of concern and I remember how I
breathed in.
Please, I thought, it was just a prank. Then another kid tried
to grab my
bag. It contained my passport, credit cards, money, diary, contacts
book,
mobile phone. I yanked it back and put the strap round my shoulder.
Justin
and I crossed the road and someone punched me in the back.
How do you walk out of a dream when the characters suddenly
turn hostile? I
saw one of the men who had been all smiles when we shook hands.
He wasn't
smiling now. Some of the smaller boys were still laughing but
their grins
were transforming into something else. The respected foreigner
- the man
who had been all "salaam aleikum" a few minutes ago - was upset,
frightened, on the run. The West was being brought low. Justin
was being
pushed around and, in the middle of the road, we noticed a bus
driver
waving us to his vehicle. Fayyaz, still by the car, unable to
understand
why we had walked away, could no longer see us. Justin reached
the bus and
climbed aboard. As I put my foot on the step three men grabbed
the strap of
my bag and wrenched me back on to the road. Justin's hand shot
out. "Hold
on," he shouted. I did.
That's when the first mighty crack descended on my head. I almost
fell down
under the blow, my ears singing with the impact. I had expected
this,
though not so painful or hard, not so immediate. Its message
was awful.
Someone hated me enough to hurt me. There were two more blows,
one on the
back of my shoulder, a powerful fist that sent me crashing against
the side
of the bus while still clutching Justin's hand. The passengers
were looking
out at me and then at Justin. But they did not move. No one
wanted to help.
I cried out "Help me Justin", and Justin - who was doing more
than any
human could do by clinging to my ever loosening grip asked me
- over the
screams of the crowd - what I wanted him to do. Then I realized.
I could
only just hear him. Yes, they were shouting. Did I catch the
word "kaffir"
- infidel? Perhaps I was was wrong. That's when I was dragged
away from
Justin. There were two more cracks on my head, one on each side
and for
some odd reason, part of my memory - some small crack in my
brain -
registered a moment at school, at a primary school called the
Cedars in
Maidstone more than 50 years ago when a tall boy building sandcastles
in
the playground had hit me on the head. I had a memory of the
blow smelling,
as if it had affected my nose. The next blow came from a man
I saw carrying
a big stone in his right hand. He brought it down on my forehead
with
tremendous force and something hot and liquid splashed down
my face and
lips and chin. I was kicked. On the back, on the shins, on my
right thigh.
Another teenager grabbed my bag yet again and I was left clinging
to the
strap, looking up suddenly and realizing there must have been
60 men in
front of me, howling.
Oddly, it wasn't fear I felt but a kind of wonderment. So this
is how it
happens. I knew that I had to respond. Or, so I reasoned in
my stunned
state, I had to die. The only thing that shocked me was my own
physical
sense of collapse, my growing awareness of the liquid beginning
to cover
me. I don't think I've ever seen so much blood before. For a
second, I
caught a glimpse of something terrible, a nightmare face - my
own -
reflected in the window of the bus, streaked in blood, my hands
drenched in
the stuff like Lady Macbeth, slopping down my pullover and the
collar of my
shirt until my back was wet and my bag dripping with crimson
and vague
splashes suddenly appearing on my trousers.
The more I bled, the more the crowd gathered and beat me with
their fists.
Pebbles and small stones began to bounce off my head and shoulders.
How
long, I remembered thinking, could this go on? My head was suddenly
struck
by stones on both sides at the same time - not thrown stones
but stones in
the palms of men who were using them to try and crack my skull.
Then a fist
punched me in the face, splintering my glasses on my nose, another
hand
grabbed at the spare pair of spectacles round my neck and ripped
the
leather container from the cord. I guess at this point I should
thank
Lebanon. For 25 years, I have covered Lebanon's wars and the
Lebanese used
to teach me, over and over again, how to stay alive: take a
decision - any
decision - but don't do nothing.
So I wrenched the bag back from the hands of the young man who
was holding
it. He stepped back. Then I turned on the man on my right, the
one holding
the bloody stone in his hand and I bashed my fist into his mouth.
I
couldn't see very much - my eyes were not only short-sighted
without my
glasses but were misting over with a red haze - but I saw the
man sort of
cough and a tooth fall from his lip and then he fell back on
the road. For
a second the crowd stopped. Then I went for the other man, clutching
my bag
under my arm and banging my fist into his nose. He roared in
anger and it
suddenly turned all red. I missed another man with a punch,
hit one more in
the face, and ran. I was back in the middle of the road but
could not see.
I brought my hands to my eyes and they were full of blood and
with my
fingers I tried to scrape the gooey stuff out. It made a kind
of sucking
sound but I began to see again and realized. that I was crying
and weeping
and that the tears were cleaning my eyes of blood. What had
I done, I kept
asking myself? I had been punching and attacking Afghan refugees,
the very
people I had been writing about for so long, the very dispossessed,
mutilated people whom my own country -among others - was killing
along,
with the Taliban, just across the border. God spare me, I thought.
I think
I actually said it. The men whose families our bombers were
killing were
now my enemies too.
Then something quite remarkable happened. A man walked up to
me, very
calmly, and took me by the arm. I couldn't see him very well
for all the
blood that was running into my eyes but he was dressed in a
kind of robe
and wore a turban and had a white-grey beard. And he led me
away from the
crowd. I looked over my shoulder. There were now a hundred men
behind me
and a few stones skittered along the road, but they were not
aimed at me
-presumably to avoid hitting the stranger. He was like an Old
Testament
figure or some Bible story, the Good Samaritan, a Muslim man
- perhaps a
mullah in the village - who was trying to save my life.
He pushed me into the back of a police truck. But the policemen
didn't
move. They were terrified. "Help me," I kept shouting through
the tiny
window at the back of their cab, my hands leaving streams of
blood down the
glass. They drove a few meters and stopped until the tall man
spoke to them
again. Then they drove another 300 meters. And there, beside
the road, was
a Red Cross-Red Crescent convoy. The crowd was still behind
us. But two of
the medical attendants pulled me behind one of their vehicles,
poured water
over my hands and face and began pushing bandages on to my head
and face
and the back of my head. "Lie down and we'll cover you with
a blanket so
they can't see you," one of them said. They were both Muslims,
Bangladeshis
and their names should be recorded because they were good men
and true:
Mohamed Abdul Halim and Sikder Mokaddes Ahmed. I lay on the
floor,
groaning, aware that I might live.
Within minutes, Justin arrived. He had been protected by a massive
soldier
from the Baluchistan Levies - true ghost of the British Empire
who, with a
single rifle, kept the crowds away from the car in which Justin
was now
sitting. I fumbled with my bag. They never got the bag, I kept
saying to
myself, as if my passport and my credit cards were a kind of
Holy Grail.
But they had seized my final pair of spare glasses - I was blind
without
all three - and my mobile telephone was missing and so was my
contacts
book, containing 25 years of telephone numbers throughout the
Middle East.
What was I supposed to do? Ask everyone who ever knew me to
re-send their
telephone numbers? Goddamit, I said and tried to bang my fist
on my side
until I realized. it was bleeding from a big gash on the wrist
- the mark
of the tooth I had just knocked out of a man's jaw, a man who
was truly
innocent of any crime except that of being the victim of the
world.
I had spent more than two and a half decades reporting the humiliation
and
misery of the Muslim world and now their anger had embraced
me too. Or had
it? There were Mohamed and Sikder of the Red Crescent and Fayyaz
who came
panting back to the car incandescent at our treatment and Amanullah
who
invited us to his home for medical treatment. And there was
the Muslim
saint who had taken me by the arm. And - I realized.- there
were all the
Afghan men and boys who had attacked me who should never have
done so but
whose brutality was entirely the product of others, of us -
of we who had
armed their struggle against the Russians and ignored their
pain and
laughed at their civil war and then armed and paid them again
for the "War
for Civilization" just a few miles away and then bombed their
homes and
ripped up their families and called them "collateral damage".
So I thought I should write about what happened to us in this
fearful,
silly, bloody, tiny incident. I feared other versions would
produce a
different narrative, of how a British journalist was "beaten
up by a mob of
Afghan refugees". And of course, that's the point. The people
who were
assaulted were the Afghans, the scars inflicted by us - by B-52s,
not by
them. And I'll say it again. If I was an Afghan refugee in Kila
Abdullah, I
would have done just what they did. I would have attacked Robert
Fisk. Or
any other Westerner I could find.
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