I’m looking at the floor because there’s nowhere else to look anymore

I’m looking at the floor because there’s nowhere else to look any more. It is brown-red and made from cement. Discoloured in places, chewing gum pressed into its surface. At least, I think it’s chewing gum. I control an urge to fall down upon the floor, to feel its smooth stone, to feel its dust, to press my face into its cold comfort. But I won’t because I know that, if I do, they might I-don’t-know-what me.

This floor has felt the shuffle of endless feet over the last four years, felt those feet force themselves over its warning floors to the security machines and search areas ahead. Lines of people, patiently everyday, submitting to the architecture of the checkpoint, squeezed through cattle cages, cramped between bars, sent across this floor for the impertinent approval of occupiers.

I am looking at the floor because there’s nowhere else to look any more. I cannot look at the walls, covered with the language of occupation:
‘Insert your documents into the window and await further instructions.’
‘Deposit your bags in the conveyor belt, stand back and await further instructions.’
‘Keep the terminal clean.’
I cannot read these signs any more, especially not the one over there that reads, ‘Emergency Exit.’ There are some I can’t read anyway, written in those block capitals, another angry order.

I am looking at the floor because there’s nowhere else to look any more. I cannot look into the faces of the people waiting beside me. In front there’s a mother, a baby lolling over her shoulder, its eyes fixed by my foreign face. The little boy there, no more than eight, carrying a box of chewing gum for sale, hopeful my foreign pockets will hold change. The pretty young girl behind me, dressed in blue, heading for school. The teenager leaning on the bars, his first moustache faintly showing, an echo perhaps of his father – where is his father?

I am looking at the floor because there’s nowhere else to look any more. I cannot look at the soldiers who hide behind bullet-proof glass, whose orders distort the intercom, who target these unwanted citizens. I cannot look at this soldier, just a youth, as he interrogates the young woman in front – Where is your brother? Where is your father? I cannot look at that other soldier, her feet up on a soft chair, insolently idle on her mobile, talking in a tough voice about something.

I am looking at the floor because there’s nowhere else to look any more. I cannot look outside, beyond the cages, to the cars crawling past soldiers who carry weapons like magic wands, turning princes into frogs. I cannot watch as families are kicked out and the search begins for they-don’t-know-what. I cannot face the watchtower, standing sinister with battlefield views over the wall, the concrete strips of the wall, each one connected like Lego to the last, the least imaginative construction, the efficient architecture of control.

No, I can’t look anywhere else any more so I am looking at the floor. This brown-red cement floor, the foundation of this prefabricated building, this prefabricated checkpoint, this prefabricated state.

Published by

David

David Charles is co-writer of BBC radio sitcom Foiled. He also writes for The Bike Project, Thighs of Steel, and the Elevate Festival. He blogs at davidcharles.info.

One thought on “I’m looking at the floor because there’s nowhere else to look anymore”

  1. Liked your story and the repeating sentences that build up the picture of where you are and why you can look no2where else. Also the idea you introduce of a prefabricated state – excellent story.
    big love

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