In the summer of 2022, I gained insight into the British penal system when I was jailed for a month following direct action against Elbit—this is my prison diary (pt.8)
In the summer of 2022, I gained insight into the British penal system when I was remanded to Her Majesty’s Prison Eastwood Park. I was sent to jail for one month along with eight other activists following direct action in Bristol against Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest private arms company. During the month I spent in the penitentiary, I documented everything I saw, heard, felt, and thought as a form of resistance. This is my prison diary (pt.8).
June 4th 2022
All the prisoners are frustrated by the never-ending Jubilee weekend celebrated “in the Queen’s honour”. From friends outside, I’ve understood that we prisoners were spared the suffering of this grand patriotic celebration. Prison services have stopped operating, causing the prisoners to be under psychological pressure.
There is no significant difference in the composition of society in jail compared to the outside world: Only a few of the people are kind and noble-hearted, and only a few of them are utterly corrupt, while the overall majority would act according to the circumstances – as Epicurus taught.
The assault I’ve experienced in London last year had prepared me for jail. I’m aware that a blow can always come from nowhere (or is it my childhood trauma speaking?). I can’t imagine what the other women in here must have endured. I shall always be kind to them, whose fate is far harder than mine.
Above my shower room there is a white mark of paint. I stare at it and every time my eyes see Matisse’s dancers – a huge painting I saw in a modern art museum in Paris, not far away from The Petit Palais. I can now understand art’s power to grasp the abstractedness of movement so that every mark or brushstroke resembles the artist’s soul which has given it life. I miss Paris. Maybe when I get out of here (They cannot keep me here forever), I’ll travel to Europe to see Matisse’s dancers once again and think of prison, the same place that has protected me from the world.
Just like the protagonists in Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, I also despise all those matters such as work, studies, business, money and the entire bourgeois society – it all seems repulsive to me.
If and when I get out of here, I would like to find a true friend, not an abusive man, and to raise a cat and a dog with him – to raise my own “family” and grow vegetables and fruits far away from people and the petty-bourgeois culture.
In a moment of self-reflection, when it’s all quiet around me, I sit on the bed and close my eyes – I observe and see my petty anxieties: the cell to which I’ll be forced to move, the bail that might get denied. These are all anxieties relating to matter. I will not let them get a hold of me. If I do, I might as well give myself to slavery, for every material and external dependency is not more than inner slavery. This is how I must liberate myself from these petty anxieties. At once, these concerns appear insignificant to me. I breathe deeply and recall the arrest cell at the Magistrates’ cellar and how I took deep breaths while being in there to overcome the fear, to accept it as a step in a pursuit of justice, the virtue of the soul. I must be ready to face everything that might come as a consequence my action. Suddenly, tears began dropping from my eyes. I don’t feel like I have the nothing that I have. On the contrary: I’m feeling like the richest person on earth! And although I’m a prisoner and cannot go outside to the afternoon sun, I feel like the freest person alive!
June 5th 2022
Today is the last day of the Jubilee celebrations, and all the prisoners in the induction unit are preparing to be transferred tomorrow to another building. I am also mentally preparing myself to be moved out of here. I must accept being transferred, just like the other women in the wing who are saying they’re “ready” to be transferred. They claim that Res 6 is not as bad as you’d think and that the “girls” there are calm and more “settled”.
Today I was left to myself in the back yard. It was grey and cold, and the grim weather affected everyone who became tired, including me.
In the night my dream continues
My soul went up and down the arms factory stairs
Passed through glass and shattered windows we’ve left behind Spreading to all directions
Right and then left and right again up through the staircase
Sabotage, Sabotage, and Sabotage again!
The soul takes hold of my dreams.
Throughout the day I am flooded with memories. Pieces of beautiful memories from the sea and the public park where I used to jog every day are revealed to me. These memories take a hold of me, and I don’t know why. It is as if the soul is asking to return to its previous life before prison. But I must mentally prepare for a more extended stay here, and I must not dwell on the past. “What you have experienced no one can take away from you”, Frankl writes. The past I have lived is overflowing with experiences of beauty. How hard I’ve worked on my studies, how rich my life is. Now I find it hard to think what it would be like to return to it.
Now the sky is grey and sadness attacks me. I recall Lea Goldberg’s poem:
My land,
An improvised land of beauty The queen has no home
The king has no crown
It is a poem about grace. It describes a poor land where spring only comes for seven days a year, when the poor get to feast as if they were brides and grooms.
What caused the sadness I felt was the fact that I was denied access to speak to Yuval and get permission to call him before the pathetic queen’s Jubilee began. It has been more than a week since I’ve tried and couldn’t contact him. The feeling of having no one caring for me started creeping into my heart; the same alienation I know from Germany. I began re-reading the support letters I’ve received and it uplifted my spirit immediately. I can’t imagine things to have been any different, and so the sadness has disappeared like the moving clouds in the sky.
Beyond the walls, there’s a tree that has not yet bloomed. It must have died because all the other trees are covered with green leaves. But the dead tree stays there. Birds fly over it and land on its branch; it serves them as a place of rest and nesting. It reminds me that every moment contains the death of that moment. The tree will not regain its life, but it still has a purpose. Every moment in the past is sealed and kept for us to recapture – just like this moment of looking at the dead tree in my window.
I hope one day will come and I will laugh about the queen’s jubilee and tell people how the prisoners have suffered in this endless weekend. The ringing of our laughter will be heard from afar.
June 06th 2022
In the night, if it can be called a night, my soul again came to my protection. I dreamt I was in jail, but everything there embraced me and touched me tenderly. I woke up in the same place – in jail – and put myself back to sleep. I focused on breathing and told myself that no fate could damage my peace. Nothing can make me break. I am indifferent to everything. I fell asleep again, and even more beautiful dreams came to me. I woke up hearing the girls screaming inside their cells. In the most difficult moments, my soul comes to my rescue. I am grateful for this body and mind I’ve received.
June 7th 2022
My hand is hurting from writing. I am waiting now for the pig to take me to another cell which I’ll be sharing with someone. Maybe I’ll earn good company, who knows? The night was dreadful. The women in the other cells were screaming in rage. One of the woman said that she’s here in jail because of a man. I told her that I believed her. I do.
In the night dream, I went back to the 5th grade. How terrible – the age of my trauma. It was my elementary school classroom, but I was a mature woman. I wrote “Infantilism” on the blackboard. I began escaping through the hallways and hidden corridors, which only I knew as a child. I believe the dream was trying to warn me of the risk of being reduced to having a child mentality. Jail is like a boarding school, with the same level of control but without the educational program – or is it school that is a daytime prison for children?
More brutal and surreal was the second dream I had that night. It was a dream about enslavement, of being forced into labour, of living in a cemetery, of horror with no end. Charly, my comrade, was in it. He came to my aid in the dream just as he did when he held me and told me not to fear as the pigs broke the glass when they arrested us at the Elbit Systems headquarters.
Even today, on this grey morning, I think of these dreams, nightmares, being there to protect me, to tell me what my soul cannot afford to be conscious of.
I didn’t manage to speak with Yuval and the “International Officer” is not keen on helping me out. Despite the frustration, this is an opportunity to learn how important it is for me to speak with him, and his significance to my life becomes clearer.
“None of us imagined that they’ll lock us up and throw away the keys!”, I wrote in my letter to Feds. “You won’t believe it, but as I’m writing you now, a ray of sunshine just came through my window and cast its glimmering light on the paper – as if it was your spirit that lights on me after long days of clouds and rain. In the end, we’ll be singing Bella Ciao like we did on the day of our arrest!”.
