Darek Morley
7 pm Police bus/ holding cell. I am a single white man aboard a bus with 60 other asian men, half of who am are police and half of them are playing games on thier cell phones. The radio reports and from the stacatto insertion of crisp dramatic consontents I get the impression it coud be about the protest we've just had, the reason I've been under arrest these last 20 hours, but ofcourse its in Cantonese and I can only imagine. Everyone it seems speaks some English, not much and I'm amazed at how you learn to manage but still there's no one I can level with, who can inform me to my situation. In an identical 20 seater bus , one of dozens holding the throoong of Korean farmers and peasents, sits the other white guy of 1000 in cuffs AJ, a landed in Hong Kong from Azerbaijan (Spl Thanks Idil) . I flash the victory sign, that constant symbol in Chinese photographs and smile weakly. He responds responds in kind, weakly. Randomly the bus will crawl ahead a few metres shuffling us around the enormous holding grounds. It may be that the buses are slowly leaving. I cannot tell from my windows view. I only see other buses, less now it seems. All of them are presently still. If we are being moved it stands to reason I'll watch them all leave. I was in the last batch of protestors to be wrapped up and likely I'll be the last to be processed into jail. The arrest began at 9:30 Last night. After a peaceful begining to the march yesterday, predictably the peasents and farmers began to challenge police lines and to flow out into restricted parts of the city . The Koreans were successful at overpowering police and managed to take ground all the way to the convention centre: which was our goal. They were not able to hold it however and they were soon surrounded by police. For blocks and blocks around the central grouping of protestors police formed extensive baracades systematically choking off entry and exit to the clash zone. In effect though the Koreans had managed to thoroughly disrupt the downtown Hong Kong district including the tram and the subway system due to the strong police reaction to the threat. At the convention centre a huge force or riot police was converging to protect the last line. It was very exciting as we charged forward and took hold of the link fence standing in front of the police and then ripped it away from them with the strength of a mob. Some people began to kick the poles of the fence out to use as truncheon weapons. Here we extended our front line and struggled for ground. There was one instant when I stood alone in a large empty space between the police and the protestors. I felt like I was the only opposition from them advancing on our position. I stood there very aware of my body in space. I felt as though my body filled every inch of that huge empty space betweem them and us. * it was at this point while writing on the bus that I realized that if my book was taken as evidence that I could be incriminating myself so in the text at this point occurs a great renunciation of all this as a fictional story* Then the police began to move forward. The night was full of moments like this; a palapble tension, conflict, explosion , surrealism. I believed at the time somehow, that it was my posture that had provoked them. I turned innocently, standing still there, unrelenting, slowly being pushed ahead by sheilds. No violence, offering them my back. They swung at me, blocked some blows with my hands but then was struck sharply upon my back, I fell forwards. I retreated, walking in circles trying to release the pain. Soon I joined again the Koren farmers again, who knew me , and I helped manage the vicious and venemous reporters who will impede the protest they come to record in thier frenzied states in the fray. Tempers and tensions were high. There was almost violence between us and the photogs and I had to mightily resist throwing cameras to the street. A long stand-off insued which was very tedious but when it ended it was much for the worse. Police launched great amounts of tear gas into the crowd. Just thinking of this makes my eyes water but it does not make my throat itch and burn as an encounter with the genuine article will. Protestors fell over with pain and asphyxiation and were decapacitated in all directions.. Those better prepared brought salt water or vinegar which help, and brought them to the suffering and led them off to safety. Here the police advanced and even stole our water cart, wanting people to suffer greatly. The retreat that we found was in the middle of a cordoned off freeway . It had a great wind passing through it keeping air fresh and clean. I believe there were 2000 of us at the begining there. This was the point where the trap tightened and froze us. A police seargent declared our unsubdued army to be an assembly of the most unlawful sort and placed us all 2000 under arrest. Now all he had to do was make good on his promise, and arrest 2000 people. We chanted and danced and shouted through the night. After some hours of our festival of defiance carrying on like this The Korean forces Marshalls expressed succinctly to us that we would all infact likely be arrested who stayed. And that we would do it proudly!! Not everyone could make the same stand and it was discovered that only Koreans were bound by the circle of police, and that most others could get away. The press was still in full force at this point, but the numbers began to thin. I remember seeing other white faces but when morning came they were not with us. Half the people managed to get away through the police lines in the night. The night became cool and we began to huddle together on the ground which was also cool, to conserve heat. We passed time like this and with great rallies of dancing and music that truly lifted my soul. To dance in such a way, so freely and wildly to such spontaneous and heartfelt magical music as the korean leagues alchemically create. Everywhere they travel with drums and cymbols. I danced about in a great circle laughing and smiling and monkeying spasmoidically . Above us a full moon; ever quite tranquil all seeing eye, and I took great comfort in her presence with us that night. Later as people tired, hungered.... there was no food, and no washrooms so some people gathered and built stalls from signs over sewer grates. Spirits were sinking but good news was coming accross the lines and that heartened us against the cold. We would hear about breakdowns in the talks. True or not we were happy to have them. Groups of men would form cirlces and kick a pop bottle aound with funny playfulness, to keep warm. Through out the night they hauled away about half of our number. Now I sit here in the auxiliary police station in Kowloon wondering what is taking so damn long. 8 hours we've been sitting on these buses. I will say this for the HK police. Within one hour of being here we had bread water and toilet and a smoke. Yes I smoke when in jail. Now the police are eating thier dinner. Only a few of cops left on the bus, some of the Koreans are chatting now and stretching. Its nice to see them livelier. The morning has been very dejected and still. I am with the very last busload. These men with me lay on the street when the police came for them and resisted thier arrest. It was difficult to wait so long in the cold. As I write pepper spray sucked into my clothing newly inflames the skin on my arm. This happens sparatically. It must be the motion of my arm writing thats the cause. Just 15 minutes ago I was told the order to standby for departure had been given and now theyre done eating and the police are bording the bus again. The scenario is: We the geusts have the window seats. I am using the pen of the guard next to me; a gift. Stiffness rides so many of my joints. My knees and my right hip joint especially wail in disomfort when moved. You might finally wonder why I am bar one the only white persone detained. I have been asked why I have CHOSEN this by the other one, my partner in crime AJ. He Charged me as an idealist. Ofcourse I rose in my own defense against so vile an accusation. Certainly I do appreciate the ideals described or sketched out by such an action of resistance, and in moments of bitterness I have turned to them for warmth. But beyond those abstracts was a more personal encounter that made for me so much more real thier meaning and so much more clear my volition to give myself up lke this. I certainly could have left. I met Kim Hyun Kon of Korea earlier that day, yesterday , in the park. I was somewhat tentatively carrying around my placard which read " White trash against the WTO". I found myself unsure of my scrawled witticism among a display of such visual passion. Then Kim Hyun Kon singled me out an asked me where I was from, and then walked away. I was unsettled by this both because I had allready been feeling uncomfortable with doubt and because he seemed somehow fragile, frayed. I approached him and communication was slow and difficult. I soon found myself making a solidarity speech through a translator to the toughest hardest fighting contingent of Korean peasents. Or this was his description of them, his group from home. I was very nervous but was recieved warmly and with enthusiasm and respect. Kim Hyun Kon was pleased by this and warmed to me. He asked if I had tried the Korean drink. "SOJU!" I exclaimed happily. I had tried it on a few occassions with the typically generous and jovial Korean farmers in scattered moments over the week. We sat together and he tried to tell me something of his life. He was motivated. His english was very bad and he repeatedly apologized. I tried to reciprocate with my feelings of inadequacy at being unable to communicate nearly as well in his language. He spoke in his fragmented way of American imperialism and the price it exacts on his community, on asia. He smiled and thanked me for sitting. He talked of the protest and of the peasent farmers league, and the protest he had planned. "Self-kill" was the how he put it but I knew what he meant. Have I yet spoken sufficiently of the nobility of these Korean fighters? The smiling celebration with which they live thier lives. The manner in which they generously share all that they have with even the most perfect stranger. They even clean up the streets after they have a protest there. And when they sing thier protest songs it is so strong and pure. Songs which narrate the activities of daily life, the pains and joys of the farmers or fisherfolk life. When I heard them sing a song about the heroism of giving ones life in struggle against oppression I both felt it and believed it. Kim Hyun Kon sat there on the grass beside me choked with tears, torn in many ways. Here was a joyful encounter with a North American, a person, a friend, and against that the legacy of North American oppression. With a strange determination of someone at the end of his rope he shook his head and asked over and over again. "Why? Why? Why?" I only sat there numb, his question cutting through me, echoing inside. And truly, what could I say? I could think of nothing but I seemed to feel like I should. I dont really want to repeat what else was said. I was confused, I might have asked him to live. I dont know. I dont know if he lives now or if he will make his protest at home in Korea. I think he will. We drank that bottle of Soju together and then we drank a beer. We traded some currency, then emptied our wallets and traded those as well . I took his address in Korea, I will write to him and hope for a reply. I will hope he can come to Canada on some pretense and visit me. And I will hope that my offering myself here today can in some small way honor the courage and nobility of that simple peasent man. We still wait in the police yard. My personal bodygaurd asks me about my work as I write and I answer him dispassionalty, but I answer him still. I respect the value his freindship offer has. I am in the midst of so much madness!. I see the buses roll, to court I've heard, and I may be deported, how nice, home for christmas! Some moments sitting here I feel compelled to shout UNDALE! But besides being the wrong language I forget that my will holds no currency here. I am a prisoner. My only link to anyone is the phone number in magic marker on my arm, my friends on N***** road. I hope to see them again. Some of them are being held somewhere. My story, the story that I sat down to write is actually over., its complete...still I write. I write because..... I write because it comforts me. It gives me something to focus on. It takes me away from this monotonous waiting into the future when this will be read by people and into those moments of the past which I describe, which fortify me against this ugliness and the looming spectre of doubt. This ugly building and luxury bus. I just went for a washroom break and met a Hong Kongese /American woman. She also expects deportation. Its said that we'll be held until the talks are complete which should be very soon now anyway. Released or dealt with otherwise tommorow. So I accepted the offered cigarette from my police escort to the urinal. Its such a comedy watching me play at smoking a cig. " Do you smoke"? "Yes, Yes I do " I repeat myself to banish any doubt the officer never considered. I stood there getting so high off each haul that I had to walk very slowly back to the bus, as though I were floating. Standing there with the smokers trying to flick my cigarette naturally. A ridiculous charade. Looking around the bus now sunken low in my seat I wonder what the Koreans are saying. What they're thinking. While walking back to the bus I candidly, naively ask the gaurd if he has any respect for the Koreans. " Its my job" he says shrugging. Below speech that I am ignorant of anyway I wonder what theyre thinking and feeling. I'll never really know. What are thier destinies going to be after we're all deported an I'm back in Canada and they Korea. What next? Its now 9:30. The officer says we'll spend the night in the cell thank jesus. Where are my Hong Kong friends? Will they be beside me tonight? I picture the mass OSSSA style gymnasium campouts of highschool. Where is AJ? He is no longer accross form my window. He's invited us all back to his restaurant on Lockheart ST to smoke the shisha and drink when this is over. Will I get to have that drink with him, in the VIP room he described as we huddled on the cold ground last night, with the velvet curtains and heaps of pillows? To touch my hair it has become matted with grease and pepper spray, the orange stuff which dotted stains my shirt and pants and burns my skin. My lips ar very dry and chapped. Unshaven now for more than a week. As I washed my hands I caught my reflection in the mirror. I saw what these police see. It is no boy in the mirror, to thier unknowing eyes, to all appearances a man. Yet I have allways rebeled against manhood. With all the dryness and compromise that come with it. Only looking in the mirror just now I could not doubt what i saw. A discheveld but calm man. A western man. A content man. The cigarettes pile up in my throat now like a traffic accident. I promise myself I will only smoke in jail. And outside of that for sharing a smoke with Chris or Livia or Sadie. That is how I was givin my first cigarette you know? From my sister on another night where I was to be arrested. Then two days ago, upon a night of indescribable beauty for me I met Livia and shared an offered smoke while around us the Koreans brought culture and music and ritual dance to the police line. I dont know that I have ever devoured food as fast as that meal of rice wrapped in corn husk offered to the prisoners hours ago. UNtil then we had been given only sweet breads in scant amounts and some soymilk. The hot sauce squeezed from packages that the Koreans allways seem to have possesion of was so hot, I inhaled it in mere bites. Not even after fast breaking or after heavy labour have I taken food so greedily. It must be the sense of having no control over getting it. Hoping I might get a second helping if I finish first, but we all finished first. Washing hands each time I visit the toilet doesnt seem to be any help in keeping the pepper from getting in my nose and eyes. I sit here now, so thankful to have this book for companionship. I also know how a cigarette can be a companion. Powerful spirits like nicotene and tobacco and the time you spend together. The causualness of the friendship. Like the friend you make on a flight. Disposable, unabashed. But not like the hitchhike. Two more buses leave. Its almost ten. 21:52, in the reflection on the window it reads 52:15. Our bus begins to move now. Theres a great deal of surrealism sitting here staring at the sign printed on the inside of the bathroom stall in characters, and stamped with the seal of the Hong Kong police dept. The Characters have descended from pictograms I'm told. I am sure I see one that reads drum or drumming, though I'm not sure what its doing here. Maybe it means flush. Some of the symbols have symetry. I recognize one. The symbol for one. Character writing has also adopted the use of the comma. Is all this really happening? Back on the bus the old axiom of the power of writing is underlined by the curious looks of the guards. They look over my shoulder curiously but I am sure my scrawlings are indecipherable. My shoulder is swollen and sore where I was struck. Absent-mindedly touching my hair is what mysteriously contaminates my hands again and again I discover. I wonder where Livia is. I saw her breifly at the march, passed her my sign and then ran off to take pictures form a roof top I'd discovered. I never saw her again though I found my sign discarded. I likely never will unless Hong Kong justice permits my indescretion. We are the last buses. The one beside this one fires exhaust, a great spit of black smoke, the excitement of the engines reving. The prospect of change makes me sit up straight in my seat. Still waiting. 22 55 is the same in a reflection Words left over form the brits in Hong Kong, like rubbish I am often surprized to find in the vocabulary of the people I encounter. The cops says "place that in the rubbish". But can you imagine "lets rubbish the joint!" My feet are damp and rotten in my shoes. Meanwhile thinking about the culture I admire some things of China. They do not floss over appearence in the neurotic way of the west. Though keeping face is maybe more important in daiy rituals here it is not with the ridiculous extremes of home. The backside of somehting need not look like the formal facade we relentlessly promote. Or a mess may be made anywhere really and a cleaning its understood a cleaner will restore it. It has much over the hypochondria of NA. And we with our hapless driving. No Americans would last on the roads here. All the vehicles glide like graceful hippos in water. How is it they never touch? The people here are more self respoonsible, manouverable. I can still hear the sound of the drum rythem , the chiming of the cymbols, the deep gongs singing, then it all coming to a climax and then the slow pulsing of the drums. Its in my head and all around. I can hear it in the idling engine. This waiting is itching me. It seems that perpetual readiness is the technique chosen to placate us. Stockholm syndrome. I begin to understand. Two of my gaurds seem to be trying to be very friendly towards me. I have difficulty rebuking them. That they are supposed to be nasty to me creates an inherent greatness in thier common kindness. I am obliged to be thankful for the smallest things. 11:30. Still waiting I'm so tired and delirious exhausted, I can close my eyes and believe i can understand anything thats being said in cantonese or Korean. Ofcourse I'm crazy i realize. 2340 spells yes in the reflection and yes we are finally Moving --------------------------- PROLOGUE Monday 1245 It was about four AM by the time they got us into the cells and gave us blankets. I was so compleatly exhausted at this point that it did not occur to me to seek aid or representation, also it was the middle of the night. I only fell into a deep and dreamless sleep on the cold concrete cell floor. Now I am awake and thinking clearly again. I cannot think of thier tactics of distraction and fatigue as mere accidents. But now I am ready. A gaurd cracks up as he tells me that within twelve hours I should know what happens to me. "Maybe release HAHAHAHAHA" He says. I think I only vaguely get the joke. I am still itchy, doused in pepperspray having no change of clothes and no shower. My friend Jane would find this amusing; Theres a crises on the cell block. It seems as if there was only one container of kimchi for 76 men in 4 cells. This has compelled the Koreans to hunger striker for better conditions. ONe of the men in my cell sits cross -legged and shakes his bowed head saying "kimchi". TO me it says "we are tired people far from home fighting great political powers, to the death if we must, we do not want to fight over kimchi" But I have allways had an overactive imagination. I want to resist in solidarity with them but it smells damn good. I think it would be a true crime though. I wonder what these guys think of me. Surely I look the worst of us all here, in my tshirt and pants soaked in orange. "smelling like a brewery, looking like a tramp" as Tom Waits would say. Song breaks out. How nice to hear that! What a beautiful resonance. They sing with one voice. I am happy but sudued by these bars. I do not join the chant. That song that they sing is so strong, I have heard it so much these days. I wonder if I will hear it again. Certainly in my memory. Maybe they will make a video like in Seattle. Very exciting things happening now. Some lawyers have come to see me now from my friends in Hong Kong and the HKPA. I've been asked to spread the word. Keep silent. Elect to remain silent. Answer no question that could incriminate yourself. Smuggling names and prison numbers out to them so they can meet with other leaders in the cells. They have a Korean translator. Time steals on. My days , my hopes for these days, time taken away. Leaves so many islands of action. yet something strong is being built here. I have chosen this path and it has value. Whatever comes from it is part of the whole. A great choice and these subsequent parts have greatness too. Like in the Shawshank Redemption, with the moments that make you feel like a free man. Free people need those moments at least as much. The prisons of our lifes are more often of the mind. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TO do everything with love. To withhold that action that can not be done with love until that time that it can be? Because when cultural history is being made, at ground level it just looks like a bunch of people going to parties.
