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Literary Review
Lines of contention
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CHRISTOPHER HURST reflects on three "hot" border crossings he has visited: Berlin, Nicosia and Wagha.
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Wagha: Theatre of ritual animosity
I USED to taunt well-travelled friends who had never visited the Berlin Wall by saying that no one could claim to be a citizen of the world who had not seen it. Now it no longer exists, having disappeared along with the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1989, but in its day it had an existence, a presence as potent as an active volcano. On August 13, l961, the East German regime hastily put it up, on Moscow's orders, to halt the constant exodus of its more enterprising citizens into the enclave of West Berlin and thence, under Allied protection, to the Federal Republic 110 miles further west. There was a viewing platform on the western side close to the Brandenburg Gate (an 18th-century landmark) from which tourists and VIPs could look across to the other side. It was there that President Kennedy made his famous rallying cry "Ich bin ein Berliner".
The 9-foot-high wall was built of rows of concrete blocks, topped with barbed wire. Buildings close to it were mostly demolished, but in places houses merged into the wall, their windows also filled with blocks. The western face was decorated in many places with graffiti and psychedelic decorations. Berlin in its prime was splendid rather than beautiful, but it had many fine Baroque, 19th-century and modern buildings. The wall was of an ugliness that can hardly be imagined by anyone who did not see it, and by its very existence made a mockery of all notions of civilisation and human decency.
I crossed into East Berlin twice. The first time was on foot through the famed "Checkpoint Charlie". It was unpleasant being eyed by the border guards, who clearly had license to kill — especially a young peroxide blonde female one. "Peace" propaganda, the East's favourite ideological weapon, was effectively employed. Displayed on a wall of the small guardhouse was a saying of Bertolt Brecht. I forget the exact words, but the drift was that Carthage waged three wars against Rome; after the first it suffered severe damage; after the second it was crippled; and after the third, not one stone was left standing on another.
One of the bizarre features of the city's division was the fact that the U-Bahn, the underground railway, was run by the West Berlin administration, and the S-Bahn, the overhead railway, by the East — and it was from the S-Bahn trains as they ran through the west side that most of the escapes were made before August l96l. On my second crossing, I took the S-Bahn — from which one had a good view of the tank traps and barbed wire, all heavily mined and booby trapped, on the eastern side — to the Friedrichstrasse station right in the old centre of the city, where one went through the checkpoint. To annoy the West Germans, the easterners officially referred to Berlin as the Hauptstadt (capital) of the GDR — the West German capital, Bonn, being a dull, sleepy town on the Rhine.
(A strange aspect of the GDR's disappearance is that with it the humbler inhabitants, the vast majority who were not intellectuals or politically adventurous, lost the cradle-to-grave security of education, employment and social services they enjoyed under communist rule. The east has still barely come to terms with what they see as the Western walk-over. The odious wall served for them as a beacon by which all could find their way.) In October 2001 I revisited Cyprus, where I did my military service in 1949-50, and for me an important moment was a long-preplanned visit to the Turkish-controlled northern side of the capital, Nicosia, which I knew well in the old days. The city was already divided soon after independence in the 1960s, but for a foreigner passing from one side of the line to the other involved the minimum of formalities. It involves few today, but since the Turks invaded and conquered the northern part of the island in 1974 the barrier has been of an altogether different order. Its potency is made plain, even to those on the southern Greek side who never cross it, by the presence of a colossal replica of the flag of the self-proclaimed "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus", which has been cut into the southern flank of the mountain range that runs along the north coast of the island. It is impossible for the Greek Cypriots and many foreigners living in Nicosia and anywhere in the central plain not to see it every day, and it is as ugly and offensive to all notions of human decency as was the Berlin Wall. It is easy to understand the Turkish reaction to the 1974 coup, designed by the then Greek military regime to annex the whole of Cyprus to Greece, but the monstrous flag, a rape of the natural environment, must alienate Turkey's sympathisers.
The police and soldiers who man the border posts in Nicosia do their job inoffensively, but between the posts is a sterile buffer zone administered by the UN, and walking through it one passes the once-proud Ledra Palace, which I remember being opened amid much celebration in 1949. It was the island's first 5-star hotel, but it is now used as a barracks by UN troops who hang their washing out of the windows. The border itself at this point is marked not by a solid wall but by rows of battered old oildrums, painted white but with the rust showing through. As a traveller I enjoyed being in Turkish Nicosia, just as I enjoyed being in East Berlin when it was the GDR's hauptstadt, but the situation is deeply depressing.
My most recent experience of a dangerous border was in February at Wagha, where I made the half-hour car journey west from Amritsar to witness the stand-down ceremony at sunset. Driving for miles along a dead-straight road builds up a sense of anticipation; then the car is parked and one walks the remaining few hundred metres to the crossing-point itself. I presume that none of my readers, even those who have never been to Wagha, needs to be told the configuration, but I will simply retrace my movements. There is an arena, entered through a ceremonial arch, on either side of the border gates, with rows of seats all round, rising in tiers. When I arrived, the arena was still empty, and standing in front of the archway was a tall, handsome, extremely smart army sergeant wearing immaculate uniform and with a red and gold cockade on his cap. His warrior-like moustache curled upwards. After a while the crowd which had gathered was allowed to walk along a path around the outside of the enclosure, to enter it some way ahead. As we walked round, I saw a similar file of visitors on the Pak side of the line, a few yards away. Instinctively I waved my hand in greeting to them, but quickly realised this was not the thing to do. It was clear, as we filled the rows of seats inside the arena that not only were there many more spectators on our side, but that the arena itself on the Pak side was smaller than ours — or so it appeared to me. Music started blaring from a loudspeaker outside the guardroom — very loud. Simultaneously the same <147,1,0>thing was happening on the other side with different music — I wondered who could be enjoying any of it.
Another sergeant spoke briefly to the crowd. I asked my neighbour what he had said, and was told it was a request not to chant anti-Pak slogans. Soon the guard — about half a dozen soldiers and NCOs in all — marched out with an extremely rapid step and exaggerated movements; they came to a halt with a massive goose-step. At this point the crowd broke into cheers, and then started shouting slogans. A young man in front acted as cheer-leader; clearly it was all pre-arranged. I asked my neighbour if they were disregarding the request not to chant anti-Pak slogans; no, he said, encouraging me to join in — they were chanting pro-Indian ones ("Bharat Mata"). But to my ears the effect was the same, and feeling I could not be part of it I moved away from the crowd to a position by the archway.
By now the gates in the centre had been opened, and the guards on both sides — the Pakistanis equally smart with dark green cockades — were rapid-marching to and fro in a frenetic ballet of aggressive movements. The chanting continued. Then at last there was silence as the flags were run down and buglers sounded the Last Post. This is always a solemn moment, associated with remembering the fallen in battle — or, seen another way, the futility of war. I had an overwhelming feeling that the soldiers on both sides were united as fellow-professionals simply carrying out orders, and when the ceremony was over would happily have adjourned to the canteen together to share refreshments and compare notes about their respective assignments. What made them enemies were politicians who have to fan nationalist sentiment in order to win elections; and the politicians' incorrigibly simple-minded surrogates, chanting slogans and whipping up hatred. Such is war, and such is the life of nations.
Surely, encouraging the public not only to witness but also to play a part in this daily ritual, which deprived of its needless posturing would be innocuous, is a cynical manoeuvre by the governments of both sides to keep the cauldron continually on the boil. It is shameful. Stopping it might not make a lot of difference, but it would be a move in the right direction.
Email: hurst1@atlas.co.uk
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