Nov. 19, 2003
Just once, I'd like to get through an airport without being the guy who gets "randomly" picked to be searched.
I mean, it would be nice to not have to open up my checked luggage and explain to the surly looking airport security guards that the funny shaped things in the Tupperware containers are not bombs, but my mom's homemade Indian food. Although in some circles, those could be considered the same thing.
This past summer I made a trip to California for a wedding. I don't believe I was going to meet any terrorists or anything while I was there, but then again, maybe there's something I don't know about my cousins. I made extra sure I shaved before I went anywhere near the airport. It seems that the predominant school of thought among airport screeners is that all brown people with facial hair are prime candidates for hiding bombs in their shoes and razors up their sleeves.
Any preparations I made didn't matter, though. I was singled out, again. This time, they spared me the hassle of taking me to a back room and opening up my checked luggage. I still had to spend a good five minutes explaining to the screener that the zipper on the fly of my pants was not a deadly weapon, and that it was made out of (gasp!) metal — of course it was going to set off their detectors. Where do they dig these people up anyway?
This is not unlike my previous trip to California, when I had to convince security that the powdery residue in my container of Altoid mints was not anthrax, but the remains of crushed up candy. Perhaps if the airport shop hadn't sold me a defective box of mints I wouldn't have been in the predicament in the first place.
In any case, getting out of that jam was a rather hard task, considering that I wanted to avoid using the A-word around the jumpy airport screeners. If I was going to say anthrax in an airport, I might as well have worn an Osama bin Laden fan club T-shirt.
While on paper the government will have you believe that screeners are fair and random, all of my trips to the airport post-9/11 indicate otherwise. To them, I'm young and brown — the trendy terrorist look these days. My friends even joke that if I don't shave for a couple of weeks, I look like I'm ready for a stint with al-Qaida. Seems the airport screeners think so, too.
While the attentive screeners were busy scouring the insoles of my shoes, learning how a zipper works and mulling over the contents of my Altoids box, I wonder if they noticed the team of journalists slipping onto the plane with some contraband, or the 20-year-old college student smuggling in box cutters, bleach and matches to prove the point that he could bring weapons onto a plane. Apparently not.
Short of getting the Michael Jackson treatment for my skin, and shaving every day, I don't think I'll ever achieve what everyone else that's not me seems to have: airport anonymity.
Ahmad is a Binghamton University student and a copy editor for the Press & Sun-Bulletin. He is definitely not a terrorist. E-mail him at wahmad@pressconnects.com.
© 2003 Press & Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, N.Y.