I am sick of my anti-terrorism kit

So I am standing behind all shapes, sizes, colours and obviously nationalities at Dubai International Mall, otherwise known as Dubai International Airport, waiting to surrender my boarding pass to get on this Emirates flight to Frankfurt.

In front of me is a small family: an old woman flanked by her two sons. The woman wears a black hijab, covering her hair and arms but revealing her old face. The elder of the two boys, a skinny and tall boy of no more than 18 years old, handles the passports and boarding passes as they approach the flight attendant at the boarding counter.

Remember, this is the final step. The visas have been issued, their luggage already checked-in and they are simply boarding the plane, after arriving from someplace else. But the woman tearing the boarding passes and wishing travellers a good journey looks at the small family’s passports and begins the second longest inquisition of modern times:

Woman: Where are you going?

Boy: To Frankfurt

Woman: Okay. Why are you going to Frankfurt?

Boy: To visit my father

Woman: What is he doing there?

Boy: He is working there

Woman: Okay. What is your father’s name (she looks at his passport)

Boy: Abul Mohamed Jamal Mustapha … (the rest is inaudible for me)

Woman: According to this passport … you missed one name

Boy: (He clarifies, pointing to something that I cannot hear)

Woman: So when did you last visit your father?

Boy: About nine years ago

Woman: Why so long ago?

Boy: Because … (and again I cannot hear the rest)

While I am watching the circus act play out, wondering when the boy would lose his patience and scream out something random like “Okay! Okay! I like looking at granny porn,” I am called to the other counter by another woman to board the flight.

I pass by the family and look at their passports which reveal their Pakistani nationality. My eyes wander to the name-badge of the woman-dog at the counter who suspiciously looks like my Aunt Katie back home and easily resembles the average Savatri from Bangalore, and it reveals unsurprisingly: “Gayatri”.

I squirm at the fair assumption that “Gayatri”, like thousands of other migrant workers in the UAE, was really an Indian national taking her national prestige and honour — already far up her rectum — to a whole new level of perversity as she takes the Mickey out of this little Pakistani family trying to get to Europe.

Of course, whether she was Indian or even Taiwanese (though I seriously doubt the latter) is hardly the point.

Firstly, “Gayatri” is really just a flight attendant and not an immigration officer.

Secondly, the boy who can’t remember his father’s fifteenth name is not some indentured labourer hitchhiking through the galaxy, nor is he on the first leg of his journey that normally stirs the most frenetic check-ups.

He was already in Dubai International, about to board a connecting flight to Frankfurt, meaning that the necessary check-ups had already been completed. Airlines have to check that visas are in order (ie: issued) to protect themselves for in the event that a visa is a cranky fake, the airline would have to fly the miscreant back to the place of departure at their own cost.

But asking why the boy hadn’t seen his womanising father for nine years is hardly verifying an already legitimate visa.

Yet our tall Pakistani friend continues bravely — dealing with the entire rhetoric of air travel soaked in a terrorism discourse that makes him a beggar in every airport he ventures into, and turns his admission onto every flight an act of self-paid charity.

In theory he could’ve told “Gayatri” that he was actually visiting her sister in Frankfurt. In reality, of course, he has to talk to “Gayatri” with his eyes to the floor until she favours him to cross into the plane that would take him to the much fabled land of Europe.

Instead of raising the alarm about her clearly prejudiced questions, he treats the obstacle course like a championed monk or dervish would in seeking the highest levels of tolerance, patience and spirituality.

But what choice does he have?

He is brown. Strike One. He is Muslim. Strike Two. To open his mouth and act too smart and he really is “out”.

It is especially infuriating when you consider how airlines can be the vanguard of mobility and shrinking worlds, yet remain unequivocally tied to the state like fermenting umbilical cords; at once debunking and suckling the state.

Sure we all remember 9/11 and London and Madrid and Hiroshima and Nagasaki but when did racial profiling become fair discrimination universally because of an overwhelming stronger terrorism concern?

This is why it was almost funny to hear Obama thrilling us with his Quranic quotes and earnest ideologues calling for ending mistrust and clash of civilisations anecdotes, when the nature of travel and mobility today suggests that it would take decades or a bigger threat like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to thwart years of strong Islamophobic propaganda.

Case in point, I am convinced the Russians are still coming.

Obama also said improving exchange programmes and building online communities where youngsters in Kansas could flirt with youngsters in Cairo towards developing positive notions of intercultural dialogue. But the online and real world, as the couple will surely find out the day they decide to move beyond cyber sex, are literally world’s apart. Put simply — how long do we wait before North Africans or South Asians or Arab-looking heroes are no longer treated like lepers with suicide bomber tendencies at airports en route the Western World?

And sure, put into perspective, this treatment is not as bad as walking around Baghdad with your goat and being shelled, or planting some opium in Peshawar and having rockets light up your fields, or sitting up with your suffering children because of the after-effects of white phosphorous. Of course, undressing and embarrassing yourself or having cheeky security personnel check out your anus simply because of a flawed classification system can never be bad as losing your limbs.

Forgive me then, for being petty, but either way, I am pretty sure I am no longer comfortable with continuously pulling out my anti-terrorist kit every time I travel.

For someone who hates shaving facial hair since my clean shaven face resembles a scratchy stick of asparagus that no one wants to dip into their soup, except old, sick and veggie freaks, I have to firstly pull out the shaving blades and take that haircut.

Then it is my vocabulary that must be tied up. Since “bomb” is pretty much a part of every Muslim’s upbringing these days, I need to discipline myself not to shout out “I will bomb this place” as the knee-jerk reaction to all things we Muslims don’t like. Then it’s my luggage. Instead of spraying my bags with religious phrases asking God to protect my travel, I spray my bag with Rough Rider condoms. Finally, it is image. I switch into the typically under-nourished journo mode, strutting around in slightly torn cargos, sneakers and a hoodie boasting the latest iPod headphones as I seek to look too scruffy to be a fresh puppy out of a madrasah aus Kandahar and too stupid to be a polished undercover pilot in an Armani suit. Finally, stay away from all contentious behaviour at a 5km radius from all airports and it should all be fine.

And it works. It always does. No one interferes, and, mostly, no one bothers.

But for this to work, all parts must function in unison.

For example, the last time I was in Europe I decided not to shave before my return flight out of Amsterdam — as a slightly demented social experiment — but mainly because shaving during a European winter is like melting the hairs on your balls with heated tweezers.

I flew out of Europe three times in three years and you would think airport security would now offer me a drink as their local homey, but this one time I refused to shave my six-day unkempt beard and I’m picked out like Ahmed the plump chicken terrorist asking to be slaughtered.

Despite my passport being laced with years of German study visas, it took just a mini-beard for airport security to disregard my frequent and clearly legitimate travel to freak out and bring out the cavalry.

My bags were turned upside down, my passport put into some CIA type gadget to verify authenticity and the questions posed bordered the insane (What is the capital of Mongolia?), whilst ordinary law-abiding Europeans were forced to point at me as they explained to their little Heidi, Heinrich and Hannah why the queue resembled a lunch-time traffic jam.

I am South African, so the interrogation is almost always less intensive and the search for curry powder laced with marijuana is of a higher concern. Being a dangerous radical is miniscule since the local Jamiat Ulema is a pretty impotent gizmo of clerics rather than some Interpol-referenced terrorist movement claiming Fordsburg in Johannesburg for an autonomous Muslim state. But still the little beard can twist the mood of your travel experience, even if every other aspect of your anti-terrorism kit is in order.

In contrast, if you’re coming from Pakistan, a nation confused into a country and now in absolute chaos, you might have to prove you are a homosexual seeking asylum in Europe, since your nationality makes all attempts to clean up your image null and void. And even if you do get the visa, proving you actually plan on returning home alive rather than as a burnt-out fire-cracker, the whole world is really still against you.

And predictably, like a record on mode “broken”, the Pakistani family continued answering the trigger-happy Emirates woman and I wondered still how long this boy would hold out, patience-wise.

Of course, patience for the brown man in these times is a crucial survival tool, or so I learned some years back when I had an altercation with an employee or manager with the low-cost Condor airline in Frankfurt airport.

What started as a mere request, albeit an important one on my part, became an altercation when I threatened to report him to his company for barking at me like a stray wanker. He suddenly changed his tone and motioned close to my face, popping that elusive space bubble as he pretended to help me. But all he really did was read out my full name very slowly, “Mohamed Azad Ebrahim Essa”, emphasizing each name and when he was done, looked me straight in the eye and said even more slowly “Are you sure you really want to fly?”

Being a slow sod, it took me a whole 5 seconds to realise what he meant and I blinked as I felt fire rage through my lungs like a lion without a roar and I nodded profusely with a dented smile “Okay,” I said, “I understand. I understand completely”.

“Siegfried” had my passport after all and I had an important flight to catch. On returning my passport, I thanked him for his time very politely and walked away, biting my lip as specially created fumes lit my path. I finally turned around, called out his name and showed him the finger.

I remember thinking special paratroopers would break through the airport windows and take me away — Minority Report style — but none of it happened. I even thought it could be my first book.

Siegfried was a prick, even the average neo-Nazi would battle to be such a goon as he so easily was born to be. I should have reported him. But I didn’t have any proof, or any real argument. What was I going to say exactly?

I was young and stupid.

But let that happen today. I would get his surname, blog about it violently and send the link to his mother.