Al-Ahram Weekly | Opinion | Suspicious eyes

		Al-Ahram Weekly Online 8 - 14 November 2001 Issue No.559
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue \| Previous issue \| Site map

Suspicious eyes
Sharif Elmusa* discovers some are more random than others

On a recent trip to Washington, I discovered what it means to be what the African-American poet Ralph Angle describes as "revealed." I became suddenly conspicuous; I had a taste -- a mild taste -- of the persecution that Arabs and Muslims (as well as those who could look like them or have names similar to theirs) have experienced in Western countries since 11 September. Once we are revealed, we "never stop reacting"; we "become the only character, looking / upward, tying a shoe." I read and over- read every move by other passengers and security personnel; but I also seemed to set off the alarms in the reptilian parts of their brains: mutual paranoia.
I look "generic," you might say. Once a man stopped me on Connecticut Avenue in Washington and, after swallowing his hesitation, asked me if I was "Pedro, the painter from Guatemala." Crossing borders, the authority of my American passport has more than compensated for the liability of my name and Palestinian birthplace, except at Tel Aviv airport (part of which, coincidentally, sits on the land of the village where I was born). This normalcy has been rudely disrupted. My face and my passport have both become objects of scrutiny.
At Cairo airport, it was largely business as usual, except at the boarding gate. There, all passengers underwent body checks and our handbags were inspected. There were two inspectors, a man and a woman. The woman wore a hijab. She handled both men's and women's luggage. I liked that. I thought this upended the image of Muslim women who dress like her and who have been harassed and ridiculed in public spaces in the West. Here, she was checking the luggage of Western travelers; she was a guardian of safety and they were "suspects."
On the plane, the atmosphere was calm, almost sombre. My eyes met those of a European woman for an instant. It wasn't a casual, accidental meeting of eyes. Still, I suspended judgement. After the fasten-your-seatbelts sign was turned off, I stood up to take books and other articles out of my bag in the overhead compartment. She and another man glanced at me on and off, intently. The exchange of looks was political. They saw an Arab man and horrifying images of exploding planes, and I sensed bigotry in their eyes. Perhaps the incidents of pilots and passengers refusing to fly with Arabs induced my reaction and I was making it all up. Possibly; but what matters is perception.
Afterward, I kept "a low profile," as the warden messages advise Americans to do in foreign countries! I did this to reassure my fellow passengers and to spare myself potentially unpleasant moments. I feigned sleep, refrained from standing and stretching and read -- among others, Ralph Angle's words about "how once revealed we / never stop reacting." I doubt they would have struck me as they did had I come across them under different circumstances.
At the ordinarily pleasant Amsterdam airport, the line in front of the main security gate was long. When my turn came, I was ushered out of the line and made to wait outside a side room, where a policeman took my passport for verification. My passport had a faint, old ink blot on top of the picture from water that had spilled on it. For the past six years, since it was issued, no one but the Israelis had found the mark suspicious. I felt angry at being removed from the line, especially at a time when such an act bore a greater stigma than usual. Reflexively, I glanced at the line and my eyes collided with those of another passenger. I turned back and minded my book.
On a bench in front of me sat four of my darker brothers. They seemed to have been waiting for some time; perhaps they were even used to waiting at airports. Was our presence a reflection of a clash of the political white against the other hues of the colour spectrum? My wait was relatively short, 10 minutes or so; after all, there was nothing wrong with my passport, except my name. I left; they stayed.
One more obstacle remained. At the boarding gate, there was a universal "interrogation," apart from the checking of bags. Flying has become "Israelised," I thought. There is a "border lore" out there waiting to be collected from Palestinians and international visitors to the West Bank and Gaza, especially those traveling along. Once I had to tell the security agent all about the Palestinian development plan that I had worked on in Gaza during the summer of 1997. Another time, I was asked to elaborate on the Israeli-Palestinian water conflict. My book on the topic was in my briefcase, with my photo on the cover; but this was not sufficient evidence that I knew the subject. How could you explain such a topic to a person without having a clue about his background, though? An altercation was inevitable.
These are but mild examples of sometimes very distressful encounters. My interrogator at Amsterdam airport was very young and inexperienced and had to consult a couple of times with her supervisor. I felt sorry for her. This was nothing like the hostility at Tel Aviv airport.
At Washington's Dulles airport, where I used to be greeted with a friendly "welcome home," the officer this time saw fit to inspect my passport under a magnifying glass. It was no longer the solid navy-blue authority I believed it was. Naturally, the first thing I did the next morning was to apply for a new one, believing it would spare me future probing.
On the way back to Cairo, however, when the ticket agent at Dulles opened my freshly minted document, my name caused her eyes to open wide. She leafed through the blank pages and asked me why I didn't have a visa to Egypt (Americans can get visas at Cairo airport). I told her why, then showed her the Egyptian one- year work permit stamped on the old passport. She was not swayed, and handed the two passports over to her boss. He took a quick look at them and said they were okay. Since when has US security trusted a seal from the Egyptian embassy more than it does its own passport?
Nor was going through the boarding gate any less difficult. I was sent to the inspection cue. The line was once again replete with dark- skinned passengers. Selection was purportedly random. Obviously, some possessed more random names and faces than others. Random checking may be fast and efficient, but it ensures neither security nor fairness. Although it might deter, it does not guarantee that a potential hijacker will not slip through. Picking passengers out for examination is not like an opinion poll, where a sample can represent thinking at large. Also, at present, the rules of selection are not transparent and it appears to be based more on profiling than on statistics. Considering the political atmosphere, only universal inspection can and will be perceived as fair.
The United States has acknowledged in retrospect the wrongs it inflicted on various "Others": the Native Americans (genocide), the blacks (slavery), the Irish (and they told us no Irish need apply), the Japanese (mass internment) and others. Now Arabs and Muslims have been added to the honours list. Why not stop persecution today, rather than admit later that a wrong was committed?
But then perhaps freedom, as Scheherazade instructs us, can be attained only in the imagination, on a flying carpet or in the mythical land of Waq Al-Waq.
* The writer is director of the Middle East Studies Program and associate professor of political science at the American University in Cairo.

Recommend this page

© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved

Send a letter to the Editor