Sucking in the Attention

My opinion of Michael Jackson has always been, just like many, that he was quite the freak. Whether it was a skin disease that led to the change in his color as he claims, or whether it was an intentional surgical operation stemming from a psychological issue as many chose to belief, was never something I stopped to think about, and I had always sided with latter. Despite I am not even the slightest of a fan of Jackson, today he crossed my mind as I was thinking of how I could hack off that skin of mine. Only today I realized why Jackson may have had a problem, and only today I actually felt what it was like to be judged by your skin color.

It all began as I stepped into the first checkpoint at the Frankfurt International Airport, after a 4-hour flight from Alexandria. Then, and before I had even taken my passport out, the airport officer smiled and greeted me with a “Asalamo Alaikom”. I got bedazzled for a moment, but then I accepted his words since after all, the plane was coming from an Arab country, and my looks, despite how extremely charming they are, are not that of a European. I also whispered to myself that he is just an employee trying to be friendly to the passengers, you know, to get a raise or avoid a demotion, or something!

While going through the boarding procedures for my flight to Chicago, I noticed many faces and many colors, and expected it would be virtually impossible to selectively pin me out. To my delight, I wasn’t, and was here and there “hello’ed” and “hi’ed” to.

But then after I boarded that big-ass Boeing 777, and just right before the plane took off, I saw a man in a white costume walking through the sidewalks, and noticed a flight crew badge swinging off his shirt. He was silently passing through, looking left and right as he moves on, and then as he passed by me, he slowed down, smiled, and uttered “Asalamo Alaikom” with a big friendly grin on his face! This time it perplexed me. Unlike the checkpoint officer, this one didn’t greet anyone before or after me! He just came, and threw this words on me, and then went on.

“Damn you skin color,” I said to myself. But then I looked around, and saw several skin shades close to mine, so it cannot be the color that sold me out. Maybe I misjudged him. Maybe he did not racially profile me based on color - “shame on me,” I said to myself, he must have profiled me based on race, not on color! He must have had a list from the captain with “possible” threat subjects, possibly only listing Arabs like me, and he just passed to say a friendly “hello.”

Oh! Blackies, I feel for you.

But the fun didn’t end here. 8 and half hours later, the plane landed, and some 300 passengers flocked through the doors anxious to stretch their legs. After a short walk through a few passages and some escalators up and down, we joined a hundred or so more passengers in a long, long queue to meet the visa officers. I honestly didn’t track what each passenger went through in each line, but what I saw was that each passenger, just like the one before him, gave the officer his passport, made a fingerprint scan, and had a photo taken of him. Every passenger took no more than a minute, and the line was moving steadily.

When I went in to the officer, things seemed no different. She took my passport, asked for why am I here, and I made the same fingerprint scan and had my picture taken just like everyone else. But then, different from all before me, and rather than her saying to me “enjoy your stay” or whatever, she asked me to follow her for “additional procedures.” She got out of her booth, leaving back her copy of the latest Harry Potter, and I followed her to the seemingly unknown. I suspected I would be taken for “special registration”, a procedure they follow for “threat subjects”, “terrorism suspects”, or those whose name matches that of a suspect or fugitive in their lists.

“Damn you race,” I said to myself.

She showed me to the inside of a large hall, and asked me to stay there. The room was silent with no airport employees. I sat down and took a quick look to my left at the only two men in the room. Somehow, it seems that of all those hundreds of people, I had something in common with those two! I then looked at the right, and saw a number of “interview” rooms that for obvious reasons I expected to be more of “interrogation” rooms.

An officer stepped in, and summoned one of the two men, and her questions to him where all above the normal dicebel levels. Apparently, the guy had some of his documents expired, and during his talk, he said he was learning to fly helicopters in Florida! And not long later, another officer stepped in, and called upon the other man, calling him by his name, “Aly”! Well, this makes it clear - this is the room in which they bring all the travelers they see as garbage, and I was on today’s menu!

When my turn came, the officer punched some buttons on his keyboard and asked me the same old questions - why am I here, how long I would be staying, and whether it was my first time in the US. He then took my fingerprints, again, and dismissed me. I am really not sure what the hell was that, and I didn’t want to argue with him, but if I were to guess, it was not “special registration”, because if it were, I would have been given hell load of instructions that govern my travel on local flights.

Whether it was “special registration” or not, it definitely was a special treatment, and the kind of preferential treatment one does not long for!

Posted August 1st, 2007. Filed under: SIGGRAPH 2007, Coverage, Posts.