Latest / Letter to America / Airport Security

Transcript

Airport Security · Letter to America

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Airport security is taken very seriously in Istanbul.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Three stages between the curb and the plane.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can get a little tense in the process, and the gates aren't usually much better.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: People trying to be simultaneously relaxed and ready to hop up and beat the crowd to boarding.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: I feel a difference immediately waiting at the gate for a flight to Egypt.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: The soothing murmurs around me, familiar words and phrases.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Affection between family members, friends, couples, even colleagues, an ease and warmth that covers the whole waiting area.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: A young couple looking for a place to sit.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: A middle-aged man traveling alone gets up to offer them his place to rest and wait.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: They resist.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: He might be old enough to be their father.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: He insists.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: They insist.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, he pretends to have something to do and walks away, forcing them to accept his gesture so they can settle down and relax.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Many kids lie across laps.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Very few adults stretch out across multiple seats.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Space is more shared, less occupied.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Snacks and sips are passed around.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: You always pack a little extra, you never know.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's not an atmosphere I've experienced on a flight to anywhere else I've been.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's a vibe unique to Egyptians heading home.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: A sense that we're almost there, just one more flight.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: The gate feels like a welcoming outpost of Egypt.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: A taste of the hospitality, the humor, the humanity.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: We're on the jetway, waiting to board with two men in front of us.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: One reaches up and touches a scar he notices on the back of the other's head.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: He asks about it, while tenderly rubbing it.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: He squeezes his friend's shoulder in a soothing way, as if to make him feel better about a childhood wound healed long ago.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: We arrive in Cairo and breeze through security without even opening a bag.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: We head into town for Tameya sandwiches and kosherri, street food that makes me feel at home in a place that all told, I've only lived in for six years, almost fifty years ago.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to understand how and why.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is where my central nervous system has decided I'm the most safe.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: When a group of a dozen or so of us left our close-knit high school for college in Boston, I didn't really speak a word of Arabic.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: I learned fast, trying to keep up with the humor amongst my friends.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: By the first trip home for the holidays, my family moved to Hong Kong, and for a decade or so I didn't even visit Egypt with any frequency.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, even sitting at a gate, waiting to board, I feel my breathing and heart rate drop.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: By the time I arrive in Egypt, I feel a sense of calm and contentment spread through me.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: In a way I've never really understood.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Egypt became home when I moved to Boston.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Today that same group lives in a handful of countries, settling in New York, London, Montenegro, UAE, Istanbul, and Cairo, but not feeling fully settled.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: For me it all started in middle and high school when we moved the summer after sixth grade.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: The feeling was almost instant.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: I was completely free and easy, encouraged to roam all around Cairo and eventually Egypt, on foot, in cabs, and eventually learning to drive in a time long before cell phones and GPS.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: I always felt like I was under a watchful, protective eye.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: I got lost, had flat tires, and learned by trial and error that almost everything could be solved by asking someone for help.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the time you didn't even have to ask.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: I remember once taking my parents to the airport, and as I left, the car started rattling like something in the engine had broken loose.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: The driver of an airport limo that was the same make and model of Mercedes waved me down and gestured to pop the hood.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: I tried to look like I knew what I was looking at or looking for, but I had absolutely no clue.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: He pointed at a broken rubber gasket like thing, and went to his trunk and returned with a new one.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: It turned out to be a motor mount, and with help from a couple of other drivers, he attached it and instantly solved my problem and sent me on my way, without accepting anything in return, except my thanks and a high five.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: My friends and family in the U.S.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: couldn't imagine living abroad.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: When we went back in the summers or for holidays, I was always asked if it was safe.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: People couldn't believe it when I said I felt much more nervous in the States with random shootings and cops with attitudes.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: People on the streets who avoided eye contact or speaking to strangers.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: It was a challenge even to get help or directions, especially in big cities, but kind of everywhere.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: I had fun, the food, cartoons, MTV, but I was alert and a little on edge the whole time.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: I always felt relief when we got to the airport, to head back someplace warm and familiar.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: As we got older, my friends and I rode horses and motorcycles in the desert.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: We camped on beaches to snorkel and scuba dive in the Red Sea.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: We explored archaeological sites, museums, neighborhoods that rarely saw a foreigner, let alone a teenaged one.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: We went to bars and nightclubs with no drinking age, dressed and acted way more grown up than we were.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: We were a novelty, a funny sight.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was particularly amusing as a Hawega, a foreigner who wasn't a tourist.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: I lived here.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: My expanding repertoire of phrases in Arabic sounded kind of like a local, not learned in a classroom, picked up on the street.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: This was my home.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Forty years later, it still is.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: I speak a lot more Arabic and look a little less alien since social media and global brands have encouraged everyone to dress more similarly than different.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Today it's our kids that live in the US, and visit family abroad, not the other way around.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: We worry about how foreigners are treated, about threats of terrorism, while we marvel at how safe it feels here.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: We've been in Almaz Bay on the North Coast since Sunday, taking turns providing each other with a blanket of hospitality, booking a cabana on the beach for the day, hosting a meal, picking someone up or dropping them off.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's a staggering amount of sharing and caring for each other, and little in the way of flexing or pretense.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: It makes me feel like I'm finally settling in, letting go of the need to understand, finding my bearings, and recognizing that even though I've never lived on the coast, or anywhere else in Egypt for that matter, since I was a teenager, for reasons I feel deeply but don't comprehend, and can't explain, at least temporarily I'm back in the place that feels most like home to me.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: We find casual moments alone to check in with each other about events of the past year.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Two of us find ourselves bobbing in the cool, gentle waves of the bay, separate from the group.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: We take a moment to catch up on my family moves, my new podcast, kids, a new job.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: I glance at the very well-healed surgical scar and don't mention it.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's a safe distance in the questions, respect for boundaries, but a willingness to go deeper, anywhere either of us wants to feel heard, helped, or hugged.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Just not where the healing has already happened.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is Handalin in Sahel, Egypt.