Who needs to work out when you can have a controlled heart attack?
I’ve been traveling now for almost seven months, which is really hard to imagine. It’s been a day… it’s been a year…? I had to start adding the day of the week to my journal entries because the date alone had begun to lose all meaning and I found myself wondering what day of the week it actually was on more than one occasion. But throughout all that time I’ve been pretty damn attentive to where all my stuff is at all times. To say that I’m terrified of losing any one of my : phone, passport, credit card, wallet would be an understatement. I’ve found myself doing the “pocket-check” while standing in the apartment I’ve rented just to double check I know where my critical means are.
So you can imagine my utter electrified shock when I bent over to pick up my ‘bags’ after scanning the departure screen in the Queen Alia International Airport in Jordan and realized that I only had the one and most insignificant of my two bags with me. Instant involuntary whole-body contraction and accompanying perspiration squirts from every pore preceded my brain’s capacity to remember where I’d left my bag. I’d strolled through the Duty-Free post customs check and wondered just how long my bag had a head start on me catching up to it, if it hadn’t already left the building or made it to the bomb sniffing dog room. I hustled my way back through Duty-Free, regretting the languid stroll I’d taken to the departure screen and began retracing my mental steps…Had I set it down on the bench seats just past the customs conveyor belts? Man, it could be long gone by now!
Sweaty and frantic I made it back to the bench and my hopes exhausted quicker than my breath. That’d be a big fat nope! I swiveled left and right and back towards the conveyor belt; uttered a feeble hello or excuse me to the Arabic speaking security guys and spied what, god please god, might be my bag still on the belt. I huffed a winded, “I think I left my bag,” pointing back to the bench while catching a sidelong glance at my blue Cabin Zero backpack abandoned and apparently ignored on the metal rollers next to a big gray shoe bin. “I left my bag,” I sputtered again and pointed to the bag on the belt while reaching for it. The motion towards the bag elicited the first of any kind of response or acknowledgement of the four blazered security guards. With a not so fast wag of a finger one of the guards took my bag and walked it back to the scanner for another run through.
I was beginning to relax a bit and catch my breath with the fact that I hadn’t lost all the clothes not on my body or that I’d be spending the next three hours with a bomb squad or drug team. I could feel the sheen of sweat on my freshly shaved dome as my heart started to reduce from a gallop to a trot and waited for my bag to traverse the x-ray eyes of security once more. Run through once more, the guard simply handed me my bag…to my utter relief.
And that was that…which really piqued my curiosity, though not enough to press my luck with any inquiries of the blazered staff. Is that really it? Is he just going to hand me my bag? Without asking for any ID or proof that the bag was mine? I mean sure, it would be a hell of a performance to pull off such genuine anxiety, but there are pros out there who do all kinds of clandestine shit for living. Did they recognize me as the undisputed owner of the bag? I sport a rather long Van Dyke with a bald head and glasses, so outside of thirty-year class reunions in the Mid-West, I do kind of stick out in this neck of the woods. And if that’s the case, why didn’t any of them make a peep when I walked off without the bag five minutes earlier or acknowledge what a dumbass I was for leaving it in the first place?
And what does that say about the level of security in the Queen’s airport? If it was that safe, I doubt the cops outside and in the arrival/departure areas would be walking around with their hands on the automatic rifles slung at the ready across their chests. Nor would the plain-clothes police have their blazers tailored to more stylishly conceal the handgun on their hip. So were these guys just slacking; the equivalent of domestic TSA agents just punching the clock? Or am I just so obviously not a threat that they really couldn’t be bothered by the bearded bald guy who’s either a Jew or an American on his way out of Jordan so bon voyage!
Whatever the reason, I’m happily reunited with the sum total of my worldly possessions and glad for the good natured or indifferent hospitality of the Jordanian security at Queen Alia International Airport.