ORLANDO, 25 June — Upon announcing a trip to the United States for summer vacation, I received mixed reactions from my friends and co-workers. Some were shocked that I would still want to venture to the land of "fun, sun and shopping," after all the bias and mistreatments of Arabs recently. Others were envious and asked me if I could pack them along with my suitcases.
This is not my first trip back since Sept. 11, but this time the news and horror stories of mistreatment left me more than just a little anxious. I expected a lot of questions upon passing through JFK Airport immigration and passport control but it was smooth and uneventful. It was when I began my domestic travel that all the hassles began.
When I went to check into Delta Airlines for my flight to Orlando and the illustrious Disney World, I was told that I would not make the flight because of impending security checks. When I told the Delta agent that there was no problem with my luggage being checked, she responded, "Trust me you will never make it." Soon I discovered why she was so confident in her statement, she was not talking about my luggage passing through a security device.
The next flight to Orlando was out of LaGuardia, to which I would have to drag my two exhausted children and three pieces of luggage in a cab and wait four hours until the next flight. At LaGuardia Airport the adventure did not end, it was just beginning. I found out that since I bought my JFK-Orlando tickets in Saudi Arabia, I was immediately flagged in the Delta computer to be subjected to all additional security screening. I had to have my luggage dissected piece by piece — leaving no underwear or sock unpacked and packed again by two security agents. The entire process, including the waiting in lines for my humiliation and disgust at having my personal belongings mishandled took an hour and half.
Once all my luggage was finally checked, entertaining my two boisterous children for two and half hours was my next task at hand. Finally, we were called at the gate to board the plane. However, as the gate agent took my five-year-old daughter’s boarding pass told me "this little peanut has been randomly selected to go through an additional security check." Her surprise only increased when she realized my son’s pass related the same message.
Finally, she signed and asked all three of us to step to the right for additional "random" security screening. It was more than a hassle than anything else, especially with small children and when they made us all remove our shoes — the kids were not too fond of that idea, my son threw a temper tantrum.
I thought I would be leaving such annoyances at the airport, but it seemed to follow us throughout our vacation. At all the gates of Disney World theme parks is a new security policy that officers check all bags coming into the park. While added security is always comforting, more lines at Disney World are not. What was most amusing was that the security seemed to be for show more than anything else. Only one of the thirteen or so times I had to go through these checks did an officer really inspect my backpack full of cameras, film, and snacks. The other times I was asked to open my bag, not even to receive a glance at what was inside, they would just said "okay, thank you," as soon as my bag opened.
Perhaps this is because at Disney they were not warned ahead of time that we were tourists arriving from the "land of terrorists," which Saudi Arabia has been so incorrectly been labeled.
