If you’ve ever been in a horrifying situation, you know how time can be distorted from its normal pace. Events go into slow motion and the entire scene is imprinted on your consciousness in minute detail. I now have a terrible experience stamped on my brain cells, which no amount of tears has been able to wash away. My friends tell me that time will dull the pain. But until the future salves my soul, I replay the scene every night in my sleep and I wake up in the dark shaking with fear, again and again.
Although I am now a Saudi national, I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. Pennsylvania is a US state that was founded on the concept of religious freedom. Pittsburgh is a great melting pot of a city, where people of all races, religions and many nationalities live side by side. Many foreign students are attracted to the city because it is a learning center and home to many colleges and universities.
It was in Pittsburgh that I first met students from the Arab world and eventually became a Muslim. It was also in Pittsburgh during my school days that I stood every morning and recited the "Pledge of Allegiance," which ends with the words that are supposed to describe America — "one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Ten days ago in another US city, Seattle, Washington, I discovered that since Sept. 11 Americans have forgotten some of the important concepts that are supposed to be a part of the foundation on which a great nation was built.
I had traveled to the US for an Arab media briefing by a major information technology company. I was joined by approximately two dozen journalists from across the Arab world. Many of the journalists, including myself, had been nervous about coming to the United States. We’d heard terrible stories of atrocities suffered by other Arabs whose only mistake had been to stand before a US immigration official. We were lucky. Our entry to the US was without serious incident. No one imagined that leaving America would be harder than entering, but it was.
Our mission over, a group of five of us arrived at Seattle Airport on July 24. We had all traveled into Seattle on British Airways, business class. We expected that we would all be leaving that way. We gave the BA ground staff member our tickets and passports, and we were quite surprised when the group was issued four business class boarding passes and one economy class boarding pass. When we asked the BA check-in attendant to review the tickets, she became annoyed with our questions. She instructed us to remove ourselves from the check-in area as we were slowing down the flight check-in process. She told us that if we had any further questions we should direct them to the BA ticketing staff.
To make a long story short, eventually BA was kind enough to issue us the fifth business class boarding pass. When our flight was called we happily proceeded to the boarding area. We had already made it through Seattle airport security. We thought we were going home. It was a mistaken assumption.
Immediately before entering the corridor to go to the BA plane, I was told by a BA ground staff member to step to the left. This was the same BA staff member who had taken offense after we asked her questions concerning the issuance of our boarding passes. I inquired if there was any problem and I was told by the BA staff member that I was going to be searched. I never imagined that I was going to be threatened, humiliated and stripped of my rights as well, but I was.
First I was instructed by a female security official to place my carry-on bags on a table. The table was in plain view of other passengers who were boarding the BA flight to London. People were determinedly looking away from the area, ashamed to see what was going on there. I was then told to step away from the table and turn to the side, facing all the other passengers coming and going in that part of the airport. I could no longer see my bags. The female inspector, with a metal detector wand in her hand, ordered me to spread my arms and legs. She moved my arms and legs into the position she wanted, with my arms stretched out at the shoulders and my legs forming a triangle with the floor. In the meantime I heard the male security guard start tearing apart my carry-on baggage without my permission or presence.
I turned my head to the side and asked what he was doing and did he want assistance? I was ordered by the female inspector to face forward immediately. She started at the top of my head with her metal detector and as she came to each area that caused her wand to beep, she felt for what the metal object underneath might be. "This is your bra," she called out loudly. "And this is your bra," she chirped out delightedly again. "And this is your bra again!" she exclaimed once more. I couldn’t believe it. What was the point of her informing every passerby about my bra?
Then she found the metal stud at the corner of the pocket on my trousers. She insisted that I pull up my sweater to show her the stud. She went around to the other side and demanded the same thing. At that moment the man digging through my bags dropped an object that sounded like my digital camera, on the table. I instinctively turned my head to the right. The female inspector blocked my view and raised her metal detector in front of her like a club.
"This is the third time I told you to face forward, Ma’am," she said menacingly, the metal detector held at chest level. "Don’t you understand English?"
"Are you going to hit me?" I asked. She didn’t answer.
Then she swung the metal detector down across my chest and abdomen. Her wand beeped at the button on my trousers. She instructed me to pull my sweater up above my trousers and pull the waistband of my pants away from my waist. Then the inspector put her hand down my pants and groped the zipper and button from the inside. There I was standing in front of British Airways ground staff, other boarding passengers and other passengers at the Seattle Airport, a Muslim woman in a headscarf with my arms out at my sides, my midriff exposed and an inspector I didn’t know with her hand down the front of my trousers. I wanted to hurt her as she was hurting me, but it was impossible. I started crying.
"Do we have to continue this here?" I asked. "We do if you want to board the plane," she replied.
Eventually I was told to take off my shoes and the metal detector was run over the bottom of my feet and my shoes. Then I was ordered to take my bags and get on the plane. When I asked for time to inspect my bags I was told that if I didn’t board immediately my luggage would be offloaded.
Onboard flight BA48 I demanded to see the head of the cabin staff. Relating the incident to her I was overheard by a BA ground staff member who was carrying out duties on the plane. "You were searched because you were the last person getting on the plane," he said. Another BA cabin crew member pointed out that four women had come on behind my group of journalists. "Did your boarding card come through the machine at the boarding gate?" the man asked. When I indicated that it had, he advised me that I had not been targeted by US Immigration. Instead I had been selected by the BA ground crew member for a "random search" as ordered by airport regulations.
There was nothing random about the search. That BA ground staff member was the same one that had felt bothered by our group at the check-in counter. She had seen my Saudi passport then and she had already spoken to me in annoyed tones at that time. When she picked me out for the search I saw her face. She could not control the expression of the pleasure that she was feeling by her action.
I have been severely traumatized by the search at the Seattle Airport. It was illegal for my bags to be opened and searched without my consent and supervision. It was also illegal to order me to take bags onto an airplane when I had no idea what might have been placed inside them. Forcing me to expose my body in public definitely violated my rights concerning religious freedom as guaranteed under the American Constitution. I don’t even want to go into the humiliation factor.
British Airways has apologized for the search in Seattle and an investigation is under way. I have discovered that many other Arab BA passengers have been subjected to the same horrifying searches even though they, like me, cleared airport security. Many of those passengers have been forbidden to speak out by their companies, who do not want to appear anti-American. This leads me to believe that somehow people have forgotten that the rights, duties and privileges stated in the US Constitution are to be adhered to in good times and bad. Speaking out when the principles held dear by the US Constitution have been circumscribed is an obligation on all those who love the United States of America.
