Sunday, November 02, 2008

A suitcase full of trouble in Washington, D.C.:

Somewhere below me, making its way upward from the bowels of a small Embraer 175, was the source of my anxiety -- a suitcase full of files and books dealing explicitly and in great detail with the likelihood and the possible shape of a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States of America.

The suitcase also contained my second passport (Eastern European in origin, complete with a number of Middle Eastern stamps), and a pouch with my travelling SIM cards, small computer chips that I swap into my mobile phone allowing me to have a Polish phone number when in Poland, British when in Britain, Israeli when in Israel, and so on, and so on.

Owing to a strange moment in life which saw me juggling graduate studies, consulting and journalism, all this seemed perfectly natural when I packed my bag.

Yet as I listened to the ubiquitous recorded announcements informing passengers to mind their suitcases, I couldn't help but give in to the anxiety of the post-9/11 airport, and to concede just how strange all this must have looked.

Once I picked up my suitcase, I started to give in to the sensation that my life would not be easy to explain away.

1:29 AM