Category: security

flying from London Heathrow to the U.S. with an american airline is rather cheap at the moment. “Everyday Low Fares” as UKwebsite of United Airlines announces. and the full security experience comes for free.

in fact we already met with security on the London underground. from Manor House to Heathrow is a straight line, the Picadilly line, but it takes a good while (as a number of us remember very well from when rutvica and camille were waiting at Heathrow for giulia and me, who basically left Manor House too late, to catch a flight to Athens for the ESF…). taking the promised extra security into account, we left Manor House really early. only to get stuck underground between Manor House and Finsbury park. for the longest time. morning peak hours, too many people, not enough oxygen. amazing how people responded through basically ignoring that we were standing still in a small and dark tunnel with no idea what was happening. people focused on their trashy newspapers or novels. when there finally is an announcement, we are told that there’s a fire alert on the Victoria line and that the train cannot continue. for a moment giulia and i exchange glances, there’s something strange about the Victoria line story cause basically we’re on the Picadilly line. when the train finally moves, it only takes us to Finsbury Park where it stops all together, we are advised to change to the Victoria line. stranger still. but everybody stays very calm and english-style polite. and the mass of people gathered in the station by now slowly starts filling trains on the Victoria line. once we’re on that train, we get the information that there’s a serious fire alert on the Picadilly line. this is confirmed in the other stations we have to change and pass through, so it seems that the story while we were on the Picadilly line was manufactured to keep people from panicking. it worked. it also makes you think what Picadilly fire story is supposed to do.

we get to Heathrow later than we had planned, but the long queues we had come to imagine didn’t materialize. still, the wait is longer than the queue would suggest, as every passanger has to answer an elaborate list of questions. at the end of that list i ask if it is okay to take the small container for my lenses with some drops of liquid on board with me.
– “oh no,” says the United Airlines woman decisively, “no liquids”.
– “i understand, but at some point during the journey i will need to take my lenses out.”
– “i understand, but liquids cannot go on board.”
– “so there will there be liquid for lenses provided on the plane, for passengers who need some?”
– “ah, i don’t think so,” she apologizes.
– “but this is a journey from London to San Francisco with overlay. my eyes can’t take it that long. this qualifies as special needs.”
– “i hear what you’re saying. and if these security measures become permanent, we’ll have to come up with solutions. but it’s all very new at the moment, we’re all still trying to figure it out. you know, after what happened…”
i bite my tongue not to say, after what didn’t happen…
– “and you don’t have glasses with you?”
– “no…” (a little lie for the sake of poking in their absurd security measures…)
she apologizes and suggests that i can take the container with me and ask the security people, but warns us that i mostly likely will have to leave the lenses container with them. i thank her and take up the suggestion. giulia shakes her head at this reflex to stand on my grounds and not move and keep on arguing when dealing with red tape, bureaucrazy and other official shit.

security is indeed more tight. a display of all the items you cannot take on board, it resembles the cosmetic corner in a department store. more things need to go through the x-ray, more people get body-searched. i decide not to ask anything beforehand, saving up the arguing for after the x-ray. only, that never happens cause my “liquids” pass x-ray without a problem. interesting.

but security doesn’t end here, there’s more at the gate of my flight, organized by United Airlines this time. after another passport check, all the passengers of our flight have their handluggage thoroughly checked and are being body-searched. the queue is long and once i’ve passed passport control i decide not to join the end the snake of people, waiting instead till the snakes gets shorter and one can cut through the curves. while i’m standing there, and effectively creating a second queue, a flight attendent comes to me and signals me to go through. without the extra body and luggage check. they were running out of time. thus goes the true story of how i smuggled liquids on the plane after the august 2006 non-event…

Chicago. my point of entry in the country, so this is where i need to do custums and immigration control. for some reason i have an intuition that it will be more tight, less friendly, than in San Francisco. which doens’t bother me too much, cause i react badly to the friendliness combined with this hyper-security (as you might remember). it surely is less friendly, but also less tight. well relatively speaking, after all we’re living in times of security: two digital fingerprints and a digital picture, and a new paper stappled in my passport, with the warning that i’m into trouble if i lose that piece of paper. (which i know by now.) but no extra x-ray of luggage like in san francisco.

the guy who does the prints and picture looks like a military brute. his collegue asks him something about a commercial, and he answers that he wouldn’t know, cause he doesn’t watch television. “it makes your brain rot,” he adds, and looks at me for confirmation. “oh yes,” i respond with the big smile, also to the other passport control officer, “it makes your brain rot.” “i prefer to read,” says the guy, “i read 5 newspapers a day.” if i wouldn’t get damned so nervous and uncomfortable in these security situations, i would have wanted to ask him which newspapers, i’m still curious.

‘t Is gebeurd, c’est fini, the saga of the boxes is over. This story pursued me for the last couple of months, and most often i’ve avoided to go into much detail. True, it was very easy to put it in a nutshell: “it’s such a mess”. Today we’ve put an end to the mess – which would have never been possible without maría’s doing. Let me now finally tell you the story. It starts with the fact that settling here wasn’t the easiest thing in the world. Besides the stories which you already know, there was a very material thing of my work refusing to travel with me. First i found that my work in digital form didn’t make the crossing: the whole folder on my laptop meredith named “work” just happened to be empty when i arrived here. Empty. Papers, interviews, presentations, articles… since 1998 – gone. It took some weeks, and Wendy’s work and effort, to retrieve almost all documents from some far away hidden cave on the Constant server. Then there were the books and documents which i shipped with a Dutch/Belgian shipping company Cleve en zonen sometime beginning of January. The two boxes were supposed to arrive in San Francisco (Oakland) mid-February. Around that time i get a bill from the Californian partners of the shipping company, Primary Freight in L.A., that seems outrageous to me. So i call to ask for clarification. The woman i talk to actually advises me not to pay just yet, as the boxes are in a container held by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. It seems unlikely at that stage that the container will be able to enter the country, due to post 9/11 security measures. It’s not my books that are causing the problem, the woman adds. A week later her intuition is confirmed – the container cannot enter – and she tells me that the boxes will remain on the who will soon be on its way home, to Rotterdam. I was almost ready to leave for New York at the time, couldn’t imagine myself settling in Santa Cruz, and the idea that my books would be returning home was a great relief.

Having just left New York and arrived in London i got an email saying that my shipment had passed Customs and Border Protection in Los Angelos. What the hell… Some days later in Italy i made a firm phonecall to Cleve en zonen in Antwerpen making it clear that the shipment was hopelessly late for me, would need to be shipped back home as soon as possible and that i refused to pay for the extra costs. What i got from the other side of the line: a confirmation that this was beyond the reasonable delay time for shipments, “the container from hell” was the nick-name the guy used. Plus a commitment that “the client” should not carry the extra costs for this and so their insurance would. A bit more foggy with respect to the effort of sending the boxes home – “So, hm, are you sure the shipment has become useless to you?” “Yes, my mission over there is finished,” i remember saying, “i will need the books very soon back in Brussels.” “Hm, i see, let’s see what we can do…” I got in contact with Primary Freight immediately, and let them know that the shipment should go back to Rotterdam as soon possible on the costs of the insurance company of Cleve en zonen. A second email from them to confirm, and i confirm. A second moment of relief that it is over.

When i return to California in the beginning of May maría gives me letter from U.S. Customs and Borders which arrived at the old address in Kenneth Street. An outrageous bill for storage costs for the two boxes… After many angry phonecalls to L.A. and Antwerpen, in which i manage to convince the woman in L.A. to forward me her email conversation with the people in Antwerpen, it seems that Primary Freight had also asked Cleve en zonen for a confirmation for the return of the shipment and Cleve en zonen never responded to that question. So the two boxes travelled from L.A. to Oakland, stayed in the free storage for a number of days and then moved on different storage places which charged a lot… Initially i refuse to deal with it – it’s these shipping companies that fucked up so they better solve the problem. Phonecalls are incredibly frustrating as they feel like talking to, and banging my head against, a wall. Although in some way i end up getting beyond the wall with the Primary Freight woman, when i get really angry and bring the conversation on a personal level with her. It usually goes like this: after 15 minutes of impossibilities and other crap, i get upset and tell her that this is intolerable. “Karen,” i tell her, “i’m not some kind of company or agent, don’t give me the standard shit. It’s not as if i can put these costs on my insurance, i’m paying this from my own money that i work for [here i am performing the employee, although i admit that the Marie Curie scholarship doesn’t really feel like that…]. You also work for your money, how would you feel when you pay for something that first of all is not delivered, and secondly generates even more outrageous costs because the company neglected to communicate well?” At this point she tends to get helpful, and every phonecall we do the same routine all over again… Then there are super frustrating phonecalls to Cleve en zonen in Antwerpen, to U.S. Customs and Borders Protection in Oakland and to Penn Logistics in Oakland. As all the parties involved put so much energy in emphasizing where and how they are not responsible, i’m starting to understand the fragmentation of the process – everyone is involved in a distinct part of the travel of my boxes, and already has a finger pointed to someone else when it seems that something went wrong somewhere along the way. I also understand that they are not very used to deal with individuals, even the U.S. Customs and Border Protection suggests in first instance to hire a broker to do all the paper work. Then there is a guardian angel, her name also Karen, at the Bayport Warehouse in San Leandro, where the boxes are actually located. She guides me through the whole thing, making it possible to envision what driving up to Oakland to pick up the boxes would look like in pratical terms. And while the others keep on saying that is unlikely that all can be done in one day, she insists that it is possible. She also suggests a way to navigate the red tape: “Make sure that people take pity on you,” the thing she no doubt did. She even suggests the possibility of simply not picking up the boxes (after a certain amount of time in storage they are destroyed) and not paying (only a part of) the costs. Which had also crossed my mind, and i could use Marie Curie money to buy the books again, but the boxes also contain some personal documents – it’s my Istanbul diary that ruled out that option.

It’s maría who takes out a day to go with me, and we have david’s Volvo to do the trick. Our first stop is of course at the Bayport Warehouse in San Leandro, with the guardian angel who turns out to be a middle-age obese woman. A warehouse in an industrial park, an empty office (not one poster on the wall) with hardly any colleagues. It strikes us miserable working conditions. From there we drive to the U.S. Customs and Border protection in Oakland. Here we enter the port, and soon we are the only car in the midst of American monster trucks (thank God for the Volvo…). At some point, stuck in between two of those which totally blocks our view on the road, we find ourselves driving on a scale to weigh the trucks, before we realize we need to be in the other lane. I get out the car to run up to the small cabin besides the scale to ask the person who works there for directions. A young woman on her own, once more we’re struck by her working environment.

U.S. Customs and Borders – this is the terrain of the Department of Homeland Security, as a big flag reminds us in cause we would have forgotten the economy of security in this country. The two men in line before us, apparently picking up a shipment from Thailand, get all kinds of questions. How often do you go to Thailand? What do you do there? Employees come in and out, and they tend to be very generous, with greetings and smiles. They also tend to be people of color. And they’re all armed. When it’s my turn it goes so much smoother than some of the phonecalls had lead me to fear. “So, what took you so long to pick up those boxes?” I begin the long-winded story, the one that you are now reading, and quickly the woman says “alright, alright.” I get the necessary stamps and clearance.

Penn Logistics where the boxes had stored at first for a ridiculous amont of money. The office part of the warehouse is very small, a bit claustrofobic. Three woman, two of them obese. Then i discover an aquarium with two boa snakes. One of the woman has a pluche snake near her desk. It somehow seems that the three have created their own little world in here, which strikes us as quite surreal. Working conditions, again. While i do the paper work maría sits down on the only chair for visitors and picks up the only book on the coffee table. A 9/11 photobook. At some point i hear her close the book and put it on the table again with a slam, accompanied with a sign. We look at each other, time to get out of this place. I finish my business with the woman who happened to be someone i spoke on the phone with – i recognize her voice. One of those voices who insisted that “we are not responsible.” At some point she acknowledges our phonecall, and apologetically explains that they can’t take risks and then you never now and usually she never even gets to see the people (ah, another complication: i don’t have bank account here so i had to pay all the bills in cash, usually she gets checks mailed to her). I just try to think about how the world looks like from a miserable office with two boa snakes and a 9/11 photobook and the complicity between three woman who don’t exactely look joyful. The outside world must often seem limited to voices on the phone – asking, disputing, complicating things; phones you’d prefer to put down as soon as you can.

Back to Bayport Warehouse. Meanwhil Karen is dealing with an unforseen problem, Primary Freight can’t confirm receipt yet of a money order i send them some days ago. We pay the money again to Karen, who writes us a check for precisely the same amount, which we can cash as soon as she gets notice Primary Freight. Her boss drops by again – it seems as our visit to the offices brings some action in the day – and she’s clearly not supposed to do be doing this. It is a matter of trust (we could retracted the money order and cash this check immediately, or she could make it impossible for us to cash the check so the payment is done twice), and the trust is clearly mutual. So what makes the world look differently from this miserable office? Back home we send Karen a post-card from Santa Cruz with a beautiful sunset. Perhaps the walls of her office will not be entirely empty anymore.

The plane takes off in London Heathrow and i recognise a familiar anger slowly raising its ugly head. By the time we land in San Francisco i’m both steaming and amazed at how this place (the U.S. in general? California? or tiny Santa Cruz and all it stands for?) is able to trigger off this anger in me. All these weeks, almost two months of travelling, through multi-layered and nuanced physical and affective landscapes, through a spectre of different shades of connection and different types of relationships one can have to a particular space. And then BANG, sheer anger.

This time – it strikes me as well – there is no alienation of “stepping into the other side of the television screen”, that might have mediated the anger. No, this international airport already feels familiar. And so i get upset when customs officials do their surveillance job with much friendliness and a smile. “You have a beautiful handwriting,” says the guy who checks my forms and papers. “You have very beautiful eyes. Grey and green and blue, it probably depends on the light?” says the guy who takes digital fingerprints and a picture of me. The friendly faces of this surveillance make me want to scream… But all i say is: “Would that be information you need to let me in the country?” He looks a bit embarrased, turns very concentrated to the screen in front of him. I feel like asking why all of this is necessary, they already have my fingerprints and multiple pictures, digital and non-digital, of me. But i bite my tongue. The game of friendliness is strictly regulated, as big notices remind the aliens & non-residents at all times: Insulting or threatening a customs officer is an offense.

Camille’s words in Athens ring through my head, and it seems a good idea to take them (more) seriously. That such anger of the “alien” is important to articulate, that it points to things that people who are more settled in a place don’t see or feel anymore. And she talked about all the things that made her angry and upset in her first months in the UK. The blatent signs and marks of a deeply classist society that repulsed her, and the fact that it didn’t seem to upset other people so much – something which is perhaps even more repulsive. And i think of all the friends who are very angry about things in Belgium and Flanders and Europe, and how that anger is precious to me. An anger that i can and do share but often it comes from a different source, i.e. when it requires the labour of learning to see the mechanisms and privileges that i have been brought up with, and have learned to take for granted. So i’m determined to articulate better the ways in which this Santa Cruz feels so wrong.

But for the moment of arrival it’s good to be saved from my anger, and that is precisely what Natascha and Kelly do.