Terminal
צילום: איי אף פי
Terminal love
Halili, who used to love the drama and mystery of airports, now finds they make him terminally ill
As a young and rather strange child, my favorite place in all of Israel was the departures lounge of Ben Gurion airport. I would take a bus from my house to the airport where for hours I would walk around the terminal jealously watching all the people flying to distant, mysterious lands. Then I would return home to my dismal, dull and very local reality.
When I grew up, I shed some of the strangeness and the wanderings around the airport I converted to more interesting travel to world capitals. But the exciting part remained, the arriving at a foreign airport, spending a couple of hours there enjoying whatever it had to offer. Every airport was different, unique and exciting in it’s own way.
Each place had a distinct flavor and smell and the human parade was always interesting. Unfortunately, over the last few years, my country and many others have begun imposing a terrible injustice. Not only has the adventure of flying become a nightmare but newer airports all look like conveyer belt planning, as if they were designed by one neo-modern architect with round glasses and an urban design concept based solely on function.
Of course there were those American airports that ended by love of flying and caused me to gladly adopt train travel and not just as a possible way to commit suicide. Since the American airports began their hysterical security checks you need to employ the talents of Hanna Senesh to get onto the plane in one piece.
The new policy basically ends your ability to make an impression at the airport. If in the past every flight was an exciting event for which you would dress up. Today it’s advisable to just wear sweats since it’s the only outfit that’s metal free. In the last two years for example, I am careful not to wear a belt in my pants. I also leave my shirt with the sequins and snaps on a hanger in my closet. Otherwise, the metal detector blasts forth with an alarm that is a poor imitation of that on American Idol as all those nervous, impatient passengers standing behind me glare.
Then comes the stage of questions and another round of checking. For some reason, without volunteering I am the one always pulled out of the line to undergo the additional security check.
This stage includes a body search of the kind I do not particularly like, a check of all the contents of my baggage and the interminable round of questions that even my military service in the Israeli army does not help to cut short. Once I was asked my exact ethnic origins. I stupidly said that I was Israeli but my parents are of Iranian descent. In an instant I found myself in an interrogation room and only my journalists card saved me from the threat of an inquisition.
In the past the bitter pill you would have to swallow during the questioning were sweets sold in the restaurants of the airports. I remember eating a Belgian waffle at the airport in Brussels, a chestnut cream pastry in Charles De Gaulle Airport, apple strudel at the airport in Vienna and smoking a joint at Schiphol in Amsterdam. Today, the culinary options are so limited that I made a beeline for the airport McDonalds.
Where’s the duty free?
The galloping globalization has left its mark on airports around the world. They have lost their uniqueness and now aim to be places where every passenger feels at home even though he really isn’t. When I travel abroad the last thing I want is to feel at home where I am chased by ghosts and mice.
The duty free shops around the world have also fallen in line. I often feel that they are set up exactly the same with the same prices. The only comforting exception to that I discovered at the airport in the resort town of Bodrum in Turkey. There you could get locally made Marlboro Lights for eight dollars a carton. That the Turks for you. They set their own pace and are independent. No wonder the EU doesn’t want them as members.
I am exhausted when I board the plane, let down and tired. There another public health catastrophe awaits, a result of the deterioration in the quality of the traveling adventure. No more indulging stewardesses who place a pillow under my neck, suggesting I recline the seat to be more comfortable as I sip a Bloody Mary.
The flight has turned into a free for all. Even a subway ride has more prestige. No more food on domestic flights, no sound system and the films they show are at least four hours long. However, what have not changed are screaming infants and filthy bathrooms.
I now realize I have started to work for the airlines. I asked to sit in the same row as the emergency exit for which the passenger pays a price. In the event of a crash, it is me who will have to assist others to safely flee the aircraft. There is also the risk I will become the first target of a terror attack.
“You must read the emergency instructions,” I am told by the stewardess, “so that you know how you can help.” I mumble my consent in order to get away from her hovering. If the plane loses altitude and an emergency landing is needed, I am the first out and I’ll try to grab my suitcase as well. I did not buy a plane ticket in order to be a one-man rescue and recovery team.
Why not El Al
Here is an anti-Zionist confession. I never fly El Al. For years now, one flying adventure with them was enough for me to admit to the Israeli leadership that if I am landing in Tel Aviv – why start the experience at Kennedy airport? I don’t mean the behavior you all know about – the pushing, the shoving, elbows, and arguments. Actually I am talking about this behavior but mean that when I fly El Al I am also doing God’s work.
The last time it happened, I almost caused an incident requiring use of the emergency exit. It was three hours after we had taken off. I had finally succeeded in finding a comfortable position for my long legs and began to feel drowsy. The women next to me stopped arguing and David stopped shouting to his buddy Moshe to take pictures of the clouds. Exactly at that moment, when my body had at last achieved some calm and quiet, I got hit in the head. “Ben Ladin,” I opened my eyes in fear, “is that you?” It wasn’t Bin Laden but a bearded guy who looked like him.
“Time to pray Shachrit,” he ordered me as he stroked his beard sending the leftovers of his meal into my lap. “No thanks, I gave at the office,” I said. I moaned a little and closed my eyes. But the envoy from the Holy One Blessed Be He would not give up. “Come, it’s a mitzvah. It will only take ten minutes.”
I remained firm in my refusal at the same time trying to figure out how he knew that dawn was breaking outside when it was still pitch black. I regretted in my heart all the physics classes that I skipped in school, but even more I regretted the fellow standing next to me who refused to take no for an answer.
Eventually, the yeshiva student left. I though the paying episode was over but after five minutes I found out I was wrong. A whole group of them congregated in the front of the plane and began to pray shachrit right in my face. When we landed in Israel, I kissed the holy ground.
Yaniv Halily is Yedioth Ahronoth’s N.Y. correspondent. His column is published in Yedioth America
