The Asshole simply isn’t going to back down. I can see that, even as Christine, more animated even than she was onstage last night in front of an adoring crowd at the culmination of the Mad’Art Dance Festival in Carthage, buzzes around him serving up French menu of super-reasonable arguments that he should change his mind and allow us to go on to the gate. But this audience, dressed as he is in the pale blue, white and gold uniform of the Tunisian airport security cop, is going to make a point that he is not there for the taking. He probably grew up pulling the legs and wings off flies, delighting in watching the death throes of the frantic, helpless and dying insect as it buzzed its last moments in the dirt. Now, replete with the ever present and silly looking over-tall peaked cap of petty officialdom the world over, he is flexing his personal power bar and torturing us with the reality that I am going to have to go back through security, run the gauntlet of passport control in reverse, past the Prayer Room and the tourist shops, through the entire airport and make my way back to the check-in area for Air France where I will doubtless be charged another arm and a leg (my checked bag was 8 kilos overweight - $175 merci bien) and then make it to the gate in time for our flight, which leaves in 20 minutes. And who’s to say I won’t get more shit in at least ONE stage of the return gauntlet… just to make sure we’re potentially TOTALLY fucked he makes me leave my hand luggage roller with Christine and the rest of Epiphany Dance while I attempt his designated obstacle course. Jeux sans frontieres indeed.
I probably shouldn’t have obeyed the order to play the didge when they told me to. Perhaps if I hadn’t then this wouldn’t have happened. But these kinds of people like to make you jump through utterly unnecessary hoops. The female cop half heartedly keeping an eye on the X-Ray machine was happy to let the guy in front of me pass his half drunk litre of water around the security equipment, thereby avoiding any kind of check on it, but was insistent that I first show her The Leg, then play it for her. Actually it sounded pretty good in there, but maybe I overdid it. It certainly seemed so for the backline of macho security goons I hadn’t yet noticed were lying in wait. First up they confiscated the instrument and, carrying The Leg at arms length over to a lolling superior determined that it was a dangerous weapon (sonically, perhaps – but physically? Surely I could have done more damage with the Stratocaster that Randy was carrying for me, either in one piece or perhaps with a dis-assemblage of its component parts). Enter The Asshole stage left; the tallest cop in the room. He’s resolute in his insistence that I go back to square one and utterly disdainful and dismissive of our pleas that he could fall in line with every other airport security I have ever passed through in the entire globe and check it in at the gate itself. His only vocabulary, aside from body language that dictates that we are some kind of unpleasant infestation that he’s trodden in, consists of “Non” and “Check” There’s no way through but to give in and go - So, I’m off and running, literally.
Actually, the Air France officials at both the required desks – check in and cashier – turned out to be surprisingly sympathetic, knowing that they’d already chewed off one of my other legs perhaps, metaphorically speaking. After a relatively short conference between the two departments they let me go almost apologetically and sent me off with instructions to take The Leg to “Position #32”. With momentary, yet desperate, hesitation I found Position #32 occupied by 5 guys, 4 of them in Air France uniforms and the fifth, a 275 LB gorilla in a white coat with Services Especiales (or some such legend) printed on his breast pocket, leaning in a proprietorial manner with his rear end against Position #32 and his back to the rest of the gang. This thug looked at me as if measuring me up for lead boots after a bit of violent horseplay in a small windowless room away from prying eyes or recording equipment. Not a good omen, certainly… “Ca va?” I said in my best conversational French, meeting his eyes and hoping to lighten the mood, as well as my own load. “Non!” he thundered in an unpleasantly damning voice that brooked nothing but Certain Doom. WTF? I’m going to leave my most favored of all instruments and my constant companion for the past 25 years in its soft leather case, protected by nothing but a token strand of bubble-wrap and a prayer In the hands of THIS monster who, for no apparent reason whatsoever seems to have taken a serious and aggravated dislike to me? At this stage I have no choice.
With my heart sinking and a sense of foreboding that I am utterly helpless to influence the positive outcome of this story I hand over The Leg and giving it one last longing look turn my back on Goon and the Gang and hurry back past The Prayer Room, the tourist shops and successfully negotiate the safe return of my passport, which was confiscated on my way out by yet another uniformed official. Fortunately, unencumbered by suspicious hand baggage and now familiar with the protocol of each stage of the way ahead I manage to pass through even Security without a hitch (those jerks have had their fun by now, I suppose) and, joining the rest of my crew we board the plane with moments to spare. Charles de Gaulle here we come, though I have a bad taste in my mouth that remains long after I do NOT see The Leg being hurled off the plane onto the tarmac at Bristol airport in the UK, which is my final destination for the day. Fortunately, and to my enormous relief, my old friend and constant companion for the past quarter century finally does appear, looking somewhat disheveled but otherwise intact, on the carousel.
Welcome to England. At a station café populated by cabbies Bangers, Egg and Chips washed down with a Cuppa Tea you could stand your spoon in never tasted so good!
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