Welcome home (to Canada) -- my self-indulgent rant

Yesterday, the mini-plane I was on from NY to Toronto landed at Pearson, which I've heard a number of times charges the highest landing fees in the world. Waited for thirty minutes for the good people at Pearson to connect a tube from the gate to the plane. So I was in a pretty surly mood. The guy who let me back in the country must have marked me for further inspection, as the final stop on my exit from the airport was the place where they rifle through your bags to make sure you're not cheating the government of a couple hundred bucks of sales tax by exceeding your $750 spending allowance abroad. Obviously not to keep you from bringing in drugs, or they would have dogs...

Anyway, the guy assigned to me was, I would guess, of Middle-Eastern or South-Asian background. He asked me if I bought anything while I was away, and I said no emphatically and angrily. As he opened my bag, the first thing he saw was a book with its bright price sticker right on the cover. Oops. He didn't say anything. I asked him why he was searching my bag. He answered he didn't have any obligation to tell me.

"Actually, yeah, you do have to tell me why you're searching my bag."

No, he emphasized, he didn't have to tell me. "If you don't want people to look in your bags, don't travel. Do you understand my point?"

I wasn't being outwardly hostile, just sarcastic and dismissive. Anyway, a little more along those lines, and then:

"What do you do?"

"I'm a journalist."

"Oh, like that guy who got his head cut off, Daniel Pearl?"

"Yeah, actually my ambition is also to have my head cut off."

Yada yada yada. He reassured me that no one was getting his head cut off. I almost asked him for his full name and badge number, but couldn't be bothered. It seemed obvious that he was trying to show this snotty little shit what it's like to get humiliated by airport handlers. For one thing, Daniel Pearl hasn't been in the news for quite a while -- most Canadians probably wouldn't even know who he is. Given that he was beheaded in Pakistan, and that the name rolled so easily off the guy's lips, I imagine he must have either been Pakistani in origin or simply had a really good grasp of post-9-11 current affairs. (Or just a huge fan of BHL?) I also imagine it was a comment directed at me being Jewish, though I can't remember whether or not he looked at my passport or just my customs card -- ie, I'm not sure whether or not he read my name. But if it wasn't an anti-Semitic comment, what a wildly unspecific yet aggressive thing to say to a journalist! Obviously I didn't mention that I was only half-Jewish, and the wrong half at that. (Or that I was only half a journalist, and the wrong half at that.)

(Odd coincidences: I've read half of 'Who Killed Daniel Pearl?', and liked it but sometimes you don't finish books. I lent it to my Pakistani-Canadian friend Fahd, whose last name is Hussein, and who's had it a lot worse than that (!) at the airport. An Iranian-French girl I dated a couple years ago told me I looked like Daniel Pearl, within about twenty-four hours of telling me I looked like Jerry Seinfeld.)

After that, the harassment became banal, devoid of geo-political/identity-politics significance. He took my Apple laptop out of my knapsack, and moved it around with his hands.

"When did you buy this?"

"About three months ago."

"Do you have a receipt?"

"No."

"What store?"

"I bought it online."

"You know, I could hold onto this until you come back here and show me a receipt. Most people never come back with a receipt. Can you see now why we go through people's bags?"

"Look," and here OJ Simpson dangerously surfaced from my subconscious, "even if I did buy it in New York, it would cost the Canadian government about a hundred bucks in sales taxes. Who cares? People are bringing into Canada hundreds of millions of dollars of products made by six-year-olds."

A little more back-and-forth, and I was out, all luggage safely in hand. I can imagine that if he identified as a potential Daniel Pearl someone more Jewish and less self-hating, he would have gotten himself into some trouble. You know, because the wonderful anti-racist Jewish groups use such incidents of suspicion and division (and maybe resentment and even hate?) to bring people together, right? Ha ha ha.