Next Time I'll Cry "Uncle"

Last Saturday my big brother married an incredible Israeli woman (MAZEL TOV!!!) whose uncle happens to be a pilot for the Israeli airline El Al.  The whole family introduced themselves to me during the celebrations and told me to fly only with my new uncle-in-law from now on. (Let's call him "Captain Dohd", which is Hebrew for "Captain Uncle".  Stay tuned for more vocab!)

Alas: I'd booked my flight long ago, and it was not with Captain Dohd. I thought, oh well-- there's always next time, and I can wait to see a 747 cockpit...a little while longer.  Instead, I ended up having one of my infamous Obligatory Mis-Adventures with Public Transport.  This one was a new low and in involved being suspected of...well, that "T" word you never want to hear in an airport.  Or anywhere, actually.  And it all might have been avoided if Captain Dohd had been there.

Here's what happened.  I left Chelsea for JFK in plenty of time for my flight (stop snorting, family), but unbeknownst to me, JFK had torn up all the train tracks between the subway's last stop and the airport. So instead of a smooth, quick, air-conditioned AirTran ride into JFK, the Powers At Be thought it'd be a grand delight to load hundreds of angry, sweaty, rushed and baggage-toting New Yorkers onto a teeny little bus at Jamaica Center and transport them that way.  They loaded us onto the bus as slowly as possible, then made us stand pancaked between our luggage swearing about the situation while they went out for a leisurely smoke, eventually (lacking all haste) returning to the bus and proceeding to drive so. very. slowly and stopping at every. single. terminal to take onboard even more angry, sweaty, baggage-bogged people.

Nightmare.  I mean, the summer buses in Beijing were tea-time at the Ritz-Carlton compared to this.  Instead of getting to the check-in counter 2 hours before my flight, I got there 1 hour and 14 minutes before my flight.  Oh, and New Relevant Fact I Learned: El-Al boards their flights not half an hour before take-off, but a full hour before.  Thus it transpired that I was the very last person to check in for an enormous non-stop, double-decker jumbo jet flight to Tel Aviv.

Have you ever wondered what happens if you are the very last person to check into a flight?  If you are checking in only minutes before boarding, traveling alone, and heading to the Middle East?  Well, friends, let me tell you.  You immediately become suspected of the T Word.  After being thoroughly interviewed at the check-in desk (which was somewhat amusing) I was rushed immediately to the head of the long security lines with an El Al escort (which was entirely amusing) and then quizzed rather thoroughly again by the "escort" while we jogged to the gate. Then the fun really began.  My escort tried to maintain the facade of treating me as a"special guest", but pretty soon the jig was up. I was forced to surrender my carry-on bags to a group of intense airport security staff who whisked them away to a locked back room near the gate. Then my "escort" drilled me all over again: why was I going, how did I get the job, what languages did I speak, where did my family live, and so on. I was no special guest.  I was a suspect.

Pretty soon the flight began boarding.  Being infinitely wise, I thought I could help move things along by proving I was who I said I was, and offered to give the "escort" a mini-lecture on general relativity. About half-way through he abruptly walked off -- and I hadn't even gotten to the good stuff yet! Since this is the typical reaction to lectures on general relativity, I decided not to take his abrupt departure personally.

What I did take personally, however, was what followed.  After another 5 minutes of me standing around like the tall, awkward academic with Dutch heritage that I am amidst a bunch of very at-home Jewish people, a woman from the security entourage emerged from the back room and instructed me to follow her inside.  I was taken into a small curtained-off corner and partially strip-searched.  I have never been so...well, mildly violated is probably the best way to put it. I had to pass certain key articles of clothing I never wished exposed to daylight to two guys standing outside the curtains, who scrutinized every inch of said articles with those little x-ray wands.  Inside the curtains I was thoroughly searched by two women --they even looked inside my ears, poking around with their latex-gloved fingers.  It was awful, but I had to laugh a little because someone had tacked a few cheesy tourism posters to the inside the curtains, as if to say "We know we're causing you untold stress and mortification, but isn't this a nice picture of Haifa?"  

After this little session in the back room of the back room at Gate B31 at JFK airport, the security staff returned my clothes and some of my carry-on items, and escorted me to the front of the long boarding line (compensation? Eh...).  When I opened all my luggage in Tel Aviv, it was evident that security had rummaged through everything.  They tore apart some paper products and put some things in different pockets than they were before.  They reversed the order in which I'd packed everything.  I wondered if my having not one but three books on Quantum Field Theory in my bags made them feel more nervous, or less.

Anyway, all's well that ends well. The only thing I'm truly upset about is that they broke my brand new Made-in-the-USA deodorant into a million little pieces to make sure no weapons were imbedded.  This was sad.  As any American who travels can attest, you just can't get good deodorant anywhere else in the world-- you gotta stock up when you're home. I was counting on this stick to last me until Hanukkuh, but now it looks like a mini snow-globe full of feta cheese.  I'll have to smush it back together in a steamy shower, like you do with those tiny bits of leftover soap.

So that was my flight.  I took a Nesher Taxi from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem and arrived at my temporary housing-- a hostel on the Mount of Olives -- just in time to celebrate my very first Shabbat with 75 people from all over the world.

Shabbat Shalom to you, friends and family, and let the Jerusalem adventures begin!

p.s. Dear Grandma and Grandpa: I am still very much alive today.  Love, Elise.