Racial profiling? You make the call.

So, I’m trying to be vigilant. That’s how we’re supposed to help fight terrorism, right? Keep our eyes open, report anything suspicious or weird? Narc on our neighbors and whatnot? Actually, despite the Orwellian implications, I think it’s generally a good idea. People mostly tend to be oblivious to…you know, everything, and disinclined to act even if they do notice something. Although I’m a pretty observant person--I like to think I have a writer’s eye--I’m often guilty of the latter, mostly because I don’t trust my instincts, or I think I’m just being silly if I feel like something’s wrong. I’m trying not to do that, both for my sake and everyone else’s.

For example, last summer I was coming out of the post office in Manhattan--the huge one across from Penn Station--and I noticed two large--LARGE--suitcases sitting in the middle of the steps. They didn’t seem to belong to anyone. Mind you, there will people everywhere--it was lunch hour, and a beautiful day, so the steps were crowded with people sitting and eating as well as going in and out of the post office. But the bags were just sitting there, and no one seemed to notice. I stood there for a little bit to see if anyone would retrieve them. I thought about calling 911 but that definitely seemed excessive. I looked around for a cop but of course I didn’t see one. I remembered a few years back, when I was sitting in a Paris train station and a guy sitting near me left his briefcase for like one second to go grab a schedule or something, and immediately the case was surrounded by three or four assault-rifle-wielding soldiers. This was way before 9/11 or the Madrid bombing or anything like that. People love to make fun of the French and especially the French military, but let me tell you, they’re on top of shit.

Anyway, I went back into the post office and sort of wandered around, looking for someone I might tell, but again there were no cops, and there were long lines at all of the windows. I went back outside and looked at the bags again. By now they’d been there for at least 20 minutes, and it’s pretty hard to imagine someone legitimately leaving their possessions alone like that in the middle of New York friggin City. Now I was really going to call 911, but then I remembered that there was a police substation right across the street. So I walked to the corner to cross, and then I see this guy come running up out of the subway station, run over to the bags and grab them, then disappear back down into the subway. It was very odd. In any event, I decided not to tell the cops, and since the subway didn’t blow up, I guess it was all right.

That was my only experience with being on the front lines of the War Against Terror, until recently when I was returning from my trip back East for the holidays. I flew into and out of Newark, where things always seem a little bit more tense than they do at other airports. I mean, it’s where Flight 93 took off from, so I guess it’s understandable. And after having to remove every article of clothing that wasn’t in direct contact with my skin in order to get through security, and then passing a dude spread-eagled against the wall and surrounded by cops, I was feeling a little tense myself. So as I was waiting in line to board my flight, I glanced over at a row of empty seats and I noticed a book sitting there. It was softcover, about the size of a magazine, like the workbooks we used to use in school. It had a maroon cover, and yellow writing in Arabic. There was nobody anywhere near it.

Now, maybe it was a workbook. Maybe somebody was learning Arabic, something I’ve thought about doing myself, and accidentally left their book behind. Maybe any one of a number of other plausible, non-terror related reasons for the book being there was true. But you know how sometimes in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, when Bugs would get the better of someone, as he often did, they’d morph into a lollipop with the word “sucker” on it? I swear, as I stood there looking at that book, the Arabic letters on the cover morphed into Roman ones reading “How to Blow Up a Plane”. As I got closer to the woman who was examining boarding passes, I wondered if I should say anything. There was just something about that book sitting there by itself that struck me as odd. If someone had been reading it, I don’t think it would have been so. I reached the head of the line, and as I handed the woman my boarding pass, I leaned in and quietly mentioned the book. What freaked me out was when I said the word “Arabic”--she totally froze in the act of handing me my stub and her eyes widened. At that moment a security guard walked by, having just got off the plane, apparently, and the woman grabbed her and told me to tell her (the guard) what I’d just told her (the boarding-pass-taking woman). So I did, and got the same reaction, with the freezing and the eye-widening, when I said the word “Arabic”. I pointed out to the guard where I’d seen the book, and she went to look, but there was a crowd of people behind me waiting to get on the plane, so I couldn’t see what, if anything, happened. And since I didn’t hear any news reports of books being found at Newark Airport with the fingerprints of known terrorists on them, and an unknown but stylish and attractive blonde who saved a planeload of people, I guess it wasn’t anything.

The thing is, I felt all guilty about it after I got on the plane, because obviously I was working from the assumption that Arabs, or anything related to Arabs = terrorists. I like to think I’m above such base prejudice, but clearly I’m not. Actually I know I’m not, and I hate when something happens to prove it. I tried to assuage my guilt by pointing out to myself that there were three Middle Eastern-looking men sitting right in front of me on the plane, and I didn’t think anything of it, but the fact is that, although I didn’t recognize the language they were speaking, I did recognize it as an Indic and not a Semitic language. So am I a big creep? Am I just as bad as everyone else?