The morning of my flight departure, I expected an easy 3 km drive to the rental car return area and a seamless flight boarding experience back home. It’s been an exhausting vacation in Iceland, and I was ready to relax in an airport lounge. To my surprise, there was a long line of cars backed all the way up to the highway spur branching off to the hertz rental return area.. which was in reality a metal shack in the midst of dozens of frantically parked cars with people exiting their cars collectively thinking, “What the fuck is this shit?” The car rental return was at a remote site of the airport devoid of shuttle service, totally detached from the hertz rental car pick up location. I’ve been so accustomed to orderly rental car protocol — agents greeting me at the car return area doing their final car inspections within minutes of arrival with mobile devices, that I was caught off guard here. A hellish queue in the rental office with the most retarded people haggling over car damages, a scramble to move my parked car to the screams and honks of more people arriving at this car return shitfest, a hurried sprint with too much luggage on an endless parking lot sidewalk to the airport... as I was wheeling my baggage I noticed the sidewalks weren’t concrete, they were square stone pavers arranged in running bond pattern, with smaller cobblestone trims and yellow painted sidewalk guards. How cute and typically icelandic... even their most utilitarian sidewalks are composed of a patchwork of materials knitted like a woolen sweater. I thought it was funny, these rushed and frantic moments in the airport, hearing my luggage clacking loudly on these paver joints, would form my last memories in Iceland.
After a smooth automated flight check at a kiosk, a thin blond Icelandic security officer with mouselike features interrogated me in the baggage check line. He swiped my passport in a mobile machine, looked at my passport and did a double take probably because I looked so different compared to the passport photo. I was a rather disheveled version of my self wearing the same clothes I had worn the past week with silica water dry straw-like hair (from soaking in the blue lagoon for 6 hours the night before) uncombed and unkempt with sweat beading down my brows from the sprint from the car return.
“What was your favorite part of your trip?” Black sand beach. “What country are you from?” America. “What do you do for a living?” Architecture. “What exactly do you do in architecture?” Design. “What type of buildings do you design?” Schools, housing, and clinics. “How big was your largest project?” 180,000 square foot school in the Bronx. “How many days did you spend in Iceland?” 12. “Did anybody give anything or pack your baggage for you?” No. And so on.
I thought it was strange, I’ve never been interrogated at a baggage-check line before Iceland. Continuing like cattle to security checkpoint lines, I noticed they don’t check shoes here. There were a lot of Americans in the lines. You could tell because all the Americans took off their shoes and placed them in plastic bins to pass through the X-ray machines. The Icelandic guards rolled their eyes at this extraneous behavior which is not required in Iceland. But these Icelandic fuckers didn’t tell the Americans shoe scanning wasn’t necessary. like Clytemnestra withholding warning and waiting to pounce of Agamemnon for his missteps, Icelanders relished in Americans queuing up and wasting extra time taking their shoes on and off for scanning. When my bag went through the X-ray machine, I noticed the end of the machine had a robotic piston arm that pushed bags into one of 2 roller ramps. One ramp for compliant bags, the other for bags harboring non-compliant items. My backpack was pushed to the non compliant ramp. Great. I found out, my tasty cup of skyr banana strawberry yogurt was non compliant and a grave security threat. I asked if I could eat it in front of the guard. he said no. I would have to eat it outside and go through the 30 minute security line again. What a stupid policy. I noticed the guard checked out the flavor, placed my yogurt on a table, and not in the trash... what a fucker. He was saving my yogurt for a midday snack.
I proceeded to walk down the elongated airport concourse to gate D15. I was the most annoying Chinese tourist of them all. Totally oblivious to people rushing to catch their flights, I was bumping into women and knocking over small children. But instead of taking stupid pictures of myself or other chinese tourists, I was taking artful and meaningful pictures of advertising that used famous landscapes I had seen in my trip to Iceland... kirkjufell mountain, blue lagoon... a circular window with a quote by bjork framing one of my last landscape views here.
I was about to take more photos inside the men’s bathroom to show how differently they are configured than American bathrooms when I heard my name announced on the airport intercom system. “Luke, please report to gate 15.” Did they know my crazy bathroom documentation intentions and call me before I could make such deviant photos? I’ve never been summoned over airport intercom systems. Was I being kicked off a flight too full? I suddenly felt a sense of urgency and started racing to the counter where they told me I was ‘randomly’ chosen for a security check. There, I recognized my initial skinny interrogator from the baggage check interrogation standing in the back with a smirk on his face. A country of fuckers. Were my initial answers unsatisfactory? I tried not to act suspicious. But I hate wasting time and standing idly so I took photos of the plane and transmitted them along with my artsy photos of advertisements with my last moments of free WiFi. When I was called, the woman interrogator told me to empty my pockets. I started to unload all the surprising forgotten detritus I had accumulated in my pockets this past week. A ziplock with toothpaste and toothbrush and floss, a plastic braces carrying case, crumpled up receipts, a car rental waiver, my phone, a folded brochure I shoved in my pocket in my last effort to clean the car, a granola bar wrapper, and my credit card which was in my back pocket for some unknown reason. As I stood waiting I was about to type something witty... the guard was not amused and told me to leave the electronic devices alone. She then swabbed my hands and clothing looking for traces of plastic bomb explosives. She then gave me some orders. Every time I had to ask what she had said because her Icelandic accent and directions were a little strange to decipher. This ‘stalling’ tactic probably made me seem even more suspicious. She asked to see me waist. I said “what?” She repeated her order... she wanted to see my bare waist. An American would say, “lift up your jacket, sir.” To me she sounded like she was making a bedroom proposition. Then she told me open my bag, take off my shoes, and lift up the bottom of my pants (thereby exposing my signature black socks). She swabbed my whole body and my bag which was filled with baseball gloves and books. Just when I thought I was in the clear, another security guard came over and asked if I had taken pictures of airplanes. “Yes,” I replied. “I took them while waiting” (to be interrogated). What did they think I was doing? Sending pictures to Russia to provide information to my KGB spy handler regarding baggage loading protocol and security flows at Keflavik airport? I didn’t say that. Instead I said, “cause the photo was cool.” A totally honest answer that just came out of my mouth without thought, full of irreverence and lack of humility. I braced for the worst, and proceeded to show the photos I had taken in the airport, the plane, the advertisements, the bjork window. Then, the guard who swabbed me laughed, agreed, and said, “they are cool!”... the second guard, swayed by the first guard’s aesthetic judgment nodded in agreement and then left me alone to board the plane.
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