The detection effort starts in an obvious place—the airport. My twelve year old son and I embarked joyously on his first trip to Paris. I tried to insulate us with laughter and conversation from the humiliating new rituals of the search process. Then, crossing the threshold of the metal scanner, his belt buckle set off an alarm. A TSA agent asked him to step aside. My son stood, for just a moment, frozen and uncomprehending. The agent abruptly pulled him out of the line, and I saw fear flash across my boy’s face. I moved forward to reassure him, but was blocked by another agent. “He’s my son”, I pleaded.

“Step back, ma’am.”

“Look, he’s just twelve, let me stand with him”.

“Move back, ma’am or we’ll have to call security”, he growled.

The outrage rising in my throat made me feel sick. With my heart racing, blood rushing to my face, and pin pricks of sweat trickling down my chest, I was flooded by a déjà vu. I was on a wooded road in the lake country of Pinochet’s Chile. At twilight a checkpoint suddenly rose up out of the shadows. Soldiers in camouflage with automatic weapons lounged by the roadside. There was shouting: out of the car, documents, hands over your heads. I learned then the feeling of nauseating vulnerability in confrontation with a capricious force that had turned its back on reason. The toxic cocktail of ideological indoctrination, scant training, and little accountability meant that the ordinary person was guilty until proven innocent. Shaming and danger could be triggered by the slightest resistance.

One learned to live cautiously during those dark years– never quite free of fear, anticipating the government’s many eyes and ears, and conforming to evade exposure. Returning to the States after life in Chile, I knelt down in the terminal and kissed the ground. I can still taste the rush of gratitude I felt for a life without fear and backward glances. I knew I could never take for granted the good fortune of living where reason and the rule of law prevailed, where rights could not be violated on a whim. No matter what its imperfections, I had come home to the light.

The airport that night was still a far cry from Pinochet’s Chile– but not nearly as far as it used to be. I looked behind me to the long lines of submissive travelers slowly snaking their way to the x-ray machines, shoes off, baggies in hand. We had internalized the new drills without protest, editing our behavior as carefully as we edit the contents of our carry-ons. Does anyone mention the lunacy of this planet-wide assault on innocent citizens? Do we complain that our belts and shoes are less likely to contain explosives than the plane’s cargo which is barely scrutinized? No– we shuffle with heads down, vulnerable, trying to follow the rules without attracting attention, each of us guilty until proven innocent. We anticipate and conform– anything to avoid being called out by those who are watching. We had become smaller, while they had grown larger. Then I realized it: This was the work of the terror worm. (to be continued…)