Karachi Photo Blog

Friday, May 19, 2006



Now that I am a bit settled
Let me post the pictures in the order they were taken.
We landed at Ben Gurion Airport on April 17. It was a nested tour, a separate ticket that would take us from London (our stopover in the original trip) to Tel Aviv and back.
If you have a Muslim name or you were born in a Muslim-majority country you are a suspect in Israel. The girl at immigration at Ben Gurion flipped through our passports a couple of times. I asked her not to stamp--an Israeli stamp in that little book would make you persona non grata in many Muslim-majority countries (see how carefully I am avoiding calling countries Islamic or Muslim!). She handed back our passports with a card that read "Gate Pass." Well, their Gate Pass is not the kind of ticket that would whisk you out of the airport. That 'Gate Pass' meant, 'Thoroughly check these people and find out what they are really up to.' Coming out of the immigration we were duly stopped and interrogated. What was the purpose of our visit? [Well, actually we are suicide bombers.] Where do we plan to stay? [We are heading off to Gaza to get explosives.] Do we know anyone in Israel? [Not quite, You know how careless Bin Laden is, he just asked us to go without giving us names of Al-Qaida to contact in Israel.]
Luckily there was an American of Palestinian origin ahead of us. Her interrogation was more heated, so they let us off easy.

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