You have been randomly picked. We only follow instructions

I was in Bogotá to sit on the jury of the García Márquez Short Story Award for the best collection of short fiction published in Spanish in the previous year. A short list of five finalists is established: the winner receives a whopping $100,000 award, and the National Library of Colombia purchases 1,500 copies of the books of each of the remaining four finalists to be distributed to all the libraries in the country. It’s an extraordinarily generous prize that not only benefits the shortlisted authors but also promotes the short story genre in a publishing world that (in spite of Alice Munro’s success) still tells writers that they should publish novels as the main course and short stories (if at all) as an after-dinner snack.

This year, the first prize went to Edgardo Cozarinsky, one of the most remarkable writers in Spanish today. Two of his novels have already been translated into English: The Bride from Odessa and The Moldavian Pimp. I hope that some enterprising publisher, not afraid to transgress the absurd rules of the industry, will commission the translation of En el último trago nos vamos (One Last Drink and We Go), masterful ghost stories about loss, imperfect memory and old age.

Happy with the deliberations and the final choice, I went to the airport in Bogotá to fly back to New York, where I’m now living. As we all know, formalities at airports are meant to prepare us for the waiting rooms of Hell. Long, badly managed queues, slow immigration procedures that scrutinize your features with Lombroso-like prurience, humiliating stripping rituals at security, lead to finally crossing the inspection barriers, more or less free to lose yourself in a labyrinth of duty-free stalls through which you are obliged to wander until you reach the corridor that you hope will take you to your gate. All this I did, and in the end I found myself with an hour to spare in the lounge before boarding my flight for JFK.

I was sitting quietly reading a thriller from the late fifties, Lightning Strikes Twice by Jean Potts, when I heard my name being called out through the loudspeakers. I approached the counter. A young attendant asked to see my boarding pass and passport, inspected both, and returning only the passport explained that I had been pre-selected for a further security check. I asked why me, and she told me that everything would be explained later. Several other names were called out and I found myself in a group of ten or twelve chosen, waiting to be further summoned.

The boarding started and my group and I were asked to go down the ramp toward the plane but to wait at the plane’s door. There, behind a flimsy cloth screen like the ones put up around hospital beds when the doctor performs an intimate inspection, was a uniformed woman wearing gloves. One by one, we were called, asked to remove shoes, belts, watches, coats (as we had done once before at the first checkpoint) and patted all over. Our luggage was taken apart and the books I was carrying (I travel with almost no clothes but always with room for new books) were flipped through and critically scrutinized. I commented on how unnecessary this second inspection seemed after having submitted myself to the first. “These are our orders,” the inspector answered.

Suddenly I noticed that everyone in my group had indigenous features. Most of the other passengers being loaded without further delays onto the plane would have been classified in a racial typology as “white.” My group certainly not. I asked then how had this selection been made.

“You have been randomly picked,” the inspector said. I pointed to my companions. “You don’t think that there’s a common characteristic here?” I asked. “You have been randomly picked,” she repeated. “This isn’t random,” an elderly gentleman in my group interjected. “We are all indios,” and swept his arm around the group, including me.

“You have been randomly picked,” the inspector said for the third time. “We only follow instructions,” she added.

“You are following instructions from the crazy man up north,” a young woman told her. “You’re submitting to the whims of a fascist.”

“We only follow instructions,” the inspector said again, visibly perturbed by now, trying to pry open the orthopaedic shoes of a child who was being helped along by her father.

“That’s what Hitler’s henchmen said,” another passenger commented. “What are you afraid of? What do you think we’ll do? Take a gun across the border and shoot the Señor Presidente?”

“Don’t tempt me,” said the young woman.

With that, we were at last allowed on the plane.