25 June, 2:10 PM, Czernograd International Airport
“What is in the container?”
Jake’s suitcase was lying open, like a gutted whale, its contents spilling onto a laminate surface of a long rectangular examination table. Two Customs officials in non-descript grey uniforms and latex gloved hands were methodically extracting Jake’s clothes, personal artifacts and reading materials from the suitcase, leafing through books and feeling up his clothes, like discerning shoppers at a bazaar.
“What is in the container?” repeated the shorter of the two Customs agents, a middle-aged, balding man with a bushy mustache streaked with silver and sad hound dog eyes that spoke of a lifetime’s worth of disappointments. He was pointing at the platinum cylinder, which was glistening under the overhanging spotlight, unwrapped from its felt cover and the extra layer of t-shirt protection.
“Ashes,” said Jake.
“Ashes?” asked the hound dog man.
“Ashes,” said Jake again.
The two Customs agents glanced at each other, and the taller one, with a ginger crew cut and horn-rimmed glasses, grasped the urn and held it up in front of him as if he was trying to weight the contents. “What do you mean, ‘ashes’?” he said, squinting hard at Jake.
“My grandfather,” said Jake, though it sounded more like a question that a statement.
“Your grandfather?” both Customs men asked at once.
Jake was starting to sweat. The spotlight overhead was radiating heat and the little room to the side of the x-ray conveyor belt they were in now was making up with claustrophobia what it lacked in ventilation. Or maybe it was just the foreign officialdom; men bred and paid to be paranoid, unfriendly and meticulous.
“My grandfather... he was born here...” Jake waved his arm around, “in Ruthenian and Galicia,” he added as if to correct the Custom officers’ misapprehension that his grandfather was born in this hot little room. “He died recently and was cremated...” the blank look on the men’s faces stopped him again. “Cremated? You know, like, his body burned? And it was his last wishes that I... well, somebody from his family, and they chose me... Anyway, that I take his ashes back to the country where he was born and... sprinkle-“
“No, no,” the hound dog interrupted him, “not allowed.”
“What do you mean not allowed?”
“No ashes,” the officer shook his head. “Not allowed.”
“But I spoke with your embassy in Washington,” Jake said, his voice half an octave higher and the wet patches under his arms and in the small of his back expanding rapidly. “Your embassy said that it was OK, that it was not against your law to bring someone’s ashes for burial... or whatever. That I would only need to sign a declaration at the border-“
“No,” this time the taller one interrupted him. “This is not allowed here.”
Jake wiped his brow with a back of his hand. “Can I talk to someone in charge here?”
“I am in charge here,” said the taller one, pushing his glasses back with his forefinger.
“No, I mean the manager? The officer in charge?”
The two magnets spoke to each other rapidly in their own language. The hound dog suddenly picked up the urn, turned on his heel and started walking towards the door.
“Hey!” Jake lurched forward, his movement only stopped as the table’s edge dug into his upper thighs. The ginger tensed, his hand reaching for an invisible gun holster, an instinct from his previous job perhaps.
“Where-”
“All good,” the hound dog paused mid-step in the doorway, “Keep calm, please.”
After what seemed like fifteen but probably were only five minutes of uncomfortable silence and avoiding eye contact the door opened. A tall, slim middle aged woman with sharp features and dark brown hair pulled back mercilessly and pinned behind in a tight bun strode in with a confident, purposeful gait of someone used to wielding absolute power, even if only within the confines of a small stuffy room. The hound dog trailed in behind her still holding the urn.
“So, what is the matter?” she asked, short and to the point, like a school mistress, irritated at having been called to some minor incident in girls’ dormitory.
Jake explained everything again, more fully this time, desperate to ensure no misunderstandings. The woman, who did not bother to introduce herself, did not interrupt him all through his summation.
“We have to impound,” she said only when he finished and kept staring at her in silence for ten or fifteen seconds, mouth half-often, a trickle of sweat running down his forehead.
“Impound?” This wasn’t what he expected to hear. He has convinced himself that the superior’s intervention would clarify the air and resolve the problem. It generally did. Back home it did.
“Impound,” she repeated. “Keep it,” she said slowly as if Jake was dumb. Maybe he was, trying to carry cremated remains across the border.
“But-“
“We have to check if it is what you say it is,” she cut him off, keen to wrap up the interruption to her schedule. “When people are trying to come to our country with a white powder, we like to check to see what it is.”
“But I have to take my grandfather’s ashes and fulfill-“
“It’s the law,” she said.
Jake tried but couldn’t argue. With her, and with the logic. Customs officials in any other county in the world would have done the same, except perhaps in some utterly corrupt hellhole, where they could be paid off. Or they would just take the powder and keep it, particularly if it turned out to be what they thought it was. But this wasn’t an utterly corrupt hellhole; this was Europe’s very own magic kingdom, where the officials made your precious possession and the whole reason for your visit disappear in one sleight of hand.
“How long will it take?”
“Days,” the woman shrugged. “Maybe more.” Translation: not my problem; I don’t care.
Better and better. “But I don’t have days. I was planning-“
“We are not responsible for your decision to bring this substance into our country,” again in the school mistress mode. “You have to accept the consequences. We have to check what the substance is before we can release it back to you.” And Jake was a ten-year-old, who just got himself a detention. A long detention. So much for the plans to get in, sprinkle, get out, and make his family happy.
“We will give you a receipt,” she said. “You have to fill out a form and leave us the contact details where you are staying so we can get in touch with you once the tests have been done and a decision made regarding this powder.”
Ruthenia and Galicia. Where you come for a day but will want to stay for weeks. Or will have to.
Photo by Nicole Geri on Unsplash
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