The Prisons We Call Airports

Airports make my skin crawl.

I do not arrive thinking about committing a crime. The airport takes care of that part for me. From the moment I enter, the building begins treating me as though I may have done something wrong and simply have not been informed yet.

It does not matter what passport I carry, how I dress, or whether I look tired, cheerful, or terrified of missing the flight. Inside an airport, everyone is a possibility. A possible trafficker. A possible terrorist. A possible immigration problem. A possible owner of a dangerous bottle of water.

You pass through repeated controls while cameras follow you from the ceiling. Your luggage becomes a portable identity document that can be opened whenever someone decides it looks interesting. Officials can stop you, move you to another room, question you, search your belongings, and determine whether the rest of your day will continue as planned. Sometimes all it takes is looking nervous. This is a convenient criterion in a building designed specifically to make people nervous.

What follows happened during a return trip from Buenos Aires to Barcelona. I had kept the story in my head for almost two years, probably because remembering it made me angry all over again.

Leaving Buenos Aires

I arrived at the airport with roughly two hours to spare, checked my luggage, and spent the remaining time at the bar with my family. Those last minutes before a long trip always feel strangely suspended. Nobody wants to leave, but there is nothing left to do except look at the clock and pretend another coffee will slow it down.

Eventually, I collected my things and headed toward security and immigration. Before reaching the controls, I had to pay the airport departure tax, a charming system in which you pay for the privilege of standing in another line. At the first checkpoint, the performance began. Bags through the scanner. Passport out. A long look at my face, followed by the standard questions.

Where are you going?

Why are you traveling?

What do you do there?

I said I was returning to Barcelona, where I lived and worked. I smiled in the normal way people smile when they are trying to demonstrate that they are not dangerous, which is itself a deeply unnatural form of smiling. The officer remained serious. Courtesy was apparently not part of the security protocol. The entire exchange had the tone of authority speaking to a suspect, not a public employee speaking to a passenger whose documents were in order.

You become very aware of your own behavior. Do not move too quickly. Do not move too slowly. Do not sound rehearsed. Do not hesitate. Do not appear irritated by the fact that somebody is asking for information already printed on the ticket in their hand. The slightest nervousness can become evidence of something. Being late for a flight is suspicious. Being afraid of being treated as suspicious is probably suspicious too.

Once I passed security, I reached immigration, where another person scanned my passport, examined my Spanish residence card and boarding pass, and asked where I was going.

Barcelona.

Why?

Because I lived and worked there.

The passport was stamped. I was allowed to continue into that peculiar part of an airport where you have technically left one country but have not yet arrived anywhere else. A nation composed entirely of duty-free perfume, metal chairs, and people looking at screens.

Six hours over the Atlantic

Boarding took the usual eternity. People entered the aircraft carrying enough hand luggage to establish a small colony, then discovered their seat numbers only after blocking the aisle. Someone placed a bag overhead, sat down, stood up again, reopened the compartment, removed a sweater, replaced the bag, and repeated the process because apparently the sweater had made a poor first impression.

By the time I was sitting down, almost three hours had passed since entering the airport.

The flight offered what long flights traditionally offer: a narrow seat, tired passengers, children crying somewhere nearby, and the vague optimism that sleep might make the hours disappear. I put on some music and tried to relax.

About six hours into the flight, the screen showed us over the Atlantic. I noticed the aircraft beginning a slow turn. At first, very few people seemed aware of it, but the route display soon confirmed that we were heading in the wrong direction.

A few minutes later, the captain spoke in Italian, Spanish, and English. There was a problem with the aircraft, he said, and we needed to return to Brazil so a damaged part could be repaired. Excellent. Nothing improves confidence like hearing that the machine keeping you above the ocean contains a broken piece.

We landed safely, which immediately became the best thing the airline had done all day. I believe the airport was Brasília, although after that many hours the geography had become secondary. I remember roads passing beneath parts of the airfield and the feeling of being led into a forgotten section of the terminal, an area apparently reserved for passengers whose travel plans had stopped being relevant.

The airline told us food would arrive later. They also said another aircraft would land and a replacement part would be taken from it for ours. Someone mentioned that the pilot had been awake for an alarming number of hours and would use the delay to sleep.

At that point, passengers began looking at one another with the expression people use when they realize nobody in charge is about to provide a comforting explanation.

The temporary republic of stranded passengers

I started talking to the woman sitting beside me and invited her to the bar. She answered in English with an accent I could not place. She was from Cyprus and had traveled to Argentina to visit a military officer she had met online.

The internet was already arranging international romances and questionable travel decisions long before applications began sending push notifications about them.

A British traveler with dreadlocks joined us. He was in a good mood and immediately started buying drinks, waving a thick bundle of dollars while complaining that the currency was terrible and that he could not wait to exchange it for pounds.

Soon there were six or seven of us around the table. We drank beer and shared stories about airlines, delays, broken aircraft, and the various ways companies transform a customer-service failure into an exercise in group survival.

The British passenger said flying with Alitalia had been our first mistake. British Airways, he assured us, had better aircraft and more reliable service. Then the conversation turned toward airplanes, and everyone suddenly became an aeronautical engineer.

Someone said our aircraft was old. Someone else claimed that particular model had a distinguished history of fatal accidents. It was said as a joke, which did not prevent every person at the table from privately calculating the remaining probability of survival.

After four beers, I went looking for the restroom. The signage in that part of the airport had clearly been designed under the assumption that stranded passengers no longer had bodily requirements. I found a narrow corridor, followed it for some time, and eventually reached two doors that looked familiar enough to risk opening.

When I returned, people were still gathered with their passports in their hands, waiting for food or information. Neither appeared. I went back to the bar.

By the time I reached six beers, I had become much less concerned about aviation maintenance. Alcohol had converted the broken aircraft into an abstract engineering problem for somebody else.

The loudspeaker finally announced boarding. We collected our bags and returned to the plane. Dinner arrived much later. I fell asleep and did not wake until Rome.

Welcome to Fiumicino

By the time we landed, I had spent more than seventeen hours moving through aircraft and terminals. I felt dirty, exhausted, dehydrated, and mentally reduced to the minimum functions required to follow signs. All I wanted was a shower, a sofa, and perhaps several hours in which nobody asked to inspect my passport. Instead, I arrived at Fiumicino.

I passed another security control. Passport. Face. Destination. The same performance, delivered in Italian.

Then came the corridors. Airports have a particular talent for making short physical distances feel administrative. You walk down one passage, turn, enter another, turn again, and begin to suspect the building was designed by somebody who hated straight lines.

Signs warned about food, disease, and fines large enough to make the stomach contract. I was already worried about reaching Barcelona, missing the connection, and discovering what the airline intended to do about it. Then I reached another control.

I could not understand why it was necessary. I had already been screened. Unless airports contained vending machines selling Kalashnikovs between checkpoints, I had not acquired anything new.

A man in ordinary clothes looked at me and smiled. I responded with the expression of someone who had reached the limit of his interest in strangers. He showed me an identification card and gestured for me to approach. Police —he said. He asked for my passport. I began searching for it and could not immediately find it. I was wearing a pair of skater trousers with approximately twenty pockets, a design that seemed practical until every pocket became a possible location for the most important document I owned.

The officer watched me search and said I appeared nervous.

There it was. The visual detector had activated. A tired passenger unable to find his passport after crossing the Atlantic was nervous. Clearly, the investigation was progressing. He directed me into a room next to the security area.

The interrogation

Inside were four officers. One of them was a large man who watched while the others spoke rapidly in Italian. The officer who had stopped me tried to speak Spanish and began asking questions.

Where was I going?

What did I do?

What was my name?

Why was I in Italy?

My belongings were opened and spread across two tables. They removed my wallet, credit cards, documents, money, papers, and photographs of friends and family. Everything became an object to inspect. Nobody explained what they were looking for.

The room became more surreal with every minute. Officers made calls, opened books, examined cards, and moved my things around as though the arrangement itself might confess.

I asked for water. They had none. I asked to smoke. Not allowed. I asked to use the bathroom. I had to wait.

Then they said they might take me to a hospital for an examination.

A hospital?

The larger officer pointed at my stomach and asked whether I was sure there was nothing inside. The man who stopped me explained, in broken Spanish, that if I admitted having something, they could send me back without a problem. But if we went to the hospital and they found something, I could receive twenty years in prison. He mimed handcuffs.

For several minutes, I misunderstood the entire situation. I thought they were worried about food, disease, or some undocumented object I might have swallowed accidentally. After the signs in the corridor, the warnings about contaminated products, and the exhaustion of the trip, almost any theory seemed possible.

The other officers left, and I remained with the man who had stopped me. He walked in circles, studying me as though patience might cause the truth to leak out. He asked again whether there was anything in my stomach.

Finally, I lost my temper.

“What the hell do you think I have in my stomach?”

“Cocaine,” he said.

I laughed. I could not help it. After the broken aircraft, the unscheduled stop, the beers, the missed connection, and the hours without sleep, I had reached the point where being mistaken for an international cocaine courier seemed almost creatively ambitious. I told him I wanted to go to the hospital immediately. I wanted the examination. I wanted the entire absurd process completed because I had a meeting the next day and had already lost enough time. I asked for his full name. He avoided answering. I demanded that they hurry.

The silence returned. He continued moving around the room, looking through books and examining my cards. At one point, he held up my American Express and asked whether it worked. I told him to try it. Five minutes later, he said I could collect my things.

I had to gather every document, card, photograph, and piece of paper they had scattered across the tables. Nobody helped. The personal photographs they had handled like scrap paper went back into the bag one by one. I put the backpack over my shoulder. The officer waited at the door.

“Are we going to the hospital?” I asked. He said yes. We walked three meters into the corridor. Then he stopped, lowered his head, and told me to continue to Barcelona. I said no. I wanted the examination. He refused. I asked his name again. “Dani,” he said, looking down with a slight smile. I said goodbye and walked toward immigration.

Another desk, the same questions

During the walk, I tried to understand what had happened. In less than two hours, I had gone from being a delayed passenger to a suspected drug courier because I looked nervous while searching for a passport. That is the airport’s favorite transformation. Ordinary human behavior becomes evidence when viewed through the correct uniform.

At immigration, another official examined my passport and asked where I was going and how much money I carried. Under normal circumstances, I might have answered politely. These were not normal circumstances. I told her I had spent eighteen hours aboard an aircraft from her country that had turned back because of a mechanical problem. I had arrived in Rome, been detained as a possible drug trafficker, searched, questioned, and threatened with prison. Now she was holding a ticket showing my destination while asking where I was going.

She decided further discussion was unnecessary, stamped the passport, and returned it. Sometimes the correct answer to bureaucracy is a complete summary of the bureaucracy.

Five more hours

I walked toward the Alitalia desk with my stomach compressed into something the size of a walnut. I felt no relief. I wanted to leave Italy. I wanted to stop answering questions and stop watching people examine my face for invisible crimes. My original Barcelona flight had departed roughly five hours earlier. At the airline counter, an employee explained that the next flight left at eight in the evening.

He gave me a voucher for food and a business-class seat. It was the most humane gesture I had received in almost twenty hours. Eventually, after roughly twenty-four hours of travel, I landed in Barcelona. The airport felt calm. Nobody stopped me. Nobody opened my bag or asked what I had swallowed.

I reached home and stepped into the shower. The water hitting my face felt like a religious experience. My muscles finally relaxed. I put on a robe, sat in front of the television, and disappeared into sleep.

The problem is not security

To this day, airports make me tense. Not because I carry anything dangerous, but because entering one means accepting that my dignity may depend on the mood, intuition, prejudice, boredom, or professional judgment of a stranger with authority.

I understand the need for security. Aircraft are vulnerable systems carrying hundreds of people through the air. Borders exist, passports exist, and some passengers carry things they should not. The problem is not that controls exist. The problem is a system that treats humiliation as evidence of seriousness.

Being questioned without explanation does not make a control intelligent. Repeating the same question at three different desks does not make it effective. Searching every photograph and credit card while denying water and access to a bathroom does not become reasonable merely because the room contains police officers.

A system can be strict without being hostile. It can investigate without treating every person as guilty. It can explain what is happening, provide basic dignity, and recognize that exhaustion and nervousness are normal responses to an airport rather than proof of criminal intent. Security should protect passengers. It should not require every passenger to rehearse innocence. What happened to me could happen in any airport, inside or outside Europe. That is what stays with me. Not the broken aircraft or the delay, but the knowledge that for a few hours I had almost no control over my time, my belongings, or what would happen next.

The airport had become a prison without a sentence. The only difference was that I had purchased the ticket myself.