Customs officials don't care. Why would they?

I leaned on a metal table, faced with the fact that my flight was taking off in 20 minutes.  It was leaving the ground in 20 minutes. It was nearly a certainty that I would not be on it. Hell, if I had been honest with myself, I would have realized that there was 100% certainty that I would not be on it. 

                All the police walking around the customs room looked bored as they checked this or that from the passengers.  They did everything slowly. What did they have to rush for?  They didn’t have a flight.  They weren’t going anywhere. Their dead end jobs went on from day to day with as much change as the height of Mt. Everest.

My bags were sitting beside me, silently. Lumps on the tile floor, not hurting anyone. What would happen if I picked them up and started to walk away?  Hmmm.  I asked a person about my bags.

                “I’m sorry,” I said in Russian, “my flight walks off on 20 minute. It is necessary for me to walk away.”

                “Why are you here?”

                “Grenade in bag. I want to throw it away into the trash.”

                I see recognition on his face. He has heard about the American who had a grenade in his luggage.  “When is your flight?”

                “After 16 minutes.”

                “Impossible.”

                I never truly understood whether this meant it was impossible to take the stuff on the plane, or impossible to throw the stuff in the trash, or impossible for me to make it onto the flight.  I tried to get the attention of others around me. I tried to make them understand my predicament. I told them that I needed to leave immediately, that my flight was about to take off. I couldn’t manage to transfer the urgency in my world into the owners of the impassive, somnambulant faces around me. 

                I approached another person.  “I’m sorry, my flight walks off on 10 minute. It is necessary for me to walk away.”

                This one didn’t even answer. A shake of the head and a shrug of the shoulders was the full extent of his reaction.

The bureaucracy I faced was legendary. They all could see the mountain of paperwork ahead of me.  Even better than I, they could see the lines in front of officials, all with their own regulations to follow, no matter how insignificant or unimportant they were. But to whom were they insignificant? Certainly, they were insignificant to me. But of what importance was I? I didn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t know the standing of the people around me. If these people were invested in the significance of their jobs, they were successful.  They found meaning, and someone somewhere, at some point in history, must have decided that the job they were doing needed to be done.

I leaned on the table again. They were simply doing their jobs. At that moment, their job was to make sure that I didn’t take something of miniscule danger onto the plane. With 6 minutes before the plane took off, I was not going to make it.

I could imagine them laughing at the smugness that I had brought to the airport that day because I had arrived 3 hours early.  In all honesty, why would they laugh? Why would they even care at all?