Page 9 - Silent Violence

of paperbacks was scrutinised ‒ perhaps he
expected to find an imbedded phial of sherry.
When he came to the Koran, I looked to him for
some emotion, but it was not forthcoming.
Finishing one case he slid it to one side and
gestured us to open the next. To close the
inspected one, we had to rearrange the contents.
Nothing was said, but there was no surliness
either. Only the cases existed ‒ we were not
present ‒ we merely transported the cases. Even
he did not exist; he was expressionless, dead-
panning the monotonous stream for articles of
abuse.

There was no narcotising supermarket music,
but there should have been. It would have lifted
the grim silence jarred by intermittent sounds of
tearing paper.

There was a significant, if unsurprising, absence
of women. In the Asian queue I counted five waifs
with downcast eyes. Their timidity was such that
had they been told that breathing was not
permitted, they would have turned blue and died
on the spot. On our flight there had been only one
other woman. She was also a westerner and had
been noticeable in the waiting lounge at Heathrow

Page 9