Monday, 27 November 2006
It is the uncertainty that is worse than anything else. Sitting there, at that moment, I was acutely aware that my heart was beating twice its usual speed, and yet each beat was separated by an eternity in which I would sometimes wonder if it would beat again. On the outside, I appeared cool and uncaring – a little bored if anything. On the inside, I was my heart was racing at one beat per eternity.
"It's a good thing I brought the paper" my father remarked. He also appeared cool and uncaring – also a little bored if anything. Still, a smug satisfaction accompanied his proclamation, since I had told him to leave the paper while he insisted on keeping it. This was hour four of our day at the Allenby bridge to Israel from Jordan, one of two land crossings between the two countries.
Almost at that moment, we were called into another room. There, we sat for another hour before my bags were searched in detail, which took another hour.
In between my internal screams, I thought of Schrödinger and his cat.
"One can even set up quite ridiculous cases", he started one passage, after which he went on to describe in graphic detail a sick system of what would happen if a Geiger counter were exposed to one decayed atom: "If it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid", killing the cat of course.
The paradox, called "Schrödinger's cat", is that at the end of one hour, there is an equal probability that the cat is dead or alive. According to the equation, the probability of both is actually 100% - the cat is both 100% dead and 100% alive.
As I break my cool façade to pace, I am acutely aware that I am both 100% granted a visa and 100% denied it. There is no reason why the Israelis should not let a person like me into Israel and Palestine. I am there for a medical mission, have about 20 papers to prove it, and have never done anything to prejudice against my position as a peaceful person who loves and works for human rights for all people. I am accompanied by my loving father, also a physician with papers and a medical mission of his own to teach and lecture at a medical school in Jerusalem.
After the third interrogation, the interrogation man seemed pleased. He said "Welcome to Israel", and asked me to sit down while he stamped my passport. He told us Tel Aviv gave him the OK to let us in, and that he hoped our work would be rewarding. I instantly crafted plans in my head to pray in the Al-Aqsa mosque that evening and eat knaffah – a supersweet Arabic dessert – for supper. We are asked to wait, and wait for another hour.
It is the uncertainty that is worse than anything else.
The question of whether the Geiger counter of Israeli security had activated could not be known from our seats in the waiting room chairs. "It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy", said Schrödinger of his cat's predicament. He said that to prevent "us from so naively accepting as valid a 'blurred model' for representing reality", we must make a direct observation. That is to say open the box and look at the cat.
And so, having been handed back the passport, I had still been accepted and denied. It was simply a case of 'macroscopic indeterminacy' until I opened the box. And so I did.
Entry denied.
tarek
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