Recently, I went to pick-up my daughter at LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) who was on a flight from Paris on Air France. She has been in Turkey for the last five weeks and was coming home from Istanbul via Paris. While waiting for her to get through customs I was seated in the arriving flights waiting area of Terminal 2, the international terminal, minding my own business. My wife was having a latte in the nearby Starbucks.
Three young Arab speaking young men sat in my vicinity, one immediately to my right with another next to him and one across from and facing me. Aside from the fact that these young men were speaking Arabic and were middle eastern looking they were behaving like any college age young guys might; laughing, having a good time, looking at girls, etc.
I turned to the one next to me and I did something that I have wanted to do for years and years. I said, “So, are you guys terrorists or something?”
The guy next to me said something that I am guessing could be translated as WTF? Then he said, “Why? Do you think that all people that look like us are terrorists?” To which I replied, “Yeah, pretty much.”
He translated what I said to his two friends and then the fun began.
They were talking really fast and loud to each other in Arabic probably saying derogatory things about me and my mom. One guy sitting across from me next to the other young man, looked up at me from his magazine and decided that this might be a good time to move to a different seat (in a different city). Another guy in one of the facing seats put down his book the better to take in the coming festivities.
While they were still talking in rapid fire Arabic I added, “Because if you are, I’m gonna have to Jackie Chan your asses right here, right now.”
To which the young man next to me said, “Then we’ll have to go all Jihad on you.”
At this point the guy on the facing seat put his hands over his eyes like he didn’t want to witness what was about to happen.
Now, the other two are leaning forward in their seats enthusiastically joining in on the conversation. I might add, that by now, everyone else in the immediate area was watching and listening too.
I asked the guy in the seats across from me if he would have my back in the coming fray and he said that he was not from this country and wanted no part of it.
At this time I said something like, “You can go all Jihad all you want, but I’m gonna open a serious can o’ whoop ass on you guys.” To which one replied, “Can of what?” So I had to explain that to them. Turns out that can of whoop ass is a difficult concept to explain to an Arab. They could not understand how we get the whoop ass in the can in the first place. (I’m not sure I know, frankly). They also wanted me to show them the can. They wanted to know where they could buy a can in case they needed it. I told them that if they were going to visit the good ole USofA they had better know what a can o’ whoop ass is because chances are, if you go around speaking Arabic in airports, this is not the last time they were going to come face to face with one. By the time I explained whoop ass, things had calmed down considerably.
One of the young men said that they were Egyptians and that Egyptians are not like “those other Arabs.” I pointed out that one of the 9-11 hijackers was an Egyptian.
I said, “Prove you’re Egyptians. Walk like an Egyptian.” They couldn’t do it. I then asked if they knew the Steve Martin King Tut song. They didn’t know that either. They couldn’t have been real Egyptians.
Anyway, they ended up saying that they were students who were going to go to UCLA in the fall and they came early to enjoy the sights before school started. And I’m thinking; if they’re going to school in the fall they must not have a bomb strapped to them right now. So I started to relax.
When the dust had settled, so to speak, the one closest to me, Hassan, said that he is a musician and he will be studying music at UCLA. I asked him if he sang those songs that Arabs sing that sounds like they are strangling cats. He didn’t know what I meant and I didn’t take the time to explain it to him. I figure he’ll learn that at UCLA soon enough. I’ll bet UCLA has Strangling Cats 101 - A Survey of Middle Eastern Music.
When I told him that my wife was a recording artist and that she has made seven albums (what we used to call them before CDs) he thought I was joking with him. I guess that’s what you get when you’re a joker like me.
As things settled down, I ended up telling them redneck jokes, which they enjoyed immensely (after I explained what a redneck is). Hassan said, “Then you must be one of these red necked persons of which you speak.” What a wise guy.
Later they saw an Egyptian lady waiting for the same flight from Paris and they said that she is really famous and that she is like the Oprah Winfrey of Egypt. I said, “How do you know that Oprah Winfrey is not the “her” of the USA?”
We later found out that the guy sitting across from us was a prince from Tonga. It just goes to show that you never know what you’ll end up running into on a trip to LAX.
Kit Fremin is the owner and founder of Background Check International. Since 1994 BCI has served clients a varied as: the LA Times, Department of Defense, Mars, Inc., the United Nations, the NTSB and Calvary Chapels nationwide. His website is: www.bcint.com and he can be e-mailed at kit@bcint.com.
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