Edward Snowden fled the USA with the NSA on his tail. The system analyst had informed the Guardian newspaper that the clandestine agency was illegally spying on millions upon million of American citizens. This breach of constitutional rights by the government was greeted with yawns and ‘so whats’ by the dazed public, however the Obama administration sought to extradite the former CIA employee from China, forcing Mr. Snowdon to leave Hong Kong for Moscow from where he hope to catch a flight to Ecuador.
The White House threatened the South American democracy with onerous sanctions, if the fugitive was permitted to fly to Quito.
Ecuador’s national currency was the US dollar. Trade between the two nations amounted to billions.
Snowden’s passport was revoked by the State Department and the man without a country has been stuck in Moscow without any indication from the Russian authorities as to a departure date or destination.
His father has asked his son to return.
Don’t do it, dude.
As Don Corleone told his son in THE GODFATHER, “When they come for you, it will be someone close.”
Or something like that.
Of course there is nothing wrong with living in an airport.
Tom Hanks’ character in THE TERMINAL seemed to have thrived at JFK, but I got stuck at the old Moscow in 1994 during an Aeroflot from Kuala Lumpur to Karachi to Dubai to Moscow. My final stop was Paris.
The 350-seater Ilyushin Il-86 were far from comfortable. The seats were back-breakers, the air-conditioning produced a thick fog, the food service was cut to starvation rations, and the flight crew disappeared after each take-off.
On the Dubai stop a young Norwegian couple and I bought wine and food for the next leg.
The stewardesses ignored us and every other passenger from Dubai to Moscow. We were on our own.
Ten hours later we landed in Moscow. My connecting flight to Charles De Gaulle had been cancelled and the next plane wasn’t taking off until the next morning.
The two Norwegians were in a similar predicament.
It was only 10PM, but no restaurants were open and there was no place to sleep, however the Norwegians and I each had two bottles of wine. We drank them within two hours, then wandered the terminal in search for more alcohol.
Stateless transients were huddled in makeshift cardboard villages and one Afghani sold us a bottle of homemade vodka. The liter took a long time to drink. Several Russians joined us. They had their own brew. It burnt a hole in my stomach. More nationalities joined our party. Burmese, Tibetans, Acehese, Baluchis, Kurds, Druse, Berbers, Rwandans, Angolans, and Bushmen gathered into a stateless congress. They all wanted to leave. They had no place to go and after ten hours I started to think that I would remain there forever, however at Aeroflot announced the imminent departure of the Moscow-Paris flight.
The League of no Nations bid farewell in Babel tongues.
The Norwegians carried me to the plane.
I was in no condition to be near heavy equipment and bounced down the aisle. Every passenger prayed that I wouldn’t sit next to them. I found an empty row and passed out within seconds of clicking shut my seatbelt.
Several hours later at Charles De Gaulle I woke up still drunk, but happy to have escape from Moscow Airport.
We were starting to have a relationship.
Man and airport.
I’m sure that Mr. Snowdon was feeling the same way.
Hung over in limbo.