“…I love borders: the uncertainty; the promise of red tape; opportunities for being hustled; and for a few looking to make the journey a hint of fear, in uncertainty of not making it across. There’s a memory bank of vivid crossing memories sharpened by having something at stake: getting pulled out of a truck of migrant coffee-plantation labourers high up in the mountains between Guatemala/Mexico to be quizzed about drug smuggling; walking up to the international line between Tajikistan/Uzbekistan, in the ravenous cold and being called back by a detective for questioning expecting the hustle that never came; apprehensively making it across the Egypt/Libya border as the revolution raged further down the coast and wondering whether a distinct lack of paperwork would allow us to return (there was no passport stamp for entering Libya, 20 minutes of queuing at Egyptian customs to get back in, a little bit of extra hassle leaving Cairo on the way out); through to the slightly more mundane hustling of East German border guards to get a passport-less friend from East to West Berlin.
The border brings out the smuggler in all of us.”
