Matt Frei - Only in America

Compared to life in London it is also astonishingly comfortable. There are two schools at the end of the road, a park, two playgrounds and three public tennis courts. After a ten-minute walk you reach one of Washington’s best cinemas, an excellent Italian deli and four good restaurants. In the autumn Tilden Street is a riot of reds, yellows and fluorescent oranges as everything disappears under a carpet of fallen leaves. Snow obliging, in the winter it looks like a scene from Narnia. Spring is a succession of blooming trees working in colourful shifts: first the magnolias, then the cherry trees, then the dogwoods. Summer is hot and humid and belongs to a new generation of feisty mosquitoes, soldiering 24/7 to make our lives miserable. The vegetation on Tilden Streets sprouts aggressively. We live in a jungle. The seasons and the setting are almost rural but the idyll is constantly interrupted by the intrusion of modern Washington life, post 9/11. The effect is schizophrenic.

There’s the never-ending squawk of police, fire engine and ambulance sirens. The Israeli Embassy is situated less than half a mile away. Police cars sit in front of its bomb barriers or lurk in nearby alleyways and side streets, keeping an eye on what must now be the target within the target. I reassured Penny that if you’re going to make it all the way to Washington as an Islamic extremist, bombing the Israeli Embassy would make a rather tangential statement when the city is already groaning with targets.

Next to the Israeli Embassy is the new Chinese Embassy compound, carved into a hillside and built entirely by Chinese labour flown in from the Middle Kingdom. The workers in their blue uniforms are housed across the road in a makeshift compound, complete with proletarian banners extolling the virtues of the People’s Republic in a language that the host country can’t read. And so right at the end of our little road we get a fleeting glimpse of the face-off taking place between two global giants: the incumbent superpower and the emerging one.

The Chinese construction workers wake up to patriotic songs blaring through their compound of Nissen huts. They compete with the pledge of allegiance being recited, by law, in the playground of Hearst School, opposite our house. Every morning 110 children, none older than ten, stand next to the flag pole and listen as one of them bellows out the pledge of allegiance on the crackly intercom system. A high pitched reed-like voice cuts though the dank air pledging to defend the Constitution and honour the flag that flutters a hundred feet above the children’s heads.

Oddly, what always made me feel safe on Tilden Street was not the permanent police presence, not the Mossad agents with weighed-down jackets searching the bushes for bombs. Not the buzz of helicopters above or the unmanned drones eyeballing any potential threats. No: it was Barbara, walking the streets with her Labradors, keeping an eagle eye on everything on Tilden Street. In 2007, however, Barbara fell out with the one neighbour she knew better than anyone else: her husband. A grumpy fellow who was as absent from Tilden Street as his wife was present, he bolted after more than two decades of marriage. They divorced, the house was sold, Barbara moved away and Tilden Street was never the same again.

I am used to it now. After five years of living and travelling in America I start unbuckling my belt automatically as soon as I leave the check-in area of an airport. I wear shoes that can be kicked off easily. I no longer bother packing shaving cream in my hand luggage because it will be confiscated, and as I disrobe in the ludicrous pyjama party that has become airport security I think of those who are responsible for every act in this elaborate, involuntary striptease. The coat and additional ID check are, of course, courtesy of Osama bin Laden. So is the confiscated Swiss Army penknife that my father gave me when I was a boy. The separate screening for the computer predates bin Laden. It is, I believe, an Abu Nidal legacy. The shoes, of course, are a gift from Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber. I have nurtured a special place of loathing for him even though he never actually managed to detonate his sneakers. The confiscation of creams, aftershave and medicine bottles goes back to the liquid bombers who tried to blow up several airliners over the Atlantic in 2006. What happens if someone uncovers a plot to conceal a bomb in their boxer shorts or panties?

The Transportation Security Authority, or TSA, has managed to recruit people who would normally be stuck on the breadline without any qualifications, put them in a uniform, told them that they are the front line in the war on terror and encouraged them to unleash a barrage of humourless officiousness on the paying passenger. When I showed some annoyance about having to part with a newly acquired bottle of expensive aftershave, the screener, whose belly hung over his belt like a blubbery white sporran, shouted at me: ‘Sir, are you doubting our Homeland Security guidelines?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Some of them are absurd!’ This was the wrong answer. I was immediately rounded on by two of his superiors who took me into a special booth and gave me a search that involved just about everything apart from the intrusion of a gloved hand.

On flights from New York to Washington you had to exercise heroic bladder control because you were not allowed to get out of your seat for thirty minutes prior to departure in case you wanted to loiter with intent by the cockpit. This ruling only applied to the cities of New York and Washington. On any other destination you are permitted to use the loos at the front. In any case the cockpit doors these days are as secure as Fort Knox. Once I forgot this dictum, got out of my seat as we were approaching Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and was screamed at by a stewardess as if I was charging at the cockpit door with an axe. ‘Sit down NOW!’ she hollered, only seconds after asking me sweetly if I wanted another cup of coffee. Why, I wondered, had she offered me the drink if she didn’t now allow me to make room for it in my bladder? In theory the passengers were probably on my side. In practice none of them was showing it. Everyone looked down at their newspapers or folded hands. I sat down, chastened, like a naughty schoolboy, and crossed my legs, hoping to feel the plane descend soon.

At Washington National Airport a huge American flag is draped across the departure hall. In Europe such an exuberant display of patriotism would make the headlines. Here it is standard. Soldiers in desert fatigues and crew cuts shuffle through the airport on their way to Iraq or Afghanistan or heading home after another deployment. America is unmistakably at war. Uncle Sam feels fearful, vulnerable and pissed off. When strong countries feel weak strange things happen.

Washington’s other airport, Dulles, which receives international flights, has become a fortress. For non-US citizens the immigration line can last up to two hours. The use of mobile phones is strictly forbidden as if the tired and bedraggled passengers were about to call in air strikes. Here that famous American spirit of welcome and friendliness has taken leave of absence. Once I turned up at Dulles after a tediously delayed flight from London. The queue was of biblical proportions. My surreptitious use of the BlackBerry had caused the ‘customs arrival overseer on duty’ to have a seizure. Then I committed the ultimate faux pas. In filling out my visa form I described myself as a ‘resident’. It seemed logical to me. I was living in the US at a fixed abode. The customs officer, whose neck was wider than his face and whose face was as red as the alarm buzzer on his desk, looked at me as if I had just burned the Stars and Stripes on his desk.