Nick Ahad: Why random secuity checks suddenly don't feel so random any more

If they look pleased and assume you’ve got a piece of paper promising to pay them a certain amount of money, they don’t have a surname from a country where there are a lot of brown folk. If they look a bit fed up and a fug of resignation appears to descend on them, they might have a surname like Ahad (which, by the by, is Arabic in origin. I know, tres exotic, right!?).

The last time I was subjected to random checks was when I went to New York six years ago to see dance company Alvin Ailey ahead of their visit to the Bradford Alhambra theatre. Travelling with a group of nine journalists, I was asked to step aside for a ‘chat’ with airport officials in London. And when I arrived in New York. And when I left New York. Three out of a possible four. I was almost offended when I wasn’t stopped when I landed back at Heathrow. Each time I was told it was a ‘random extra security check’.

I mention this for a couple of reasons. First, I’m off on a work trip to LA in September. It will be amusing if I get ‘randomly’ selected on that trip, to pull this out and read it while waiting to be questioned. I also mention it because of the story of Faizah Shaheen from Leeds. The NHS worker was questioned by anti-terrorist police after being seen reading a book about Syrian art while on a flight to Turkey for her honeymoon. Writing about what happened in the Guardian, Shaheen said: “I was told this was a random check, but I was the only passenger to be stopped.”

Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan tweeted last week, while on a trip to America: “I fully understand & respect security with the way the world is, but to be detained at US immigration every damn time really, really sucks.” He’s since received an apology, but I feel his sense of frustration.

Earlier this week I was at the beautiful Hyde Park Picture House for a screening of the new Storyville documentary The Confession, the story of Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee. A powerful story, I can’t recommend it highly enough. As Bill Hicks used to say, is there a point? Let’s find a point.

Stories. All these stories, mine, Begg’s, Shaheen’s, Shah Rukh Khan’s – they need to be told because stories are how we make sense of the world and each other. When we stop telling stories, when we go silent, is when the people who want us to live in fear have won.

Hopefully I won’t be telling you a similar story when I get back from LA.