But borders hold a great fascination for me. There is so much arbitrary power concentrated in so few hands. Merely on a whim you can be put through the most gruelling ordeal. As a foreigner you have no rights. You can be refused permission to enter, or to leave, with no reason given. You can have your possessions destroyed simply on the pretext of a search. And those who wield this frightening authority, do they look like the mature, intelligent, good-humored people you would trust to decide your destiny? Not often.
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred you run the gauntlet without harm and squeeze through the bottleneck smoothly, but the potential for trouble is always there. These are the fault lines of society, where the nations rub together like tectonic plates, building up tensions that can pop at any time and plunge the innocent voyager into a nightmare.