After living in the USA for about twenty years I decided to visit my home land. I carefully shopped around and settled for Emirates Airlines because of their reputation and I always wanted to see Dubai. The flight was great, they have comfortable chairs, friendly hostess and numerous movies to choose from. Picking out from the window of the plane, i was excited to see the much talked about flourishing city in the world Dubai, it was beautiful. The Air port was even beyond my expectation, it was modern and state of the art, better than the major Airports I have seen here in the US.
The nightmare began when the security guards at the customs randomly(at least that is what i thought) selected us(four people out of hundreds of passengers and coincidentally we were all young and black. I thought what the hell I am in a foreign country and I have to obey their laws and regulations. The guards opened all my bags and started turning it upside down as if they were looking for a needle and they keep on asking me if I have drugs, I told them no and they keep on saying "its better if you come out now, we know you people you can't go a day with out smoking marijuana" I figured once they searched me and realized that I am clean they will let me go, I was WRONG, the nightmare has not even began yet.
The guard told me to follow him to a room at the back of the airport and he told me my bags will be at the front desk and not to worry about it. I said ok and followed his lead, he took me to a small room with no camera and told me to strip down to my boxers and he started going thru my pockets and took all my money out roughly about $7000.00 and put it on the counter and he started searching me, filling my priviate parts and bottom. He then told me to bend over so he can check my rectum with a flash light, that is when I lost it, I told him that this is too much, I have been nothing but cooperating and he is crossing the line by doing all this and that is when he called his other security guard who carried me to another room naked and told me if i don't cooperate to what they say they will detain me there indefinelty and reminded me that i am no in the US and I am not a US citizen and there will be no body to claim me. that is when i realized I am dealing with animals and i was scared that they might plant something in my bags and have me excecuted. I said go ahead and do what you have to do, the guy had me bend over and start feeling my rectum with his hand while the other guy is pointing a flash light. I never felt so violated in my life, i can't do anything about it. after all this search that lasted more than four hours, i finally was told to go and i just grabed my money and phone that was sitting on the counter in the next room and went to the hotel to rest until my next flight to Africa.
when i got to my room and noticed that the money didn't look right, i started counting this croocks took $3600.00, i was pissed off and started thinking what i should do, the weired thing is every one at the airport wears a turbun that covers part of their face and pretty much all the guys are named, Mohammod, Ahamed and so on, i don't remember who searched me and they all look alike. I went to the emirates desk in the morning to explain what happened and they told me to go to security office to tell the story but i was scared to approach this croocks, what if they detain me and have me sit in a middle east jail for ever?, what if they plant some thing and have me hanged in the middle of downtown? i said to my self it is not worth it and took my flight back home. I was suppose to fly back thru Dubai, but i paid $300.00 more and lost part of my money from the previous ticket to avoid passing thru this hell city.
IF YOU ARE YOUNG AND BLACK, DON'T GO TO DUBAI, THEY WILL RIP YOU OFF AND STILL YOUR MONEY AND THEY WILL TELL YOU TO YOUR FACE THAT YOU ARE A DRUG ADDICT AND YOU WILL HAVE DRUGS ON YOU. I am glad this is over, but atleast if I save one person that is is enough for me.
This happened roughly around dec 26-27 of 2008 and I flew from San Francisco to Dubai and from Dubai to Addis ababa, Ethiopia.
I was in a rush when I wrote this and I know I could have done a better job editing and telling a story