Time of the Octopus: Based on the True Story of Whistleblower Edward Snowden

IN PLACE OF A PROLOGUE_

The transit area of any international airport is in some ways a kind of beached Noah’s Ark. It is not floating off anywhere. It is not threatened by the rising tide of the next flood. Yet it provides a lifeboat for those who have something to be afraid of in this life of misery and hardship.

Ordinary passengers burdened merely by daily cares, baggage, children, domestic problems and lack of time shoot through transit areas like shoals migrating from one shore of the boundless ocean of air to another. They barely notice those who linger longer here.

The more persistent inhabitants of the transit area – often conforming to the biblical ‘two of every living creature under the sun’ – try to stay unnoticed, keeping away from the well-trod passenger tracks, slipping away unobtrusively into the back alleys and hidden habitable cul-de-sacs of the airport terminal. For those with means, there are, of course, mini-hotels in transit areas, but the cost is way above the ordinary lingerer’s budget.

Yes, they are a varied and numerous community, this tribe of transit area dwellers! There are migrants who, by hook or by crook, made it aboard a plane to escape from poor countries that are not even Third World, but fourth or fifth, in the hope of reaching somewhere they might be accepted as refugees. There are young travellers, who move almost like hitchhikers, without visas and permits. There are old hippies, the last outgrowth of the flower children, on the way to eternal Katmandu. There are shady characters, too – characters on the prohibited lists of different states, defaulters on credits, protestors, false witnesses, deserters, heroes of criminal and political cases; ideological fighters against borders, anarchists, extremists and radicals of all stripes, prophets and false prophets, and also the clinically insane, which may not be so different. And then there are the unfortunates who have simply lost tickets and documents.

All these people are waiting for something. Some are waiting for a decision from the authorities, some for money to be transferred from relatives or acquaintances, and others just for documents, objects, or traveling companions… But there are also those for whom a transit area is the only place on planet Earth where they can feel free.