Wow. What an awful experience, to be held at the end of the sword by ill-tempered and spectacularly stupid authorities who suspect you of heinous activity.

I feel empathy for the fellow because something similar (but on a smaller scale) happened to me recently. I have not yet decided how to write about it.

You keep thinking, “How should I answer?” Because you know that, while you’ve done nothing wrong, you must avoid the wrong answer at all costs.

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The experience, from the perspective of someone who wasn’t the person who dropped their iPod in the toilet.

A few nervous minutes later, at around 4 p.m., we landed and taxied to a desolate spot far from the terminal. I and my fellow passengers (close to 50 of us) expected to see emergency vehicles waiting and a crew of people to rush us off the plane before this “object” exploded. No such luck. We were greeted by an eerie silence, a silence that lasted almost 40 minutes until a bus finally pulled up near our plane.

Perplexed and confused, we were ordered to disembark and told that we could bring nothing with us, not even our passports. (Apparently this order was a mistake because we were expected later to have our identifying documents with us.) Grim-faced police officers with guns stared at us with accusing glances as we staggered down the steps. I felt the impulse to put my hands up. What had we done wrong? Were we suspected of terrorism?

We were transported to a large garage, filled with armed police, on the airport complex and told that we had a long wait ahead of us. This turned out to be true. It would be four hours from our arrival at Ottawa before we were finally released.

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