anti-strip search

My family was returning from a visit to Soviet Russia. It might also have been Iran. At the border, guards made us get out of our car while they searched it. As we watched from a distance, they opened all of our bags and put on every piece of clothing we'd packed. One guard had on five shirts, three coats, and a pair of underwear on his head. They appeared to be conducting a Chinese fire drill, jumping in and out of the car and running---prancing---around in our personal effects. This was hard to watch.

To pass the time, we wandered into a freedom garden erected on the non-Soviet or non-Iranian side of the border. A balcony extended over the border, with grates in the floor so you could look down and see the foreign ground. There was a library section with the 100 greatest books of freedom of all time. For some reason it was all American writers from the 1920s. But they were all first editions, and I couldn't help thinking they would be worth a lot of money if they ever made their way out of this garden in the middle of nowhere.