The Knife—India
Sitting in the Gulf Air Lounge for my 2nd layover, this time 4 hours in Bahrain. Almost got stuck here for longer. Had my luggage X-rayed and turns out I still had a knife in my duffel! Before leaving home, I grabbed an old camping duffel, just in case I buy anything in India. Did not realize a knife had slipped under the inner lining at the bottom. Security in LA had me tagged as TSA pre-checked. So just a basic check, express line, and the guy must not have been looking at that monitor. Is that a perk of flying business class? So anyone who accrues enough miles gets to take a knife on board?
Anyway I get to London and have to go through a security screening before entering the next terminal. And there they found the knife! Turns out it was just short of illegal, so they put it back in my duffel. I promptly forgot about about it and went on to spend 9 hours in the Gulf Air lounge. I was the only one there for a few hours, so I made friends with the chef and after raving about his carrot ginger soup, he told me that the recipe was a secret. I don’t usually order it in LA any more, gotten tired of it over the years, but this was extraordinary. A few minutes later, he brought out the list of ingredients.
Here’s what I remember:
Carrot/ginger soup—carrots, shallots, fresh grated ginger, coconut cream, lemon grass, orange juice, kefir lime leaves, lemon or lime juice (or both?) salt and pepper.
Eventually, it was time to leave London for Bahrain. Arrived there the next morning and went through another screening. And they found the knife….again. This time they took my passport and the knife, came back about 20 minutes later, with both. I refused to take the knife, but I’m sure the entire Arab world now has me on some kind of list. Eventually, I made it to Mumbai, slept 10 hours, met up with Ronni and Pinchas and had a great day today.
