Editor’s Note: Marlow is in this morning with some thoughts about the nature of identity, and the use of it in past and current times. The Writer’s Section at Socotra House murmured about it at the editorial meeting this morning, some from behind masks of dubious health use but solid social value. Consider Marlow’s views on this, since his experience as an ex-Pat student in France and behind The Wall long ago may provide some context for current life in these United States.

– Vic

Today’s title is a French phrase (your identity papers, please, sir) I heard quite often from French internal security officers and local gendarmes during the 1968-69 period I spent at a French university. In my opinion they wanted to see my carte de sejour was since I hung out in public cafes drinking cheap white wine and BSing with assorted commie, Maoist, Trotskyite, anarchist university students about politics, peace, war, history, the America-led free world, France, and the USSR-led commie world.

Much later I heard Russian gendarmes squawk Бумага (“bumaga”), when they wanted your “papers.” This phrase was almost always barked, and for a while it made me jump a bit. No French pretty-please made it all the more startling. More than once, I was made to wait or suffer through some stupid dangle questions.

This is what we are nonstop witnessing in and around Karzai International in Kabul. While I remain unsure which phrase the Taliban prefer using, I believe we Americans have become Russians.

While “bumaga” is now a bit archaic die to its widespread use during the communist era, nowadays, you are more likely to hear “pass” or “viza.” It’s like the word “organs” as in “the organs of state security.”

Back in the day, it always made me silently laugh when someone would say, “The organs are watching.” Nowadays given what the internetted snoops are doing regarding the policing of our thoughts, words, and written expressions, “organs” make me jump like the older French citizens did way back then when they heard something loudly shouted in abrupt sounding German. I witnessed these reactions many times.

Today’s questioned over there might as well jump (jump) so Van Halen’s peppy upbeat rock song from 1983 goes (psst — it’s about suicide) . . . “can’t you see me here I got my back against the wreckin’ machine . . . “

They are so screwed.

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