Two policewomen take me into the strip search room. They close the door and pull on latex gloves. The fear of being strip searched is so powerful I am sure they can smell it. They frisk me thoroughly, but they don’t make me undress. One of the women makes me open my suitcase. She goes through my clothes: my two new black tops from The Gap, my new soft black skirt, my white linen shirt. In the weeks before we’d left I’d rushed around buying new clothes for both of us. It felt important that we look good in Italy. Like a jaded magician she pulls out the silky black and white scarf my friend Kathy gave me for my birthday. Then my other birthday present scarf from my friend Tama — a filmy explosion of rusts and greens and smudges of pink. They take us into another office, make us sign four pages of French documents that we don’t understand and that will later be referred to as our “police papers.” They take our mug shots. There’s an escalating commotion involving a drunk Eastern European man who has been brought in to the police station. He’s demanding his rights, banging on the glass window of the room they’ve put him in

Read the original here Brigid Brett: The Red Cross Hotel (Part Two)