A family’s travelogue from Phnom Penh to Paris and back

Our stopover is Guangzhou, the capital of Canton province, a former terminus on the Silk Road. Just a stone’s throw away are industrial Shenzhen and Hong Kong, where part of my family has been exiled. A-kong, my father, will be visiting them later in the year. For the moment we have another trip to make: one that will take us back forty-seven years, before that long episode in France that covers almost the whole of my life, but which for him was a long swing to the other side of the world.

Where there’s an airport, there’s security, and where there’s China, there’s screening, so here we are at the checkpoint at Baiyun International Airport, where austere officials are checking that we’re not carrying anything suspicious. We go through the scanner first, and A-kong takes his time. When the diaphanous image of his suitcase’s entrails finally appears on the screen, the agents are surprised to see quite clearly a thirty-centimeter knife, lying peacefully alongside twelve boxes of Doliprane (paracetamol) 1000mg, one hundred and eighty COVID masks (which he will later offer to my cousin) and eight camera batteries — for A-kong suffers from a rather severe scopic compulsion. A conversation in Mandarin ensues between the agent and my father, who hopes to convince the woman not to confiscate his « fruit knife ». Meanwhile, while my wife Insa questions the reliability of Luchthaven Schiphol’s security service (we’d flown from Amsterdam), my daughter Elly rolls her eyes, my son Robin pretends to look at his smartphone (without a network), and I watch my father adopt a familiar posture: a man of good faith imploring clemency from his next superior. This time his plea has little effect. But I know it has worked before — at least once.