An obsession

He watched the much too dramatized sensationalized masalized news report of the plane hijack, and the terrorist's demands to the government to free their contemporary. He watched the photos of the hijackers' young families put on millions of screens worldwide. Their pretty normal wives. Pretty and normal, in fact, he thought.Their children, the same as children around the world, oblivious to the fact that their fathers at the very moment were away, inconveniencing (to put it mildly) a plane-load of people for as an elusive and abstract concept as freedom. He watched the arrested terrorist be released from jail, land in a secluded airfield and appear at the door of the plane, at the head of the stairs-on-wheels. He watched as the terrorist waved, with a face overgrown with scraggly and patchy hair, like the garden of a house whose occupants had died. And yet, a face alive with the jubilance of impending, if rather undeserved, freedom.

He felt no emotions - none for the lives of the military men who had been lost in arresting the terrorist. None for the emotions of the family of those on board the hijacked plane - all of whom must be thanking their government, and still praying hard, for the whole episode to end. None for the politicians, who wondered about the political impact their decision would have on the next election.

Instead, he found himself wondering, rather uncontrollably - if the terrorist had received a free upgrade to business class when he checked in for the flight. If he had, would his escort police officers be upgraded too?