Across the Frontier

Across the frontier the world's secret truths move unhindered every day. Inspectors doze or pocket dirty money, and the world's narcotics and armaments, its dangerous ideas, all the contrabandits of the age, the wanted ones, those who do have something to declare but do not declare it, slip by; while we, who have nothing much to declare, dress ourselves in nervous declarations of simplicity, openness, loyalty. The declarations of the innocent fill the air, while the others, who are not innocent, pass through the crowded, imperfect borders, or make their crossings where frontiers are hard to police, along deep ravines, down smugglers' trails, across undefended wastelands, waging their undeclared war. [...]

- Salman Rushdie from an essay titled Step Across this Line.