On 3 July l996, I was at Roissy-Charle De Gaulle airport waiting to leave for Berlin. Not long before, I had bought a cartridge belt in the flea market and I didn’t really know what to do with it. At that time I went to the gym a lot. I thought to myself: with my build, if I go through customs with this cartridge belt, I am sure to get noticed. In order to enhance my appearance as a suspicious passenger, I shaved, I bought a tight-fitting t-shirt and army trousers. I went to Roissy dressed this way. The inevitable happened. Three people from the security service stopped me and asked me to follow them. When I asked them why, they responded: “Because you look shifty”. I then found myself alone with them in a ground floor room. There they asked me what I had in my cartridge belt. I replied that they were Carambars, but clearly they were having trouble believing me. Therefore they started to scrutinise each stick of toffee in great detail, fiddling with them and putting them through the X-rays… Unperturbed, I ate one or two in order to confirm what I had just told them… After 20 minutes of tests, they had to accept what was evident: they really were face to face with Carambars. My plane was on the verge of taking off when I joined the other passengers.

translation by Caroline Hancock