Bearing a Muslim name on one's passport especially those issued by certain countries can test one's patience these days. On a recent trip to the United States, I took the family along including my two teenaged boys. On the threshold of adulthood, I thought it would be good for them to see a little bit of America and life in a big cosmopolitan city like Chicago.

I know of many friends who would rather not travel to the US these days because of the difficulties some people have faced at the immigration counter due to the security measures enforced to prevent suspected, potential or imagined terrorist-types from entering the country. Fortunately I have never had such problems as my travels there have always been for the purpose of attending medical conferences and I don't have the looks of someone from the Middle East.

Being in the relevant age bracket, I expected my two boys would have a little difficulty, just like their visa application which took two weeks to be approved. At Chicago's O'Hare airport, they had to register with the Department of Homeland Security, a process that involves filling out a form, making a declaration and answering many probing questions by an DHS official. This included checking out the contents of one my son's e-mails.

The official who interviewed my sons was firm but not at all discourteous, I suppose because they had everything in order - return air tickets, booking confirmation of the serviced apartment where we would be staying, and the scientific programme of the conference that had my name as a speaker. But even then, they whole process took more than an hour.

Anyway we took it all in good stride, knowing that he had a job to do, and such stringent measures could not be helped given what had happened three years ago in September, and most of all we had no more flights to catch. An Arab man on the same British Airways flight from London was not so lucky. He missed his connecting flight to Houston because of the registration process and interview.