From KCRW, I'm Bob Carlson, and this is unfictional.

I spend a lot of time at airports.

The last flight I took was back home to Dubai to see my dad for his birthday.

It was 23 hours from Los Angeles via Frankfurt and I was so jet-lagged by the end of it that I found myself drinking a pint of beer at like 11 o'clock in the morning.

I'm probably permanently damaged from being crunched up in the plane seat that long, but there's a small

crazy part of me that kind of loved the whole experience.

Airports are like a portal to a weird liminal space where people mind their own business for a change and it's kind of awesome.

Nobody wants to talk, nobody hits on you.

I'm not a man or a woman to the world, I'm just the flesh sitting

in 38C.

Maybe it's the beer or the jet lag, but it can all sometimes feel a little dream-like

The whole process of taking off my shoes

Emptying my water bottle getting my piercings prodded by TSA I'm

being asked who I am emptying my water bottle, being asked who I am and why I'm going where I'm going.

To which I always say, I'm Nisha, I'm a grad student, I go to USC, I'm from Dubai and I'm just here in LA to finish my degree.

It's not like those things about me aren't true.

It's what I put on my resume, it's what I tell people when I introduce myself.

But all those things just sort of float around the core of who I am, which I'm still

trying to figure out.

Unfictional is a program of true stories and personal documentaries produced by independent

audio makers from all over.

I'm your host Bob Carlson and on this episode of the program a self-portrait from journalist Nisha Vencut, someone who finds

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