It’s been a full three years since I left New York for Lahore. When I think about it, it seems far longer; another life, which in effect it was. But when I left I’d already lived there for eight years, and New York had sucked the life right out of me. I had vowed then that I wouldn’t return until some as-yet-undetermined but nonetheless-utterly-cool Life Transitions took place. (This was accompanied by a dramatic backwards glance at the Empire State Building. It doesn’t sound cool, but if someone had been filming my life story as beautifully as I had imagined it, you just know it would have broken your heart.) Anyway, I hadn’t been back since then.
Turns out losing my hair was enough of a Life Transition for me, so that I once again find myself in the bright lights of this big city.
I was very nervous on my flight here, imagining the border control officers would look at me and laugh as they told me my visa was fake and I was being sent to Guantanamo Bay for my facial hair. I was booked from London to New York, and I believed the white-friendly flight route would guarantee some kind of ease at Immigration, if only because I would not be jostling for space with countless other visa-holders.
I breezed through British customs and went on to the gate to board the plane. After handing over my ticket to the well-dressed airline attendant, I was given a faux-sweet smile. The woman winced and said, “Sir, you’ve been randomly selected for security checks.”
“Randomly,” I repeated. ??
“Totally Randomly,” she confirmed, but this time with a downward glance that I interpreted as an admission of shame and guilt. I see your roots, Rosario, I wanted to say, I see them well.
I totally expected this to happen and sidled over slightly shamefaced to the area behind the curtain where they would search me. There were seven people on the list they were checking names against (mine was first, yay!). Four were women in hijabs, two were their bearded relatives and the seventh was me. Random, right? Later, the officers brought in a small blond woman but I think she was just resting her feet.
[quote]You keep assuming a box of cocaine will fall out of your clothes and everyone will see it in well-timed horror[/quote]
A uniformed man began explaining the procedure: he snapped a rubber glove ominously over his hands, making me think of other, more dreadful things. He swabbed every little bit of stiff I had on me with a cotton square. Then he moved to my person. In times like these, even if you haven’t done anything wrong, you keep assuming a box of cocaine will just fall out of your clothes and everyone will see it in well-timed horror.
But it was over soon enough and I was allowed onto the plane.
It wasn’t even the English side that scared me about Immigration. Every time I flew into the states before this, I was detained for something called “Special Registration” that was mandatory on all males of a certain age traveling from a Muslim country (and North Korea). I had come to assume that I would be able to leave the airport until at least five hours after I had landed.
Somehow I was the first in line, but that’s because most of the flight were American citizens. ??I went up, the man took my passport, looked it over, asked me two questions, noticed that I had studied here, said “Welcome back” with a smile and sent me on. It took me a while before I could take the passport back.
“That’s it?” I asked, wide-eyed.
“Yup. Y’all are set,” he said with a smile.
“So I can just, like, walk out of here now…?”
“Yeah…” he said slowly.
“What about special registration?”
“Ah, nah man. That’s all done with. Sorry y’all had to do that. Ok, good trip. NEXT!”
It was only when the Korean girl nudged me to move that I began to inch towards baggage claim, still shocked that I had made it though in under ten minutes. I repeat: this process used to take me five hours. American girl, you gone changed. I’m here for a month!
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com
Turns out losing my hair was enough of a Life Transition for me, so that I once again find myself in the bright lights of this big city.
I was very nervous on my flight here, imagining the border control officers would look at me and laugh as they told me my visa was fake and I was being sent to Guantanamo Bay for my facial hair. I was booked from London to New York, and I believed the white-friendly flight route would guarantee some kind of ease at Immigration, if only because I would not be jostling for space with countless other visa-holders.
I breezed through British customs and went on to the gate to board the plane. After handing over my ticket to the well-dressed airline attendant, I was given a faux-sweet smile. The woman winced and said, “Sir, you’ve been randomly selected for security checks.”
“Randomly,” I repeated. ??
“Totally Randomly,” she confirmed, but this time with a downward glance that I interpreted as an admission of shame and guilt. I see your roots, Rosario, I wanted to say, I see them well.
I totally expected this to happen and sidled over slightly shamefaced to the area behind the curtain where they would search me. There were seven people on the list they were checking names against (mine was first, yay!). Four were women in hijabs, two were their bearded relatives and the seventh was me. Random, right? Later, the officers brought in a small blond woman but I think she was just resting her feet.
[quote]You keep assuming a box of cocaine will fall out of your clothes and everyone will see it in well-timed horror[/quote]
A uniformed man began explaining the procedure: he snapped a rubber glove ominously over his hands, making me think of other, more dreadful things. He swabbed every little bit of stiff I had on me with a cotton square. Then he moved to my person. In times like these, even if you haven’t done anything wrong, you keep assuming a box of cocaine will just fall out of your clothes and everyone will see it in well-timed horror.
But it was over soon enough and I was allowed onto the plane.
It wasn’t even the English side that scared me about Immigration. Every time I flew into the states before this, I was detained for something called “Special Registration” that was mandatory on all males of a certain age traveling from a Muslim country (and North Korea). I had come to assume that I would be able to leave the airport until at least five hours after I had landed.
Somehow I was the first in line, but that’s because most of the flight were American citizens. ??I went up, the man took my passport, looked it over, asked me two questions, noticed that I had studied here, said “Welcome back” with a smile and sent me on. It took me a while before I could take the passport back.
“That’s it?” I asked, wide-eyed.
“Yup. Y’all are set,” he said with a smile.
“So I can just, like, walk out of here now…?”
“Yeah…” he said slowly.
“What about special registration?”
“Ah, nah man. That’s all done with. Sorry y’all had to do that. Ok, good trip. NEXT!”
It was only when the Korean girl nudged me to move that I began to inch towards baggage claim, still shocked that I had made it though in under ten minutes. I repeat: this process used to take me five hours. American girl, you gone changed. I’m here for a month!
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com