An air of terror in the United States
Despite my inability to frighten even my cat, I have discovered that I strike terror into the heart of the United States establishment.
The suggestion that I could strike terror into anyone’s heart would reduce people I know to quivering heaps of uncontrollable laughter. It’s not that – as a regular gym-goer – I’m especially weedy, but even our cat, who has been known to hide in the washing machine to avoid guests, does not find me intimidating enough to get out of my bleary-eyed path on the staircase in the morning.
Yet I have recently discovered that I make Uncle Sam shiver in his boots. So much so, in fact, that he seems to have called in his Big Brother to watch over me. Although I’m 6′ 2” and weigh close to 200 pounds, I don’t think it is our relative size that bothers Uncle Sam. But his overboard nervousness of flying Arabs made coming to the United States on holiday no trip to Disney Land for me – it was more like Winston Smith than Mickey Mouse.
As the plane began its descent over Washington, I could feel the excitement rising inside me. Soon I would be reconciled with my wife, Katleen, who had been working in the US capital for the previous two months. I would also be spending my 30th birthday in a culture that I have grown up with from afar.
Filled with images of our upcoming kiss, I day-dream my way through the line in the chaotic immigration hall. A bossy little blonde ushers us past policemen who look as if they’ve stepped out of a low-budget remake of Hill Street Blues. Although I hope for a swift passage through passport control, reports I’d read and my experience at the US embassy in Brussels have prepared me for possible delays.
I approach the female passport control officer who returns my smile in kind. She checks my passport and visa while interviewing me about the “purpose of my stay” in such a way that it seems a little bit like small talk. Suitably impressed, I begin to lower my guard and let myself think that “this is going to be a breeze.”
Tripping up on memory lane
No sooner has the thought been released from the starting gate than it trips up at the first furlong. “Your profile fits in with the new regulations. Did they explain them to you at the embassy?” she asks. Perhaps the extra friendliness was an attempt to sweeten in advance the pill that lay ahead, just like at the US embassy in Brussels. There, the Counsel had encouragingly told me after perusing my application “As far as I’m concerned, I’m going to grant you a visa.”
An enormous “BUT…” followed in hot pursuit. Although he never told me about the new rules I would encounter upon arrival, he did have his own bombshell to drop. “According to new regulations, your application has to go to Washington for security clearance.” He explained that this was because – although I’m an Egyptian – I was born in Libya.
“How long will this take,” I ask with baited breath.
“Well, we’ve got it down to only three weeks now,” he noted positively. “And I see you’ve given yourself plenty of time.”
Of course, I thought to myself. Although I had been hoping for a painless passage through the embassy, neither I, my wife, nor even our American friends were under any illusions about the obstacles I would probably have to clear to get into Fortress America. My pre-trip blues show that even the planning phase for a trip abroad can in itself be – if you are an Arab – an adventure holiday pitting you against an assault course of incomprehensible forms and institutionalised paranoia.
And true to the Consul’s word, just over three weeks later, he called me back into the embassy for an interview. Under the watchful gaze of the Bush-Cheney-Powell trinity hanging on the wall, he gave me the good news that my approval had arrived. But he told me that he still had to ask me a few questions.
“Fire away,” I invited cheerily, immediately regretting the imagery.
“How long did you live in Libya?”
“Until I was three.”
“So, you weren’t there in the 1980s.”
“No, I left in the mid-70s.”
“I take that to mean that you never worked for the Libyan government or the Libyan army?”
“Not unless they recruit three-year olds,” I countered reasonably.
He told me to return on Friday lunchtime to pick up my visa. On a sunny autumn day in Brussels, shortly before the clock struck 13, I made it panting to the embassy’s heavily guarded front gate to pick up my visa before closing time. The disconcerting eyes of Osama bin Laden – both full of rage and a strange serenity – stared down at me from a huge wanted poster hanging in the outer reception area offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture. I didn’t find this – and the Arab-heavy list of Department of State-designated ‘terrorist organisations’ on the wall inside the visa section – to be much of a welcome sign due to the symbolic implication by religious, linguistic and ethnic association. But I was pleased – I had my visa, with my very own mug shot staring up at me off it.
Colourful encounters
Back in Dulles airport, the friendly officer piled my file into a big yellow folder. If this was the new colour coding scheme I’d read about, the yellow meant ‘selectee’ requiring extra screening – one short of red which is a backstage pass straight to an FBI interrogation room. “You need to take your papers into the office back there where they will ask you a few questions and photograph and fingerprint you.”
I wondered to myself why I, a law-abiding citizen, needed to be photographed and finger-printed like some kind of criminal, and what murky government database would contain my private particulars and who would have access to them. “I must be a real VIP,” I reflected ironically as I entered the dingy back office.
My special status was quickly confirmed by a burly, moustachioed immigration officer whose thick Spanish accent made it sound like he’d just crossed the border from Mexico. Just as I was about to start filling in the long-winded form he’d just handed me, he barked for me to “go sit at the back there somewhere.” I followed his finger to some uncomfortable-looking chairs.
I racked my brains valiantly to come up with such vital nuggets of information as all the addresses, telephone and mobile numbers I’d had over the past 10 years, and the same for both my parents. It brought memories flooding back of the bizarre paper trail I’d had to follow at the embassy in Brussels.
“Do you seek to enter the United States to engage in… subversive or terrorist activities?” demanded one question on the visa application form surreally. “Are you a member of a terrorist organisation as currently designated by the Secretary of State?” it continued.
As I was immersed in the mind-numbing form, which was poorly photocopied and barely legible, the officer shouts out to me, “You done yet?” Despite my negative response, he’d obviously decided that I’d exceeded my allotted time and ordered me to come over to the front desk. As he entered my particulars, I noticed that business was a little slow. His co-workers were standing behind him engaged in phallic banter about who was the least friendly to the “clients” that came into the office.
Once he’d entered all my details, the officer screwed up my form and threw it in the wastepaper basket behind him. He asked me to place my index fingers on an infrared machine that scans prints, and then he took my photo with a webcam. He gave me my entry stamp, but before I left he warned me ominously: “Before you leave the country, you have to find a customs officer to give you an exit stamp. Otherwise, you may never be let back into the United States.”
He gave me a stack of papers about the ‘special registration procedures’ for my holiday reading. I hunted down my bag which sat in a lonely corner of the terminal kicking its heels, since all my fellow passengers had long since disappeared. My spirits rose as I saw my wife’s smiling, if concerned, face, and I subsequently had a good time. However, the welcome and goodbye I received – simply because I was an Arab – made me wonder if I would ever again choose to go through such an ordeal. Even if such draconian measures provided more than a semblance of security, they should not be built on the indignity of ordinary people.
