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Diabolic Digest
An air of terror
By Khaled Diab
The
suggestion that I could strike fear 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.
November 2003
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 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 notes 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 organization
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, 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.
ã2004 K. Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website
is the copyright of Khaled Diab.