The randomness of being (civically)
If you could chose another nationality, and you absolutely HAVE to pick one that is at at least 50% ratio difference than your original one, which would you chose? Why?
Might seem like a warm up, innocent and frankly childish question to ask, yet it’s much more than that.
It’s an exercise to grab a feel of what is holding our place on this world together.
Where you’re allowed to enter, How you’re initially treated, How likely are you to stay out of trouble…
As I’m sitting in Barcelona airport at this moment, this stream of thought comes back even more powerfully, naturally.
However I must admit, dear readers, my wondering this time isn’t as weightless as it used to be, nor as pleasantly curious as I once discovered it.
This time, it’s restrained by necessary (maybe not) realism and sensitive resent.
I resent the randomness of my place of birth.
How deeply I hate it that because of it, I have to wait in longer lines, show a wider smile, carry an older passport, and most sadly, carry the weight of rules un-humanizing.
Tonight I fly back home from Beirut to Tunis, and since there aren’t much exchange between these two Arab countries (This is a MAJOR factor behind this civil situation weakness, more about it soon), I have to transit somewhere, and it so happened to be Barcelona.
The plane landed at 4am, you can imagine how tired we all were waiting in the line to get the visa stamp checked.
Now in Barcelona, the airport staff isn’t so keen on talking other languages than Catalan or Spanish, so I didn’t understand that I didn’t need to take any line, since I’m transiting.
Anyway, I learned it from the guy stamping (really good looking, I’d have to give them that), he took it as a chance to move around for a bit, took me to the door where it takes to my assigned terminal, explained how to do from there and just went off.
I follow the instructions, it’s so empty and cold in my terminal at that time of the day, unlike in the 1st floor terminal where it’s way more busy and choice offering in terms of food, stores and more.
Leaving my bags behind, I try to find my way through this maze of glass doors, wide corridors and empty desks.
There’s a stair, I take it, and I’m met by yet another officer. I explain the situation, and he proceeds to explain why, again oh god why, I have to bear the misfortune of my random place of birth.
Since I don’t have the Visa, I cannot (They cannot) risk allowing me into any other terminal than my own, and as you might’ve guessed it quickly now, these are the ones they keep upstairs, to avoid any extra risk.
Risk of people, like people from countries like mine, from running away in a clandestine way to Barcelona and then to rest of Europe maybe.
I’d be a terrible, terrible aspiring journalist and AI designer to be if I swipe through their fear of taking this risk without crediting it its basis of being.
There’s too much to it to simply wrap it up in a paragraph, but if I absolutely must, a little more than a welcome number of north Africans are more keen to risking their lives and fleeing illegally to a European country than to become better for a more stable future of his/her country.
Where we, north Africans, have it wrong is that many of our brothers and sisters have proved the authorities to be right about their illegal situation probability.
Where they, Europeans, get it wrong is that they see 4 non-united countries as one, reunited in bad traits.
So much for individualism when it’s just easier, and for more reasons than a blog written in an airport while sipping a now cold coffee can possibly take.
Back to the officer, as he announced me the rules, I could see the guy’s empathy building up, I understood from the bits of what I know of Spanish that he suggested to his friend officer they do the same procedure with me as another person, in a sense that I could go downstairs.
That suggestion was declined, he gave me back my passport, muttering a what seemed to be on the border of warm pity and apologetic powerlessness.
I couldn’t hold back the tears ascending to my eyes, watering them just enough to choke me with that focus to keep it under control, which I successfully did.
Dear reader, if you know me personally, or were able to accurately draw a vivid image of what constitutes my attitude and personality in most situations, then I might come off as surprisingly sensitive in this story.
I am sensitive, but I am most importantly, at this very moment, powerless.
However, dear reader, as you know me as well now, I shan’t be for long.
What can I change? How? Wouldn’t it be easier to just get a second nationality after living in a ‘developed country’ for longer than 5 years and be rid of all this administrative classification?
Yes, I will attempt to do that, but I’ll need to do a little more, something that can make us all, reunite in this deep felt feeling of inadequacy, non-satisfaction with the randomness of our head fall (where we are born, originally an Arab phrasing of ‘Birthplace’).
I am as proud to be born where I am, to hold the passport I own, to speak the language I master…
This doesn’t take away all what’s been said before, it is the very reason why something will be done about it.
aah, man, Airports…They always do something to ya don’t they?
