Being a bit of a drama queen and a kugel too, I burst into tears when the young black United States Customs and Immigration man at JFK airport held my hand in a tight grip and rolled my fingers round and round, every one, to allow the computer to take accurate fingerprints.
Right then, the drama queen in me imagined myself in Guantanamo Bay, blindfolded and crouching. And orange is just not my colour.
My tears discomforted the young man, who told me, “My first name’s Muslim and I get stopped all the time too,” he said, looking less than dry-eyed himself. If that was meant to comfort, it didn’t for it made me sadder still to realise how he had become used to his oppression in his own country. The USA Patriot Act, under which US Muslims are questioned and detained, is an oppressive law eroding the civil rights that, until recently, had made the country a beacon. It is an Act which now makes human rights in the US a charade.
My tears confounded me. We’d regularly been roughed up and fingerprinted at school and later; these guys were pussycats by comparison. Thinking later about bawling like a baby, I realised that the indignation and anger came because I have become used to my freedom. I am no longer used to having my rights stripped, my bags searched, my freedom of movement curtailed. I kicked up a terrible racket, taking notes, asking for my suitcases, asking to make calls since the “detention centre” (a mangy-looking office with outdated computer equipment and jaded immigration officers) cuts off cellphone access.
The super-visor was astounded in an American it’s-all-gonna-be-all-right, lady kind of way. He handed me a US customs and border protection “Comment Card” with its pledge to travellers — all part of the illusion of fair procedure in the great democracy. “We pledge,” it said, “to cordially greet and welcome you to the United States.” What a strange greeting. As I stood in the queue, the same young man had asked for my passport, looked at it and shouted across the lines of visitors: “I’ve got her. All the time we’ve been looking for a man.”
Our plane had been subjected to Hollywood-style drama. “Will all South Africans have their passports ready on exit,” announced a South African Airways cabin attendant, “US customs is at the exit.” I had been waved by because they were looking for a South African man; now they had their woman.
While waiting for “the agent from head office” (it got more Hollywood-like by the minute), I filled out the comment card and got to question 5. Did I feel I had been referred to the Customs and Border Protection people because of racial profiling? What other feeling was I supposed to have, given that 60 of 65 people there were Muslim, all sitting meekly as they were put through the meat-grinder. “Why are you visiting the USA?”; “Where are you staying?”; “How many times have you visited the USA?”.
Not one sought to complain; not one, it seemed, appreciated the irony of sitting in the land of the free, shackled. A guy in a DKNY T-shirt, Diesel jeans and sneakers of an equally omnipotent American brand said he was stopped every month. Does the end justify the means? Is the Patriot Act and these systems the best way to keep the US safe? Is this really the best way to stop crazies boarding jet-planes and flying them into skyscrapers?
How on Earth can Dubya proclaim himself the emperor of this, “liberty’s century”?
Shaken from my philosophical reverie by the arrival of the “agent from head office”. One Peter Robustelli, special agent from the Department of Homeland Security, apologised — continuing the charade of respect and decency. My name, apparently, had come up because it is so similar to that of Farida Haffajee, somebody on their watch-list. Who was she? What had she done? “Anything more than that, I can’t say. Do you know somebody of that name?” I vigorously shook my head, deciding that I would not declare my aunty Farida Mayet.
Imagine trying to explain that she doesn’t make bombs, but she bakes a mean muffin. And no, I didn’t think she’d ever been to Afghanistan, though I know she’s planning a trip to Mauritius.
I started explaining to the agent that I had a 10-year visa; that his government had invited me on a trip later this year to expound on its “foreign policy and human rights”. I stopped mid-sentence; there was no use trying to talk to people who have sacrificed democratic substance for form. There is little we can learn from contemporary America about human rights.