by Bapsi Sidhwa
The youth stood back, holding Feroza’s bags and restraining the tide of passengers banked behind him, and Feroza stepped into the aisle with the insouciance of one accustomed to such homage. This austere and regal behavior was expected of her. A more amiable attitude might be misconstrued.
Feroza was engrossed in an Agatha Christie murder mystery in the transit lounge when a familiar, tentative voice said, “Jee …”
Feroza looked up with a start. The brawny youth in the navy blue cardigan, accompanied by another properly respectful young man, stood before her.
“Can we get you something to drink, jee? A Coke, or tea? A sandwich?”
An ominous bell, accompanied by her grandmother’s voice, sounded an alarm. Feroza at once said, “No.” And a split second later, “Thank you.”
They did not look like the kind of strangers who’d spike her Coke with drugs.
“It’s a long wait, jee.” The youth was unobtrusively insistent. “We wondered if you’d care to join us for a gup-shup? It’ll help pass the time?”
“I’m reading. Thank you,” Feroza said primly, and at once regretted her decision.
Nose ostensibly buried in the Agatha Christie paperback, Feroza sat in the lounge feeling lonely. The transit lounge hummed with subdued conversations and the fretful cries of children. It wasn’t long before Feroza drifted into a romantic daydream of the swarthy young man with the reptilian leather jacket who had been so peremptorily banished by her father from their sitting room. Her adolescent fantasy cast him in the role of her persistent fellow traveler, and the traveler in the role of the insistent Government College student. As the competing images of the young men alternated and the imagined relationships passionately intensified, the time whizzed by.
Feroza slept very little during the twenty-nine hours it took to arrive at Kennedy Airport. For the last eight-hour lap of their flight from London to New York, they had picked up a different set of passengers. Mainly American and European. Most of the Pakistanis who had boarded the plane with her in Karachi had disembarked in London. Already the space within the aircraft, the atmosphere, had changed, become foreign. And the barely acknowledged anxiety which had assailed her the past few days, that the trip might not after all materialize, vanished. She knew she had made it to America!
By the time the plane landed and Feroza nervously stepped from the fluted corridor into the airport lounge, she was triumphant and glowing. The orderly traffic of rushing people, the bright lights and warmed air, the extraordinary cleanliness and sheen on floors and furnishings, the audacious immensity of the glass-and-steel enclosed spaces dazzled her. Burdened and awkward with her belongings, she tramped behind the other passengers, faithfully following them to the lines that had formed at the passport check. She did not see the proper young Pakistani again; he must have been swallowed up and ingested by one of the myriad lines.
It seemed to Feroza that the sallow, unsmiling officer hunched behind the counter handled her passport with aggravation. Her Pakistani passport opened from the wrong end. There was a moment of confusion. Then, starting from the back, he leafed through the pages, studying them minutely. He asked her how long she’d stay, where she’d stay, who’d support her. When Feroza told him she would stay with her uncle, who’d naturally support her, he became very inquisitive about her uncle. Was he a United States citizen, resident, visitor? How old was he, what did he do?
Feroza suddenly became aware of the pale green, almost colorless eyes studying her with startling intentness. The official repeated the question: How would her uncle support her? Feroza was barely conscious of what she said. An odd expression flitted across the hostile man’s sallow face. Thereafter he appeared to doubt everything she said with chilling implacability.
It was Feroza’s first moment of realization — she was in a strange country amidst strangers. She became quite breathless. The line behind her was getting restive; some in it were already looking at her with the distrust and hostility reserved for miscreants.
“What’s your uncle’s name?” the man asked. He placed a slip of paper on the counter. “Write it down.”
Feroza wrote: Mr. Manek Junglewalla.
The man tried to pronounce the name. Feroza smiled nervously and tried to help him with the pronunciation. There was no answering smile in the cold, unblinking eyes staring at her, or any change in the professional set of the stern mouth.
The official carefully wrote something on a white slip and tucked it into her passport.
“Show this after you collect your luggage. You must go for secondary inspection.”
Without looking at Feroza, he handed back her passport.
Utterly confused by the cryptic instruction, her legs trembling, Feroza followed the other passengers towards the baggage claim section.
And, finding herself suddenly confronted by a moving staircase, she came to a dead stop.
A few people pushed past her to step on the escalator.
An elderly American couple, their cameras and reading glasses dangling from their creased necks, appeared to understand her predicament. They had square jaws and gentle, undefined lips with faint lines running up from them, and, as married couples often do, they looked alike. They smiled, sympathetic and tentative, and asked Feroza if she understood English.
At her nod and her diffident answering smile, the man took the duty-free packages from her hand and stepped onto the escalator. The woman took hold of Feroza’s arm and, telling her to mind the cracks before the steps fell away, escorted her down the escalator. “Now get ready to get off,” she said and held Feroza firmly round the waist. Taken unawares by the continuing momentum, Feroza all but tumbled when they got off.
Feroza laughed, apologetic, embarrassed, delighted by the unexpected adventure. And, after her chilling reception by the passport officer, deeply touched by the kindness. The woman gave her arm a squeeze, and, infected by the spirit of Feroza’s wonder as her eyes again locked on the descending human cargo, the woman and her husband turned also to gaze upon the marvelously plunging staircase.
“Will someone be there to meet you, hon?” the woman asked as they neared the crush of passengers waiting by the conveyor belt.
“Oh, yes. My uncle,” Feroza said confidently.
The husband spotted their luggage and pushed through the crowd.
“You sure, hon?” The woman was concerned, but anxious also to help her husband.
Feroza nodded quickly, gratefully.
“Now, you take care, honey,” the woman said and, giving Feroza a quick hug, barreled into the thicket.
Feroza found her path to the conveyor belt blocked. Every time she tried to push through, someone or some piece of luggage intruded into the space, and she felt obliged to step back. She hovered on the fringe of the press, looking out for her luggage.
The crowd thinned as more people wheeled away their belongings. Feroza once again saw her gentle elderly friends. They were pushing their carts past parallel rows of ribbonlike customs counters. She followed their awkward, chunky figures with misting eyes and, in her heightened state of excitement and nervousness, an aching sense of loss.
Feroza’s eye caught the stately progression of her outsize suitcases on the conveyor belt. Afraid they might disappear, Feroza quickly slipped through the crowd that had by now thinned and hauled them off. She was staggered by their weight. It was the first time she had needed to handle her suitcases. She wondered what her mother had stuffed into them to make them so heavy. She remembered the books and magazines Manek had asked for, and the heavy onyx gifts Zareen had wrapped in newspaper and carefully inserted among her clothes to prevent them from breaking.
After some moments of confusion, Feroza timidly approached an immensely tall black porter with a large cart, explaining, “My bags are very heavy … Can you …?”
The porter barely deigned to flicker his lids. Gazing over her head, he trundled his cart to an elegant set of matching luggage spread before a woman in a discreetly gleaming
white mink.
Feroza wondered if he had heard her.
She finally gathered the courage to ask another gray-haired woman, who appeared to bear a resemblance to the couple who had befriended her, where she had gotten her cart. The woman hastily pointed out a shining caterpillar of stacked carts.
Feroza was struggling to extract one when a breezy young man inserted a dollar bill in a slot and calmly walked away with the cart. Feroza stared at the slot-box in bewilderment. When another young man in patched jeans hustled up with the same intent, Feroza stepped right in front of the box, barring access:
“It’s my turn!”
The slight, sunny-haired youth’s sneakers squeaked as he came to an astonished halt.
Feroza realized how strange and rude she must sound. She caught hold of the cart handle. “I don’t know how to get this,” she explained, half apologetic, half appealing for help. “Can you show me?”
The young man bent his sunny head to catch her breathy rush of words.
Feroza delved into her purse and fetched up a small wad of dollar bills of different denominations. She held them out for his inspection.
The lean young man’s smoky gray eyes were appraising her with the kind of interest and candor that would have fetched him a bullet from any self-respecting Pakistani father.
Feroza lowered her lids in confusion and unwittingly acquired a haughty air. He was half a foot taller than her five feet four inches. He appeared to her a great deal taller.
Teasingly attempting to look into her eyes, aware of her embarrassment, the youth leaned closer. He smiled flirtatiously, warmly, and, talking in an accent she found difficult to follow but pleasing, showed her how to insert the dollar bill.
Feroza loaded her suitcases and hand luggage on the cart. Her mind was now filled with images of the slender young American and his candid, admiring eyes. How easily he had talked to her, his gestures open, confident. She wished she could have responded to his readiness to be friends, but she was too self-conscious.
That was it: the word she was seeking to define her new experience. He was unselfconscious. And, busy with their own concerns, none of the people moving about them had even bothered to glance their way or stare at her, as they would have in Pakistan.
Her wide-open eyes soaking in the new impressions as she pushed the cart, a strange awareness seeped into Feroza: She knew no one, and no one knew her! It was a heady feeling to be suddenly so free — for the moment, at least — of the thousand constraints that governed her life.
The two panels of a heavy exit door at the far end opened to allow a stack of crates to pass, and, suddenly, Feroza saw Manek leaning against the demarcation railing just outside the exit. One ankle comfortably crossed over the other, arms patiently folded, Manek had peered into the abruptly revealed interior also.
After an initial start, and without the slightest change in his laid-back posture, he at once contorted his features to display a gamut of scatty emotions — surprise, confusion, helplessness — to reflect Feroza’s presumed condition. At the same time, he raised a languid forearm from the elbow and waved his hand from side to side like a mechanical paw.
Feroza squealed and waved her whole arm and, with a huge grin on her face, steered the cart towards him. She was so excited, and also relieved, to see him. Even from the distance, his skin looked lighter, his face fuller. He had grown a mustache. Knowing him as she did, his deliberate insouciance and the regal wave of the mechanical paw filled her with delight. He hadn’t changed as much as her mother had imagined. He was the same old Manek, except he was really glad to see her. Three years of separation have a mellowing effect, make remembered ways dearer. Feroza’s heart filled with affection for her former tormentor. Having no brothers, she hadn’t realized how much she missed him.
A woman in a blue uniform, stationed at a counter to the left of Feroza’s path, checked her. “Hey! You can’t leave the terminal. Your passport, please.” She held out her hand.
The woman read the white slip inserted in the passport. She looked sternly at Feroza. “You must go for secondary inspection.” Again the cryptic instruction.
The woman said something to a man in a white shirt and navy pants standing by her. She showed him the slip and gave him Feroza’s passport.
Feroza noticed the “Immigration” badge pinned to the man’s shirt. He motioned to her.
As she followed him, Feroza quickly glanced back at the exit to see if Manek was still there, but the heavy metal panels were closed. An inset door in one of the panels opened just enough to let the passengers and their carts through, one at a time.
Feroza followed the immigration officer past the row of ribbonlike wooden counters. A few open suitcases lay on them at uneven distances. These were being searched by absorbed customs inspectors who acted as if they had all the time in the world at their disposal. The weary passengers standing before their disarrayed possessions looked subdued and, as happens when law-abiding citizens are accosted with unwarranted suspicion, unaccountably guilty.
The man led her to the very last counter and told her to place her bags on it.
Applying leverage with her legs, struggling with the stiff leather straps that bound the suitcases, Feroza hoisted the bags, one by one, to the counter.
“Are you a student?” he asked.
“What?” The officer leaned forward in response to Feroza’s nervous mumbling and cupped his ear. He had slightly bulging, watery blue eyes and a moist, pale face that called to Feroza’s mind images of soft-boiled eggs.
“What’re you speaking — English? Do you want an interpreter?”
“No.” Feroza shook her head and, managing a somewhat louder pitch, breathlessly repeated, “I’m a tourist.”
“I’m an officer of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service, authorized by law to take testimony.”
The man spoke gravely, and it took Feroza a while to realize he was reciting something he must have parroted hundreds of times.
“I desire to take your sworn statement regarding your application for entering the United States. Are you willing to answer my questions at this time?”
“Y-es,” Feroza stammered, her voice a doubtful quaver.
Why was she being asked to give sworn statements? Was it normal procedure?
“Do you swear that all the statements you are about to make will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
Feroza looked at the man, speechless, then numbly nodded. “Yes.”
“If you give false testimony in this proceeding, you may be prosecuted for perjury. If you are convicted of perjury, you can be fined two thousand dollars or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both. Do you understand?”
“Y-yes.” By now Feroza’s pulse was throbbing.
“Please speak up. What is your complete and correct name?”
“Feroza Cyrus Ginwalla.”
“Are you known by any other name?”
“No.”
“What is your date of birth?”
“November 19, 1961.”
He asked her where she was born, what her nationality was, her Pakistan address, her parents’ address. Had her parents ever applied for U.S. citizenship? Was she single or married? Did she have any relatives in the United States? Anyone else besides her uncle?
“How long do you wish to stay in the United States?”
“Two or three months.”
“What’ll it be? Two months or three months? Don’t you know?”
“Probably three months.”
“Probably?”
The officer had placed a trim, booted foot on the counter; her green passport was open on his knee. His soft-boiled, lashless eyes were looking at Feroza with such humiliating mistrust that Feroza’s posture instinctively assumed the stolid sheath of dignity that had served her so well since childhood.
“Where will you reside in the United States?” The officer appeared edgy, provoked by her haughty air.<
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An olive-skinned Hispanic customs inspector in a pale gray uniform sauntered up to them. He had rebellious, straight black hair that fell over his narrow, close-set eyes.
“With my uncle,” Feroza said.
“Where will you stay … What is the address?”
The officer spoke with exaggerated patience, as if asking the question for the tenth time of an idiot.
“I don’t know,” Feroza answered, her offended expression concealing how stupid she felt, how intimidated.
“You don’t know?” The man appeared to be suddenly in a rage. “You should know!”
But why was he so angry?
The Hispanic customs inspector with the unruly hair indicated a suitcase with a thrust of his chin. “Open it.” He sounded crude and discomfitingly foreign to Feroza.
Rummaging in her handbag, Feroza withdrew a tiny key and tried clumsily to fit it into the lock.
“What is your uncle’s occupation?” her interrogator asked. “Can he support you?”
“He’s a student. But he also works at two other jobs to make extra money.”
She had stepped into the trap. Didn’t she know it was a crime for foreign students to work, he asked. Her uncle would be hauled before an immigration judge and, most likely, deported. She would have to go back on the next available flight. He knew she was a liar. She had no uncle in America. Her so-called uncle was in fact her fiancé. He wished to point out that she was making false statements; would she now speak the truth?
Feroza could not credit what her ears heard. Her eyes were smarting. The fear that had lain dormant during the flight, manifesting itself only in an unnoticed flutter of her heart, now sprang into her consciousness like a wild beast and made her heart pound. “I’m telling you the truth,” she said shakily.
Sensing that some people were staring at them, Feroza cast her eyes down and took a small step, backing away from the luggage, wishing to disassociate herself from the intolerable scene the man was creating. The key dangled in the tiny lock.