International Pick-up Techniques

The border gods are fickle. Their change in mood and whimsical determinant of fate is as inexplicable and frustrating as Zeus or Hera, or any member of the Mount Olympus Dynasty. This weekend, I’ll admit I chanced incurring their wrath. Desperate to get in to Syria after procrastination eroded my specified time allowance for admittance, I tampered with my Visa, changing the 3 scrawled in blue ink next to the category of months into a 6. My crime was also motivated by the $100 cost of the Visa I would absorb without even getting to gaze on ancient Damascus.

Not to make generalizations, but Syria, in response to certain policies of our Government, doesn’t encourage Americans to visit their country. I therefore anticipated a struggle at the border crossing. However, when I stepped up to the window after my two friends, one Bolivian and one an amalgamation of Spanish/French, had been granted entry, I found myself easily passed through, with an official stamp in my passport and the guard offering me a sweet and a smile. We left the building in order to go through the process of buying a Visa for my Bolivian friend, who was without one. I felt elated at having come away without even a verbal scratch. I even brazenly admitted my trickery to our new European friend, whom I had kept the situation from out of nervousness.

My Bolivian friend was required to return to the same window, with the same benevolent guard to get the same stamp I had just acquired. I stood back, waiting patiently. The border guard then called us all up and asked for the America Visa, not even sure which one of us had been the owner. Confused, I handed it through the window. He stared at it for a long time, contemplating and smoking a cigarette. Then he motioned with his hand and declared “Hallas, no good”. I’m not sure why the flare for dramatics, because the number was obviously forged. However, I played dumb and was insistent even as he became angrier. My Bolivian friend pleaded on my behalf and appealed to his humanity, stating that she had Palestinian family in Syria she desperately wanted to see. If the border guard turned us away, he would be denying her a once-in-a-life-time family reunion. How could he live with the burden of that guilt? I appealed to his pocketbook and offered dinars. The guard eventually told all of us to sit, expect for my Bolivian friend. He then held a private conversation with her in which he emphasized he was doing this as a favor for her and all Palestinians and got her number.

*I forgot my camera. Pictures courtesy of Google.