Volume 31, Number 14 · September 27, 1984
On Being 'Inadmissible'
By George Woodcock
Last Christmas Eve my wife and I set out from Vancouver to Sydney. At 11:30 PM the plane put down at Honolulu airport, where we intended to break the nineteen-and-a-half-hour flight, change out of our Canadian winter tweeds and continue our journey on Christmas morning. Shuffling forward to the immigration desk, I saw the woman officer was working with a black book—a literal black book, heavy and thick. I had seen nothing like it since I entered Egypt by boat at Alexandria twenty years before, during Nasser's paranoiac reign. When the woman took my passport and flicked the book to W, the smile she wore for tourists stiffened. She made a note on my form and pointed to a line of chairs. An attendant took our passports into an inner office where I saw a man pick them up, glance at them, and wander away. A little later he called us into his room. He looked embarrassed.
Feature, 2784 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |