Perks of Having a Pakistani Passport

Well what happened today was truly remarkable, certainly something that I will keep telling for a while. Woke up Monday morning realising that as I had only gotten a one month stay stamp on my passport for Kenya, I needed to get my passport restamped. Now I do have a six month multiple visa so I was going to have to go in just to get the passport restamped, no visa renewal!! Anyways, so I asked Danny what needed to be done, Danny acted as if it was going to be a no bigge, instructed Jose to take me to the place in Nairobi which was a 45 min ride on the Matatu (Public Transport vans). So Jose and I head out for our seemingly rudimentary journey. We got to the place at noon to find out that it was closed till 2:00 pm. Disgusted by the situation I asked Jose to take me to a bookstore as I needed a book on Swahili and also needed cheap but really nice sunglasses, I’m sure you guys know what I mean.

So we got the book which I love and the glasses which were 100 bob ($1.5), so far the day was going perfecto, got the book I wanted, got glasses and now was heading to get the restamping done. When I got to the place I proceeded to the first counter only to find out that my case was going to be dealt at counter 6. When in line at 6 the guy from 7 called me over only to tell me that I needed to go to 5 so I went to 5. Counter 5 had a lady sitting behind it, now whenever I see ladies I feel so much more relaxed, because more often than not they have a lesser of an ego and are willing to listen. So the lady tells me to fill out a form and see Yolander on the 7th floor. I thought, okay finally something in the right direction, a form is always a good start.

Jose and I head to the 7th floor, once we get there I see a sign saying INTERROGATION and thought okay, that’s kind of strange but who cares it wasn’t like they were going to investigate me right. From here onwards things started to insanely wrong. I got to Yolanda’s office and find another gentleman there who asks me how he can help me. Well I tell him why I’m there and he takes my PAKISTANI passport and tells me to follow him. He takes me into the waiting room of the Senior Immigration Officer, comes out after 5 mins and tells me to follow him again to the last room on the floor. The room looks kind of shady as it has bars and is locked from the outside. At this point I’m so bewildered that I’m tongue tied, I think I knew inside that this was not a waiting room but was in denial. The room had broken chairs and a table on one side. I was told to wait there till I’m called. Inside were two of my fellow INMATES; I like the feel of the word, me a convict, anyways, they ask me what airport I got arrested at and I think that they’ve lost it and tell them off. They both laugh and state the obvious to me, “You are arrested my friend, why you think they locked you from the outside”.

I wait there for about an hour thinking that this is a big mistake and as soon as the officer calls me everything is going to be sorted out but no one shows up. Now I start getting worried, start calling people, call Danny and Patrick at ICROSS tell them what’s going on. And then about an hour and a half later Jose shows up to meet the convict and tells me “Man you are arrested”, “I know that, you punk” I replied, “but what the hell for”, at that point I realised that Jose was more nervous than I was and thought to myself that this was not good. Jose went on to tell me that they looked me up on Google and found out the company I worked for in the US and somehow decided that I needed to be deported to either to Pakistan or back to the US. They told Jose to go back and buy a ticket for me and meet them at the airport in a day’s time. This did not make any sense to me, I did not overstay my visa, I just came to extend my stay within the dates of my SIX MONTH valid visa. I asked Jose to beg any officer just to listen to me, there had to be a confusion.

Well Jose left and I felt like laughing about the whole thing. This does not happen to real people; it happens in the movies, this really can’t be happening. But it was and I couldn’t do anything about it. Jose returned a couple of times without success and then finally the miracle happened; around 5 a lady showed up and called for me. She was an immigration officer, more like an black angel to me, okay I shouldn’t say black angel, for all we know angels might all be black but I’ll blame this one on Hollywood, they always show the white angel to be the good one. She takes me to her office and for the next half hour I go over everything with her, how I was just there to renew my stamp and I wasn’t illegal and had done nothing wrong nor was planning on anything like that. She looked at all my documents and told me what I already knew that there was NOTHING illegal about what I had done and there was no reason as to why I should be kept in prison.

I couldn’t thank her and God enough. Then came in another immigration officer, who I later found out was sent when Patti from ICROSS made a couple of phone calls to the Immigration Office. This guy asked the immigration lady for my file and she refused to give it to him (god I love her for that) but he went on to tell her that the reason why I’m being held is that I FIT the DAMN PROFILE and I needed to be kept for interrogation regardless. Now some of you must be wondering what the PROFILE is? WELL, I AM IN MY TWENTIES, MUSLIM, AND CARRY A PAKISTANI PASSPORT. YEAH YOU HEARD ME; I AM A MUSLIM THAT’S WHY I WAS BEING SUBJECTED TO THIS SHIT. Well my friends I never felt prouder of being a MUSLIM AND A PAKISTANI, if that’s what this world has come down to, then be it, I will fight back and not in the way they expect, not by blowing up shit but by reason, by intellect, by FAITH.

I was made to give a lengthy statement where I was deemed the accused criminal; for what? I do not know. But I gave it to them and if making me a MUSLIM makes me a convict then I’m ready to be in jail everyday for the rest of my life. All that talk about human rights and human dignity is horse shit if you’re a young MUSLIM in today’s world. The West wonders why people get crazy enough to do the mean things they do, well if a guy is accused of NOTHING and put in prison; he won’t exactly want to be your BEST FRIEND now would he. But we live in rational age; I still believe that this is why the best way to deal with this is with patience and reason and not with REVENGE, cause that’s what a lot of people in the west want; young Muslims to act irrationally, so that they can justify their own crazy actions.

Anyways, so after giving my statement to the immigration officer, I was told to wait while she takes my case to the superior officer. She also warned me that I still might have to leave the country right away. She came back after a half an hour and gave me good news, I could stay for another 2 months after which I’d have to leave, although remember my visa is valid for SIX months, but I guess maybe after 2 Months I’ll become a terrorist so I can’t stay more than that! But hey, I was still very happy, here a couple of hours ago I was in prison about to be deported and now I can stay longer. I really thanked the officer a million times. My passport was kept and I was told to come back the next day at 10 am as the people who would be able to do that were long gone. I picked up my bag pack and JOSE and I left the 7th Floor to find Patti and Boja from ICROSS waiting to greet us outside.

I was back at 10 the next morning was made to wait another couple of hours till I got my passport back. A free man again, haha, I could finally go out and help the poor again. Funny how the world goes after the ones that want to make it a better place.

Well finally I’m headed to Samburu in Central Kenya with Dante, Joe and Saruni for a week where I’ll celebrate my birthday and hopefully get to poor and suffering but happy people of Samburu tribe. I’ll be writing about that soon

Peace Out.
p.s check out the new pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/alirzaidi