(published in 2014)
You have been granted an immigrant visa for extraordinary achievement, you do not need to pass an interview with Immigration, the officer on the first floor of the Department of Homeland Security says. Do you understand?
I do, I say.
But, nevertheless, you still want to? she asks again.
I nod ruefully. This interview is the only way I can ask for advance parole. In Greek, engaging with authorities when you don’t need to is called walking up to the mouth of the wolf.
The rectangular room’s walls are filled with posters of happy people of all races and ethnicities, genders and ages, smiling in the sunshine, holding little children by the hand, everyone looking happy in a wholesome way. We are all immigrants, it says. Welcome to America!
On all four sides of the room, there are officials sitting in little booths. Unlike Border Control agents, these Immigration officials are not in uniform and their booths are really school-desks, separated by thin plastic divides.
If you have come so far in the process, the set-up implies, you are not dangerous. You are almost one of us.
I take a number and sit down on one of the chairs placed in three rows in the middle of the room. It feels strange being in the middle, as if I am under surreptitious observation from all sides. But no one seems intent on doing that.
The Immigration officers in the cubicles seem tired and kindly.
The people waiting to be interviewed look bored, covertly mutinous, wary. They have been elected through the green card lottery, and this interview is a necessary prerequisite to their completing the immigration process and receiving the green card.
Everyone in the room looks as if they would like to be elsewhere. The day is too hot, it is Friday, late summer, the city is all but abandoned.
I am seated between a sari-wearing middle-aged couple from India, and a young African man who is speaking on the phone in a musical dialect but with rising intensity.
A young woman with platinum Scandinavian looks enters the room. Gingerly seating herself as far away from the rest of us as possible, she devotes herself to examining her perfectly manicured fingernails.
7024: Booth 2. My number flashes on the electronic board high on the right wall of the room.
Although this is an encounter I have requested, I can feel my body fibrillating as I rise. In times of great distress, my mother says, My soul is trembling. Now I understand what she means.
A Black woman around 50, with long dreadlocks, dressed in a white shirt and black pants awaits me in Booth 2. She looks strong, capable, no-nonsense. She gestures towards the chair. Please take a seat.
I perch on the side of the chair, regretting my presence there, wishing I could take flight.
The woman scrutinizes me, her eyes alert and experienced. I have the feeling she is like a human MRI scanner, seeing through any posturing or dissembling.
She sifts through my paperwork, then turns her attention to the computer, perusing my electronic file. She takes her time. I start breathing too quickly, choking on my saliva. I’m afraid she can discern my fear.
So, you’re here, she states, because you want to travel while you’re out of status as a non-immigrant, but not yet in status as a legal permanent resident? Couched in these terms, yes, my request does sound both hubristic and ridiculous.
Um, yes.
How can I even be contemplating—let alone asking Immigration to help me in this madness—to leave America, when I am legally no one yet?
In ancient Greek tragedy, people sometimes commit hubris not out of arrogance but because they are trying to do the right thing or protect the person they love. “Antigone”, Sophocles’ tragedy, ends with the words: Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness. I hope my ancestors were wrong. I hope happiness is the result of love.
Where do you want to go? the officer asks.
Athens, Greece.
Where is that? Africa or Asia?
Europe, I say, Southeastern Europe. Greece. The ancient Greek myths. Homer. Odysseus. Greek yogurt. The Acropolis. The Greek financial crisis. Mykonos. Santorini. The movie “Mama Mia”. I have become the stereotype I always hated, offering up my old country as the sum of its clichés so it and I, can be seen and recognized—even if like this.
I have no idea what you are talking about, the woman says. People here come from everywhere. I cannot know every single country in the world. I work all day, then I have my life at home—taking care of my teenage son, working out, tending to my patch in our community garden, reading books about American history.
Yes, of course, of course, I try to appease her, nodding vehemently.
Okay. So what’s there? Why do you want to go to this place? And why is it an emergency?
Well, I propel my explanatory documents towards her. I have a meeting there with my publisher… and old media contacts…
Uh-huh.
Greece is my old country. I left it to come here. My mother is there. She’s alone—I have no father or siblings. At the moment she’s not well, even though she doesn’t admit it.
The Immigration officer lifts her head from the file and looks at me. Got it, she says. Your mom. OK, honey, let’s make it happen!
For the next few minutes, she concentrates on generating a small mound of paperwork meant to send me wherever I need to go, then safely usher me back into the U.S.—back home, she says—past borders and controls, and all the blueprints I have spent my life unintentionally breaking.
Finally, after a short frenzy of stamping, she signs her name with a flourish, hands me the papers. Done!
At the risk of offending her, I press my case. Are you sure these papers are enough? I’ll be free to leave the U.S.? And then I’ll be free to return?
That’s a whole lot of freedom you’re wanting, girl, she says. Dangerous stuff. She smiles. Don’t worry. You’ll go to Greece and then return without a problem. If you have any, absolutely any trouble at the airport, tell Border Control to give me a call, I’ll deal with it.
Are you sure? I ask again.
The officer morphs into my therapist. Honey. I understand you have gone through a lot to get here. But I’m the boss now. Listen to me! It’s going to be okay—and if it isn’t, you’ll call me.
I look at the papers. Under her signature it says: Head of Immigration, Department of Homeland Security for New York City. She has also included her phone number. I too am really close to my mother, she says. I too live on the Upper West Side. I love the Park.
For a moment the border between immigrant and Immigration officer is lifted.
Returning home, I find two women conversing on the building’s stoop, a huge Insomnia Cookies paper bag between them.
It was such a perfect day, says one of the women to the other. There was no past, only a sense of everything beginning.
Two days before my departure to Athens, I am once again negotiating with my landlady. I have made the mistake of telling her I am leaving for Greece.
Excellent! she says. There is a woman from Sweden to whom I can sublet the apartment for ten days while you will be gone. This suits me perfectly.
But it’s my home! I protest. We just renewed the lease. I have already paid you this month’s rent. All my stuff is inside.
I can put your stuff in the basement.
But the apartment is mine.
Well it’s mine actually, she says.
You want to collect rent from me and at the same time AirBnB it to someone else?
Yeah! she says. That will be very good for me. Why do you mind what will happen when you’re away? You’d be doing me a nice favor.
Please, I say. Please don’t take advantage of the fact that I’m an immigrant.
She stops pressing. It’s the word “immigrant” that affects her, I think. Her grandparents were refugees to the U.S. She is not too close to the immigrant experience to want to close the door behind her, nor is she yet so detached from it that she does not care. Still. The summer in New York is so hot it can melt good intentions.
On the day of my flight, I receive a text from my mother: My love, PLEASE, i beg you: do not even think of coming here. Everything you have been fighting for, everything you have suffered for will be lost if you come. It is crazy to even think of leaving the U.S. before you get your green card.
Hours later, I pass through airport security at JFK. Walking toward my departure gate, I feel devastated at leaving, even if temporarily.
Eleven hours later, I cross the thin black line that delineates the European border. The gate opens. I embrace my mother.
