ANYTHING TO DECLARE? VOL. 11
I was in Istanbul getting into a cab when my phone buzzed. A new email from Danish immigration services announced a decision had been made on my case. My fingers typed in my password to the online portal with a quickness only awakened by desperation. Your request for a renewal of your green card has been denied. You must leave Denmark by 23:59 on 11 October 2017. It was September 11th. The cab I was in was already headed to the airport, but my ticket was for New Delhi not Copenhagen. I was supposed to go for 12 days.
I arrived at the airport in a complete daze. Was the letter even real? Did I read it correctly? Ambling to the ticket counter, I tried to weigh the financial and emotional costs of rerouting my trip. Should I forfeit seeing some beloved friends in a new country to return immediately and try to sort this all out? If I went to India, it would leave me a little over two weeks to tie up loose ends, explain the situation to everyone important in my life, say my goodbyes, try not to cry, contact lawyers, pack my things, try not to cry, retract an offer I had on buying an apartment, write letters of appeal, request letters speaking to my character and contributions, try not to cry, gather data for my case, decide where I would go while my case was pending. Plus all the other things I knew I didn’t know about yet.
The airline attendants waved me up to the check-in desk and I went into autopilot. Handed over my passport. Gave my name. Lifted my luggage onto the scale. My body knew what to do but I could feel my eyes bulging, frenetic and teary with the absurd turn of my life’s stability in the last 40 minutes. It took a few seconds before I registered that the desk attendant was trying to interact with me. He was a series of spheres: a rotund man with big saucer-like brown eyes on a round face with protruding ears next to squishy apple cheeks that could challenge the cutest of toddlers. A living example of the circle technique used in figure drawing classes. He pointed at my passport and chuckled. He nudged his colleague, an incredibly slim man who was loading luggage onto the conveyor belt behind the desk, then pointed back at my passport and said something in Turkish. It was apparently hilarious, his circles would not stop bouncing with joy. The slim man laughed too, silently, his appreciation evidenced by the shake of his sinewy shoulders.
Circle Man turned back towards me and smiled, his brown saucer eyes twinkled while they looked into my confused and watery ones. “You see,” he explained, “your name in Turkish means ‘where are you going.’ And I have to ask you that question anyway. Nereye, Nereya? Nereye, Nereya?” He wheezed gaily before he collected himself, cleared his throat and professionally tapped my passport against the counter. But he was overtaken yet again, a smile bloomed wide across his perfectly round face while all the overlapping spheres of his person unexpectedly lunged forward. It was like watching a figure drawing become animated, suddenly looming large and perching itself atop the desk. His eyes opened wide and his smile pushed his apple cheeks to their limit while he leaned towards me and gleefully asked, “So, nereye, Nereya? Where are you going?!”
I had not the slightest clue.
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I decided to carry on to India. I figured the new precarity of my residency meant that I might not get the opportunity to travel there with this sort of ease again. I spent a few days in Bangalore with a dear, dear friend and her new husband. Then I traveled to Goa where I had rented a small one-room homestay on a lake in the monsoon offseason. (It was Olaulim Backyards. I cannot recommend it or the hosts Prikko and Savio enough.) I used the time to journal and think and journal and think. I kayaked in the mornings and sat in the evenings. I took outdoor showers and watched a donkey named Marta amble by. I was able to push away the panic and lean into productive plan-making. I sent one email to my parents and a few to a good friend who also happens to be a Danish immigration lawyer. The rest of the time I wandered as a stranger in a strange land and lived in the bliss of new experiences afforded by temporary homes. Through the clutter of my mind, I was able to cobble together a peace and a resolve. I thought in ellipses instead of full stops. I remembered that circumstances can feel horrible but they don’t have to be permanent. Chaos and calm govern one another just like faith and doubt. Two sides of the same coin.
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Upon landing back in Denmark, I went directly to my bosses, generous souls who treated me like family, and explained that I could no longer work for them. This kicked off a 17-day period in which I referred to myself as the “Pied Piper of Despair.” I traipsed through the city spreading melancholy. Daytime was filled with meeting lawyers, calling the municipality and giving away belongings. Evening was a marathon of breaking the news to the people who were both source and witness to years of my memories. My best friend asked me what would be the hardest to leave. I answered that I loved watching my friends become parents. She then couldn’t look me in the eye as she told me she was pregnant. The next day, in another friend’s apartment, I hadn’t yet brought myself to share the news when she excused herself to the building’s basement to get her laundry. I burst into tears when her door closed at the realization that all these little everyday realities would no longer include me. How long would it take to reach laundry level with a new friend, in a new city?
The pied piping that sticks with me most is having lunch with one of my very good pals in a traditional Danish pub: the walls were dark, the beers were cold, the patrons were shrouded in a cloud of smoke and the fish was, somehow, incredibly delicious. He asked numerous questions about the ruling and the appeal process until he suddenly apologized for his incessant inquiries. I put my hand over his. “It’s okay, Bo. It’s happening to you, too.”
That’s the strange thing about lives: we’re all at the center of each other’s. Sure, I’ve been telling my tale through this series, but it also belongs to my friends, family, colleagues and neighbors. And now it belongs to you. That short email shattered so many people’s hopes for the future, that of me and my friends for our lives together and now yours for the narrator of this story. It all suddenly dissipated into a bitter and rancorous air.
I filed the appeal, but it was denied. The party in control of immigration had run on a distinctly anti-immigrant platform. I was recommended to leave the country and then re-enter on a new visa, but there was little guarantee that the six years I had lived in the country would be honored. Were I to return, it would be as if I had just arrived. I would have to start from scratch, but in the same place. It would take me another nine years—for a total of 15 spent in the country—to be eligible to even apply for citizenship. That was too much to bear.
And so this particular chapter of my life came to an unexpected close. There is rarely a day I don’t think about it or what could have been. But to be an immigrant is to step willingly into an uncertain future, and that’s what I did. Then October 10, 2017, I headed to the airport and took another uncertain step, less willing this time and completely unsure of where my life would live. What can I say? I’m living up to my name it seems. Nereye, Nereya.
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This is the eleventh of a 12-part mini-series exploring my experience with immigration. It is edited by Ann Friedman. Read the previous installments or sign up to get the rest of the volumes delivered directly to your inbox here.