Conflicted Destiny - Season 1 Episode 38

Episode 8 years ago

Conflicted Destiny - Season 1 Episode 38

Two days before my departure, I arrived at work to find that John and a few of my clients had thrown a little surprise party for me. The biggest surprise wasn’t so much the party itself; it was seeing my Arab colleague animated and doing everything possible to make the occasion a joyous one. I thought back and realized that he had been very nice to me during the past few weeks, and I wondered why the sudden change of heart. John must have told him I wasn’t gay—or maybe he came to the conclusion on his own—and therefore realized I wouldn’t interfere with his delusional, imaginary relationship with John. I had always maintained a purely working relationship with both of them, and never hung out with either of them after work, except for the few times John and I received courtside tickets from American basketball players to watch their tournaments. John’s shop was very popular in Barcelona and many U.S. basketball players got their hair cut there. On numerous occasions they would leave courtside tickets for us so we could watch them play.
We all ate and drank, and some of the customers thanked me for my professionalism, work etiquette, and especially my effort and ingenuity in creating fantastic hairstyles that later became trends. They all said I would surely be missed, but they understood that I had to go and see my family—and besides, I wasn’t leaving for good. At the end of the party, I thanked everyone. Somehow I felt sad inside; these people thought I was only going to visit my family for a month, but in reality, this was goodbye. I knew I would never see them again.
Before leaving the shop that evening, I spent a long time in the back office with my special hair clipper. I wasn’t usually attached to inanimate objects, but I had a special connection with this clipper, which John had given me when I began working at the shop. I had a job thanks to the way the clipper felt in my hand. When I first started working there, I was terrified due to my disastrous experience at the Ghanaian guy’s shop. But here at John’s shop, my first haircut with this particular clipper was a great success. I held the clipper in my hand for a few seconds, then put it down and left the shop, never looking back.
After my party that Friday, I was able to relax the next day with Maria Joana. She was very emotional about my leaving. I had to console her, telling her that I would only be gone for a few weeks and I would be back in no time. That night we went to a nearby Italian restaurant, and afterward we went to see a movie. By the time we returned, she was a little more relaxed. The next morning she made us breakfast and after we ate, we lay down and listened to music. There was really nothing much to pack because I had been living a nomadic life, with all my belongings in one backpack that I took with me wherever I went.
We later drove to the airport, and as we approached the terminal, I told her to drop me off and not wait for me to check in. I got out of the car with my bag while she remained in the car. I walked around to the driver’s side window and gave her a kiss as tears rolled down her face. Quis barked from the backseat. I reassured her, telling her not to worry and that I would be back in a few weeks. But inside I was really saying, Thank you for everything. I may not see you again, so may you have a good life.
As she drove off, I went inside the terminal to check in. For some reason, I was very confident about this trip. I completely forgot that the diplomatic passport I was traveling with was bogus. I walked straight to the Iberian Airways check-in counter and presented my passport and ticket. The attendant checked me in without batting an eye. I collected my boarding pass, grabbed my backpack, and proceeded to the departure hall. By 9:30 p.m. we were on our way to London. We landed at Heathrow Airport two to three hours later for a layover.
After another two hours, I boarded my connecting flight to Miami, full of anxiety and expectation. I had a few bottles of wine, watched movies, and tried as much as possible to pretend that everything would be okay. In Miami, I got off the plane and went in search of my connecting flight. To get to the terminal where my connecting flight was, I had to pass through U.S. immigration.
I presented my passport to the immigration officer. He inspected it closely, his face showing his doubt. He questioned me about the authenticity of the passport. He wanted to know where I was going, and I told him that I was visiting the Bahamas. He explained that they had received information that during the war in Liberia, a lot of Liberian diplomatic and official passports were stolen and people had been caught traveling with them. They had seen an increasing number of cases of people who were not Liberians or diplomats traveling with such passports. He told me that mine looked real, but that he had his doubts. He said he had a young boy like me at home, and assumed I’d had a rough life and he didn’t want to make things more difficult for me than they had already been. He advised me that Bahamian immigrations wouldn’t allow me to enter with that passport, and asked me if I knew anyone in the U.S. I said no, and he told me that the best thing was to return to wherever I had come from, because even if he allowed me to continue, I would run into problems getting into the Bahamas. Once that happened, the Bahamians would most certainly deport me back to the U.S., and the U.S. would send me back to whatever country I had entered the U.S. from. He stressed that this would give me a bad record with the U.S., which would jeopardize my possibility of getting into the country later. He was the kindest immigration officer I had ever met, and I found his advice priceless. He concluded by telling me that the choice was mine.
It was practically impossible to overlook the consequences of my decisions. I decided it would be best for me to return to Spain. I thanked the officer and told him my plan. He handed me my passport, and I hurried over to the British Airways transfer counter. I explained to the attendants that I had to go back on the same flight that had brought me because I had some urgent matters that required me to return immediately to Spain. I doubted that they bought my explanation, but it didn’t matter. All I wanted at that point was to be out of the U.S. as fast as possible. America was my ultimate destination, and I couldn’t afford to ruin my chances of ever getting in.
Fortunately, they were able to get me on the flight. Since I had my backpack that contained all of my personal belongings, there was no issue of retrieving or checking in my luggage.
I was convinced that my sudden change of plan would never go unnoticed by British Airways. I felt dejected on the return flight. I thought I would be in the Bahamas by then. I never considered that I would be returning to Spain less than forty-eight hours after I left.
Luckily, I was not completely without a plan. Before leaving Spain, I had carefully hidden my asylum card under the insole of my shoe, so that if I encountered a situation that would require my deportation to a country, it would be Spain. Still, I felt completely hopeless and could barely tolerate the thought of returning to Spain when I had already told everyone I knew that I was going to the Bahamas to visit my family. I couldn’t go back to John’s shop since I didn’t know how to explain why I was back in Barcelona. The embarrassment was more than I could take. Worst of all, I would have to start all over again and I had no place to stay. As these thoughts kept playing over and over in my mind, I decided to make another bold move: I would stop in London.
A few hours later we landed in London and I proceeded to immigration, where I presented my passport to the officer. He asked where I was coming from, and I told him I was returning from the U.S. He flipped through the pages of my passport, looking for a U.S. stamp that wasn’t there. He asked me again where I was coming from, and I replied that I lived in Barcelona. I explained that I had left there to visit the Bahamas a couple of days ago, but upon arrival in Miami, I had changed my mind and decided to visit London instead. It was such a flimsy explanation that even I didn’t buy it. He called the attention of another security officer, and they asked me to follow them.
I was taken into a holding room at the airport. The two men began throwing rapid-fire questions at me and I gave them random answers. They weren’t satisfied with my explanations and had reason to believe that I was traveling with a forged passport; as a result, they wouldn’t allow me to enter London. They told me to stay in the room and that someone would come and speak to me later. I waited for what seemed like ages. Eventually, two menacing, heavyset white guys who looked like intelligence officers came into the room. They sat down across from me and started interrogating me. They wanted to know who I was, what I did for a living, where I was going, where I was coming from, and what I intended to do in London. Once again, I gave my story: my father was from the Bahamas, my mother was a Liberian who happened to be a diplomat, and I was just going back to the Bahamas to visit my folks. Obviously, they didn’t accept my explanation, but I decided not to change my story.
They kept probing and trying to get me to confess—something I almost began to enjoy as the drama continued to unfold. Seeing my nonchalant attitude, the two men started threatening me with jail time, and one of them got so furious that he grabbed me by the neck, shaking me and trying to knock the life out of me. But I wouldn’t budge; I looked him straight in the eye and asked him to go on and do his worst. The officers calmed down and tried to come at me from another angle. They told me that they knew I was Nigerian and they were pretty familiar with how Nigerians operated. Suddenly, I realized their intention. If I was proven a Liberian, they wouldn’t be able to deport me to Liberia because of the war there. But if they could establish that I was from another country—Nigeria, for instance—where there was no ongoing conflict, then it would be easy for them to deport me on the next available flight.
Armed with this knowledge, I decided to play their mind games. I told them I had no idea what they were talking about; I didn’t even know of any country called Nigeria. I locked eyes with them and stated that I was Bahamian. They threatened me a few more times, but the more aggressive they got with me, the more stubborn I became. After several hours of abusive, inhumane interrogation, the two officers decided to give up. They described a horrible detention center somewhere in London where there were a lot of hardened criminals, and said they would be…