Bewarned. This could be a bit of a rant. It is a story of dramas at arrival lounges at international borders.
When I arrived in Dubai in the seventies, I walked through the biggest airport I had seen. At the immigration counter, I stayed in a queue marked for South Asians. That is, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans. I gave the only identity document that linked me to my body, my freshly minted passport, which was a few days old. The kandura-wearing immigration officer, who did not know how to smile, inspected it, and stamped it, comparing it to a document he had with him. To my shock, he did not return my passport. He held it with him, in a bundle with other passports of the newly arrived before me. I felt that he took my identity away. When I questioned him, he said that the company would hold my passport, I would work for. That was it, he signalled me to move on.
I felt bad that I was a slave, an industrial slave — a refugee with no identity. I was determined to get my passport back. But that was a fight for another day. Within four months, I won my battle. That fabulous story is a good read if you have the time.
I missed my parents and kid brother, so I travelled home to Sri Lanka regularly from Dubai. When I returned to the Dubai airport, I was more observant. The queues were marked: one for the local Emiratis, one for Europeans and Americans, another for Arab citizens from the Gulf countries, another for Middle Eastern countries and the last for South Asians, in that pegging order. South Asian queue was for riffraff like me. That was like apartheid. Some called it the ‘cattle class’. So, I was part of that cattle class.
Now, this is my uncomfortable racist rant. That queue was a challenging one. There were the Sri Lankan maids, who did not know how to fill an immigration form in English, the Pakistanis who had not changed their salwar kameez from when they left their home village in a remote part of Pakistan, and Indians, mostly literate Keralites and the odd Bangladeshis. This entire group provided the low-value labour services in the country, the maids, drivers, and labourers who kept the people in the other immigration queues rich and privileged. I know I could sound prejudiced when I write this, but that was what I felt then. I did not have the social maturity to process everything I saw. While waiting in these queues, my time was spent helping the poor Sri Lankan maids complete their immigration forms.
Dubai Airport in the seventies
While I was languishing in a queue that hardly moved and was crowded, I could see the smiling Americans and Europeans going through their privileged counters, being served as VIPs. They moved swiftly. The counters marked for South Asians received the least attention. I was in the fodder queue. Part of me was revolting, part of me could not deal with the body odours coming out of fellow queuers, and part was taking a lesson in humanity, teaching me empathy for the marginalised standing next to me. Well, at an age when one could deal with these social inequities, I stayed on, got my re-entry stamped and moved on.
When I went on a holiday to England, the empire country that colonised Sri Lanka for one and half centuries, the immigration officer looked at my passport slowly and carefully. He inspected it in detail, turning it upside down.
“Are you Sinhalese or Tamil?”, he asked.
I was taken aback. It was the first time; somebody queried my ethnicity.
“I am a Sinhalese”, composing myself. I had not thought of my ethnicity in distinct lines before that incident. What is a race anyway?
Now, I realised my nationality and my distinct ethnicity also mattered at some immigration counters.
Back in Dubai, my job required the odd travel to England repeatedly. Despite having a pariah passport, it was not a problem because I worked for a British bank. But visas had to be secured before travel because I had a Sri Lankan passport. The bank’s immigration officer did the paperwork, working with the British embassy.
A few years later, I arrived in Australia on a holiday with my young family. The immigration officer was chilled. Smiling, he got into small talk with me. Suddenly, I found that the immigration officers were nice. I loved the way they treated me as a fellow human.
During that holiday, I observed how lively Aussies were. They helped me and my partner with our young kids on the trains and in public places. I felt at home in the wonderful land of opportunity in Australia. Instantly, I fell in love with the lucky country. I did not feel like a second-class citizen. On our return to Dubai, I applied to migrate to Australia, seeing the great opportunities for my young kids. A year later, when we arrived in Australia on permanent migration, when the plane landed, I wanted to kiss the holy ground at Sydney airport. It meant so much for me and my young family. No, I never kissed the tarmac, but I did that mentally, imagining it. That day was an epic moment in my life.
I was now working for the same British bank in their Sydney branch. My work in Sydney involved frequent travel to England, where the bank’s head office was. Knowing the challenges of a Sri Lankan passport, I held off my travels until I got an Australian passport. Within two years of my arrival, my family became Aussie citizens. Within a month or two, I was the proud owner of an Australian passport.
It was like my world passport, an open ticket to the whole world. I could travel anywhere without a visa, without a second thought. I felt ecstatic. I was now ready for the world, a global citizen.
I travelled to many countries for work, from Sydney, spending a few days here and there. Also, going to England and Dubai, some of my landmarks when I travelled with another identity, my Sri Lankan passport.
In Dubai, I could now pass through those priority queues that were denied to me. No visa was required. It felt weird; after all, I was the same person. Passing through the same immigration counters now as a privileged person from a first-world country. I could not get my previous experiences out of my mind when I toiled in a queue with the downtrodden. How come? Nobody asked me questions. Nobody turned my Australian passport upside down.
According to some, there are 22 million ‘aliens’ today. In my vocabulary, aliens came from the outer world, from other planets. Not so in the US, especially during the Trump era; the rest of the world was aliens for him. When I travelled to the US, finger-printing indignation at their immigration counters was a stark reminder of this thinking. For some in the US, the idea of this beautiful planet ends from their east coast to the west coast. This country that erected the Statue of Liberty with the tagline, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses”.
Enough of US bashing, the country with 5% of the world’s population and no qualms about using 25% of the world’s resources and energy. Maybe I was an ‘alien’, a term used to describe the likes of me when I had a Sri Lankan passport.
Now when I go overseas, leaving and returning to Australia, I go through smart gates. No Aussie immigration officer checks my passport. Smart gates using facial recognition technology process my exit and re-entry automatically.
But I have not forgotten when I was treated like an alien from another planet in my budding days. I have moved from the ‘cattle class’, but it is the same person. I am still me. My whole me.
A Child of Curiosity How inherent inquisitiveness became a key driver in learning experiences. Denzil Jayasinghe · B orn in the mid-20th century, I am a product of the post-World War II era. My parents, who were teenagers when the war commenced, married in the 1950s. As a representative of the baby boomer generation, I was born under the astrological sign of Capricorn, the tenth sign of the zodiac. My birth took place at Zoysa Nursing Home, a renowned institution in Colombo, Sri Lanka, around 5 in the morning. Sri Lanka, known for its tropical climate, is a beautiful island nation south of India. This climate appealed to me, and I sought similar weather in my twenties, spending them in Dubai, where the winter resembles an Australian summer. Raised by religious parents, I held them in deep affection. However, the church teachings posed a paradox for a young mind, instructing one to love God more than one’s parents. I initially adhered to the Ten Commandments and other societal norms in ...
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6 min read·Jul 24, 2022
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