I’m waiting in line to fill out an immigration form after a grueling twenty-eight-hour flight. I’m sleepless and groggy, and the touristic excitement I felt initially while wandering the departure lounges with my wife and son has long since faded, replaced by a deep fatigue. My wife attributes my exhaustion to age. After forty, she says, the body begins to lose stamina. That’s her opinion, I say, reminding myself that there’s still much left to do in life. I can’t afford to be tired yet. Securing a stable position at work, buying a house, acquiring a green card and eventually citizenship—all yet to be done. Unfulfilled dreams will come back to haunt you like ghosts. No one knows this threat more than I do. Midlife crisis is not a made-up thing.
I become aware of the passports clutched in my hands. My green passport, unlike my son’s blue one, reminds me that I’m not a tourist. I’m going home and this dormant truth stirs a wave of depression. I thought I had left that place for good, and moved on. Back to Mangalman, I think now, and laugh at the futility of my aspirations.
Why isn’t the line moving? I shift my attention to the computer. A man with ponytail is fumbling with the mouse, occasionally throwing around glances as if expecting help from someone he doesn’t know. Four or five more people, equally impatient, wait for their turn ahead of me. I turn around with a sigh, intending to express my frustration to any random person, and that’s when I find Shiva standing behind me. I haven’t seen him in years.
He grins widely at me, as if he’s been waiting for this moment, anticipating my surprise when I turn around.
“Meeting after years,” he says, stepping aside to make space for a handshake. “Aaram hunuhunchha?” Are you in good health?
I am briefly annoyed. Despite seeing me standing right in front of him, why didn’t he pat me on the shoulder and say hi?
His hand is warm and soft, but the handshake lacks grip. It feels like he has offered his hand merely for me to feel it. I can’t help but think he used to be stronger than this.
“After so many years,” I say. “Great to see you.”
A gentleman, who doesn’t display any official ID but appears to be an airport official, approaches the computer and explains the form in pretentious English, marked by a lazy but deliberate rolling of his tongue. Essentially, he lets us know that we can skip many boxes. The ponytailed man using the computer turns to a lady behind him and says something in what sounds like French, making the lady laugh nervously.
“Hope the line moves faster now,” Shiva says. “This is the line for us, right?”
Mostly foreign-looking men and women—Whites, Chinese, or South-East Asians—stand in the line. Even those who look like Nepalis speak in English, and they sound unsure of themselves, exuding impatience as they glance back at the computer, flip through their passports, and massage their necks.
“This is the right line for us, right?” Shiva asks again.
His appearance hasn’t changed much since I last saw him, except for the streaks of grey in his hair, which he still keeps long. His cheeks are sunken, as if he’s sucking on them, and he wears a backpack, just like he did when he was a part-time college teacher like me, many years ago.
“Are you a tourist?” I ask, and he looks unsettled. I quickly clarify, “Do you carry an American passport?” His appearance doesn’t reveal to me whether this is the right line for him. When he said “the right line for us”, he assumed certain things about me that I can’t be sure are correct.
He says yes, but so hesitantly that it seems he believes traveling to Nepal on an American passport is a crime. “But I’m still Nepali,” he adds quickly, and it makes his supposed crime seem even worse. His face darkens, and he moistens his lips with his tongue.
“Of course!” I say, forcing a laugh, though I’m not sure how it all works. “I’m filling out the form for my US-born son,” I try to clarify.
The French guy finally leaves the line vindictively, and the passengers surge toward the computer despite the cramped space.
“So, you haven’t gotten citizenship yet?” Shiva asks slowly. “It feels odd.”
I take a moment to think. Yes, it does, doesn’t it? For a moment, I feel like hugging him. Having spent so many years in the country, I deserve to receive U.S. citizenship and carry a U.S. passport. I gulp, feeling guilty, but the fact remains. It’s been many years since I left this country, and I don’t feel much of a connection anymore.
“To line up here,” he clarifies himself, “as a foreigner.”
A surge of dislike for Shiva wells up inside me. You’re pretentious, I think. You’ve always been pretentious. I study his face to justify my thoughts. To my disappointment, he looks serious.
I say I can understand him, and attempt a half-hearted joke that I still proudly carry my Nepali passport.
He’s traveling to Nepal with an American passport for the first time, he informs me. “I feel like a total stranger,” he adds. He glances at the immigration desk for foreigners and complains that they’re charging “us” as much money as they charge Americans. “Nepalis are Nepalis, aren’t they?” he asks.
In his question, I sense the claim that Nepali immigrants, especially the self-proclaimed immigrant leaders of the Nepali diaspora in America and elsewhere, often repeat, “Once a Nepali, always a Nepali.” No matter what foreign country’s citizenship they hold, by renouncing their Nepali citizenship, they want to remain Nepali and continue to reap the benefits of being “always a Nepali,” such as avoiding the foreign-national fare while taking domestic flights in Nepal, and, of course, not paying the visa fees when visiting Nepal once in a while.
“But some people, you know,” I say, “I hear they use their Nepali passports while traveling to Nepal.”
He bares his teeth, reminding me of how little he has changed. They have black linings, as if he still smokes. Maybe he does. I remember seeing him smoke occasionally in the college canteen, when no students were around. He grips the straps of his backpack and jerks his upper body. “I wouldn’t do that,” he says.
“Of course not!” I say, as if I know how honest he always has been. Or maybe I want to let him know that if I had an American passport, I wouldn’t use a Nepali passport to enter Nepal. That would be unethical, illegal. We are people with a high level of integrity.
The line moves faster now. I turn to the computer as the lady in front of me grabs the mouse.
I don’t hear Shiva saying anything as I fill out the form, but I can’t help wondering if he trusts me that I wouldn’t use a Nepali passport if I were in his position.
“Let’s meet up for coffee or something,” he says when I’m done.
“Let’s do that,” I reply, shaking his hand.
Until meeting Shiva, I hadn’t thought much about how it would feel to travel to Nepal as an American citizen with an American passport. I dream of holding an American passport one day, in the distant future, but I’m not in a position to envision traveling with it. Will it feel as odd as Shiva seems to feel? My son is an American citizen by virtue of his birth in the land and he wants my wife and me to be American citizens too. He doesn’t like it when we discuss our legal constraints in the country, and he resists when we remind him that he is Nepali, regardless of his legal status in the U.S. He was born of Nepali parents. “Then become American,” he says to us.
I pay the visa fees at a nearby bank counter, where there’s no line, and join my wife and son, who wait for me by a larger-than-life poster of Kumari, the living goddess of Nepal. A group of immigrant workers who flew with us from Doha surge toward the poster, with their phones held up for photographs as we head to the immigration line marked for Nepali nationals.
A middle-aged man in a tilted dhaka cap and a waistcoat with sagging pockets approaches me. “You there,” he instructs, pointing to the line marked for foreign nationals.
“We are Nepali, dai,” I say. Two Nepali passports, along with my son’s American passport and a freshly printed form, are secure in my hand.
“Who said you are not?” he snaps. “Go there, go!” he commands, his eyes fixed on my son’s passport, which he obviously recognizes by its color as American.
“It’s only my son’s,” I say. We, the couple, have Nepali passports. “We are Nepali.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he says in my face, the heavy tobacco smell mixed with his sour breath assaulting my senses. “You’re already gone. Go, go!”
How am I already gone? Does he know that in a few years I’ll get foreign citizenship and carry a foreign passport? How can he just assume it? I can return home at any moment and settle down here for the rest of my life. It’s not fair, I say to myself. I have suddenly turned into a patriot. What has Shiva done to me?
In the new line, I am behind Shiva, with my wife and son in tow.
“You said you carry a Nepali passport,” he exclaims. His face brightens, as if he’s happy that he’s caught me red-handed for a crime I said I hadn’t committed. Maybe he thinks I’m traveling with dual passports, using whichever favors me.
When I summarize my situation, he jokes that they want us to become foreign nationals the moment we leave the country, for whatever reason. “They don’t trust us,” he says.
I agree. “They don’t trust us. True.”
“And they’re jealous.” He grins.
“That too,” I say, and point out it’s his turn now.
He strides through the immigration counter and stands aside, as though waiting for us.
“Where are you lost?” my wife asks. “Our turn.”
Of course! I hastily hand my family’s passports to the officer at the counter, who instantly returns them, without looking at my face. “Over there,” he says, pointing to the line marked for Nepali nationals.
“But my son, sir—” I falter. “He’s American.”
He grabs my son’s passport back. “Hehe—” he laughs. “Your son is American. Do you think that makes you American too?”
“I didn’t say that, but—” I try to explain, and at that instant, he stretches his hand toward the Nepali passports I’m holding. He turns to another official at the nearby counter, and they spend a full minute exchanging information on a plot of land somewhere on the outskirts of Kathmandu.
“Photo,” he says to me, “photo,” shuffling the passports and the freshly printed form I’ve handed him.
“Photo?” I ask. “What photo, sir?”
“Don’t you know it needs a photo?” he says, handing me the form and the passports back.
Oh, the photo! I sigh. I needed to give him a photo of my son. And in fact, I’ve slipped it inside his passport cover. I point that out to him. “There, sir! It’s right there.”
“How’d I know?” he asks as he stretches his hand for the passports, examining our faces bitterly.
“True, sir,” I say. “My fault. You know, all these long flights.”
He doesn’t seem to care. Or he’s thinking that all of the passengers in the airport have taken long flights. Or even, don’t boast with me about your long flights, don’t boast with me about flying all the way from America. Your fucking America, where you live as second-class citizens.
“From next time,” he says as he places the passports in front of me, “paste the photo on the form.” I can’t tell why, but he sounds defeated.
Well, I say to myself, that was an obvious thing I should have done, and he didn’t need to remind me. I thank him nonetheless, but he doesn’t say, “Thik chha, thik chha!” as most officers say in Nepal when you thank them. That’s alright, that’s alright, as if dismissing you. Go, go away; you have no more business here.
Shiva is still waiting, intently observing everything we’ve gone through. “Well,” I speak to him, collecting myself, “this is weird.”
“I told you, didn’t I?” he says. “They are bitter.”
My wife nags me that I need to have a better sense of myself, especially when traveling with the family. But I don’t listen to her. You’re lost, she often says, you’re confused when you have to deal with anything that relates to the country you willingly left. I don’t get it.
“Let’s go!” I go past Shiva. Before stepping onto the escalator, I turn back to see Shiva standing at the same place, like a statue, gazing past the immigration desk, as if he were waiting for someone else. Wasn’t he waiting for me? I wonder for a second, but why would he be waiting for me? We were never very close. We taught at the same college for some time, had tea and samosas at the canteen together, along with other colleagues, shared some light jokes, and that was all. But still, I wait for him.
“Let’s go!” My son is impatient.
“Give me a second,” I say, and I walk back to the counter. “Shiva,” I call him, “are you waiting for somebody?”
He doesn’t seem to hear me.
I follow his gaze. He’s not just looking at the people in the line. Past the line there is a glass partition and beyond it is a sitting area for departing passengers, which is empty now. Beyond it, the plane that brought us safely from across the sea stands like a stoic, taking in all the pain after being deserted by the crowd.
“You forgot something?” I prod him. “Aren’t we going downstairs?”
He steps aside as if needing more space for himself to make sense of his surroundings.
“We’re heading to the baggage claim,” I say. “See you there.”
It would be awkward, though, to leave him in that situation. It’s becoming clear to me that the world is not treating him well. Or else, he is in a different world altogether.
“Seriously!” I go back to him. “Can you tell me what’s going on? Are you okay?”
He adjusts his backpack and shakes his body as if forcing himself to return to reality. “You know,” he says slowly, “I didn’t expect them to let me pass through immigration just like that.”
I lead him to the escalator. “What do you mean?” I ask.
“As if I were a real foreigner,” he grumbles. “That makes me feel this is not my country. I don’t feel like I’m coming home.”
I grab my carry-on bag, and we step onto the escalator. This man is complicated, I think. He went to America as a student like I did four years after him. Back in those days, when we taught at the same college, he was the smarter one. Talkative. Told jokes all the time. Students loved him. He said, “Ke chha muji Nepalma?” What the fuck is there in Nepal? “You have to go to America. Australia. Canada. You have to go to Europe. Explore the world. Live a life. Get out of this gutter.”
“Go! Go!” We used to tease him in the canteen, knowing that going to America was no child’s play. “Then pull us too,” we said in unison, we laughed. “Seriously,” he said and slurped his tea. Soon afterward, we saw him carrying decks of cards. “What are you playing with the cards?” we asked, and he replied, “G-R-E.” The cards had words on one side and their definitions on the other.
“G-R-E grey,” said one of our colleagues, turning the table into a tabla. Tak dhi na dhin tak! “Studying grey to go to grey’s country,” he said. Grey, meaning “khairey” in Nepali, a word used for Whites. Going to America, or Europe or Australia, meant going to khairey’s country. Soon, students were calling Shiva “GRE sir”, and he seemed to be proud of it. In a few months, he announced he’d taken the GRE test and scored enough points to apply to most universities that required the test.
You’re kidding us, aren’t you? The canteen was asking as a whole. How was that even possible? He showed us a photocopy of his test scores that he carried in his wallet. Wow, Shiva Sir! We said we knew he would do it. He was the smartest.
He flew to the U.S. the following year, making all of us feel worthless, incapable of doing anything beyond the walls of our yards, utterly incapable of dreaming.
“Kehi garna parchha, keta ho!” he preached to us, including his seniors, before flying out. You need to do something, boys!
Some of us felt challenged, including myself, who was among the weak-hearted, afraid of dreaming big.
Many of those who felt challenged are abroad now, mostly in America. But social media tells us that Shiva leads us all, as expected. Today I got to learn he has become an American citizen as well. What else is left for him to do in his life? I wonder from the position of the ones who ate samosas and chana at the canteen long ago and said America was a chimera.
“Why do you say so?” I ask him now. “Shall we go?”
He follows me reluctantly.
“I didn’t know you felt so attached to this country,” I say. “You inspired us to leave Nepal, do you remember?”
“Did I?” he asks. “How?”
It’s not the time or place for a long story. “Maybe you forgot,” I say. “Not important to you.”
“No, I haven’t,” he says.
We are now standing by the conveyor belt, waiting for our luggage. “You know?” Shiva says, “I never actually wanted to go abroad.”
“Really?”
“I wanted to show you guys,” he continues. “I remember how everyone made fun of me behind my back. Maybe not you, but—” He attempts a smile, the kind a mature man wears when pretending to not care.
I remember it well—he was called a “tupper-tuinya,” someone who showed off too much. He was never a true friend to any of us, and they had a nickname for him, “torpey,” which different people interpreted differently but basically meant a Nepali version of a “twerp.”
He has truly shown us. He’s now a tenured professor at a prestigious university in the Northeast, while I adjunct at a two-year college in rural Arkansas and do odd jobs illegally, and my wife and I hope that we’ll get our green cards soon so we can work freely and build a better life in America, which we now call home.
Shiva pulls a suitcase from the belt and places it beside him. In one corner of the suitcase is a sticker of the Nepali flag, part of a triangle ripped off.
In a dramatic move, he squats by the suitcase and runs his fingers over the disfigured flag. He looks disappointed that the flag won’t be restored to its original shape. He glances around as if searching for something that might help, and then, with a swift motion, he unzips the suitcase and pulls out a Nepali cap, which he promptly puts on.
My wife calls out, asking for help with the suitcase that has just arrived. As she struggles with the heavy load, I remain transfixed, observing Shiva. What the hell is going on with him? “Ke khalko manchhe hola!” my wife’s voice echoes in the background. What kind of man is this! I know she means me, butI can’t look away from Shiva, this new man revealing himself before me.
“Baba!” my son yells. “We need help!”
Shiva readjusts the cap and smoothens out the front, and then there appear two crossed khukris on it, just like that. Wow! It feels magical. It is magical. What will he do next? Will he pull out a daura-suruwal, the traditional Nepali attire? Does he have it in his suitcase?
His eyes follow a duffel bag as it sails toward him. When it arrives, he effortlessly lifts it off the belt, as if the bag itself wanted to be in his hands. It just springs off the conveyor, and is now happy in Shiva’s possession. The lightness of his movements shows his perfect harmony with the world in motion. Still maintaining that harmony, he opens the bag, and the next thing I know, he’s dressed in a daura. His next movement clads him in a suruwal, and he even fastens a broad belt around his waist, the kind that supporters of the monarchy wore back in the days when we were taught to recite, “Hamro raja, hamro desh; pran bhanda pyaro chha!” Our king and our country are dearer than our lives. He dons a black coat, and as soon as his feet slip into shiny black shoes, he steps a few feet away from the semi-circle of travelers around the conveyor belt. Then, as if it were a natural conclusion to this drama, his right hand promptly rises to salute, fingertips touching his right brow.
A young man beside Shiva, clutching a suitcase tightly wrapped in plastic and secured with a rope net, scrolls though his phone, and the next second, there begins to play the national anthem: “Sayaun thunga fulka hami eutai mala Nepali—” Woven from hundreds of flowers, we are one Nepali garland!
“Baba,” my son yells louder, “we need help!”
Am I supposed to reciprocate Shiva’s salute as the other passengers do?
“Hello, husband-ji!” My annoyed wife stands beside me, our luggage now on a cart. Don’t you care to help me a bit? I know she’s shouting, but her voice is drowned out by the applause that follows the national anthem. My hands reach for the cart.
“Is this how they welcome you at the airport in Nepal, Baba?” my son asks.
“What’s all this drama?” My wife’s disappointment deepens.
I want to talk to Shiva before we leave, but he has turned into a statue.
“I know this song,” my son says as the anthem repeats in the background. “But I’m American,” he adds, tugging his Lightning McQueen suitcase. They taught him the anthem at a Nepali school he attended last summer. He asked me then why he was forced to memorize the Nepali anthem when he was American.
I feel bad for Shiva. Would he come back to life if I reminded him that he carries an American passport as an American citizen?
“Baba,” my son presses on, “you didn’t answer me. You guys are also going to be American soon.” He knows how impatiently we wait for our green cards and, ultimately, U.S. citizenship. He even feels sorry for us that we aren’t American yet.
“We’re fine, Chhora,” I say. “We are Nepali.”
“What?” He sounds confused.
“So much hassle just to pass through the airport,” my wife complains. “Don’t know how we’ll manage these two weeks here.”
As I watch a driver dump our luggage into his taxi, I overhear a traveler murmur to another, “Setting up the statue in Nepali attire, with the national anthem playing in the background, is a good idea. A great way to welcome you to your country.”
Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash
