Inclement Landing

When we approached London it was still very dark, and of all the sights I've seen in my life, London's lights from a plane on a clear night was one of the most exciting and uplifting things thus far.

The flight wasn't too bad; decent food, decent wine, decent entertainment, little to no motion sickness, and I even managed to sleep for about an hour! When I got off the plane I felt quite happy and excited -- I walked briskly and smiled at other tired travelers. It was 6:10am UK time, 1:10am US time, but I was still somehow very alive, awake, alert and enthusiastic.

Air traffic was rather backed up, with five planes in a line behind mine getting ready to land, and there were hundreds and hundreds of passengers pouring out of various terminals, rushing toward immigration and baggage claim, eager to get out of there and to their ultimate destinations. I had already been more or less jogging through the place toward immigration when these other planes started dumping their passengers into the corridors, and I felt rather satisfied when I got in a very short line in the "Other" category of immigration.

When it was my turn, I marched happily up to the lady, smiled, handed her my stuff and wished her a cheery good morning (I believe this may have been my first mistake).
"Good morning," I said smiling.
"Where are you coming from?" She asked without looking at me.
"The United States," I said, still smiling.
"How long are you staying?" She said, still not looking at me.
"Five or six months."
"Well you know you can't stay longer than six months?" She sounded bored, as though the responses she was producing were automated and she wasn't really paying any attention at all.
"Oh yes, of course, I'm definitely leaving by May 1st, so it will be less than six months."
"Why are you here?"
"I'm just visiting. I want to travel."
"Do you have a return ticket home?"
"No, not yet, I'm not sure of the exact date I'm going back," I responded. This, I believe, was my second mistake, because it caused the robot woman to come to life and shoot her eyes up at me in a fierce, angry way.
"Why don't you have a return ticket home?" She asked in an all too humanly serious, mean voice.
"Well I'm just not sure of the exact date I'm going back."
"Why not?"
"My sister is having a baby and she's going to pick the date of her baby shower and I'll go back two days before that."
She then wrote on, signed and stamped some piece of paper and said, "Here. Take this and go wait over there. I or another officer will be with you shortly."

So I went to the area she pointed to and stood near all of the other people who made some sort of mistake or another on their immigration entry interviews. It was an open area with a row of padded bench type chairs, a water fountain and a handicap accessible bathroom, and while the area was open and easy to leave, it was guarded by a scrawny, polite English guy with a radio. I expected, as she'd said, that someone would be with me shortly, and this first time, it didn't take too long, fifteen minutes perhaps, but I soon discovered that "shortly" or "ten minutes" meant something completely different than what the words actually implied. The first person came a long within about fifteen minutes, as I said, and asked me the same questions that the first officer asked me, and I answered them largely the same, although tried to be more precise on when I was leaving.

Apparently I was not precise enough, because I was told to wait again and someone would be right with me. This time I waited about 20 minutes before someone new came along, pulled me into a more private area, asked me the same questions again, and then sent me back to the open area right off the side of immigration to wait for someone to "be with me shortly" again.

The third time two ladies came for me and took me down to baggage claim where they found my baggage with me. They took me over to the luggage search area and proceeded to search all of my baggage. They discovered my journal, student ID, Drivers License and Honors College degree, took them all (along with all of my other identification) and told me and my baggage (a suitcase, a guitar case, and a carry on case on wheels, all of which I had to drag myself because they weren't covered to carry anything) to follow them back upstairs, up several ramps, back through the immigration areas and into the immigration offices on the other side.

Along the way, the older, meaner lady was asked by another immigration worker to assist in the questioning of someone at one of the podiums similar to the one I was originally trapped at. The lady that I continued to follow was younger and considerably nicer than the old hag that gleefully went off to cause someone else some trouble.

Once we were in the main corridor of the immigration offices, I was told to leave my bags and follow the younger woman into another room. In this room, I was photographed, told to stare into a video camera for a long time, photographed again, and had my fingerprints taken. There was large window over the fingerprint station countertop overlooking an office next door. The office housed one very large desk with two men at it and another smaller desk with one man. There were various filing cabinets and shelves, papers, lockers, and a good deal of luggage. The men in this office were searching a guy that had been in the open area guarded by the scrawny English dude when the two ladies took me away. I smiled weakly at him when he looked at me, and he returned a similarly weak yet knowing and somewhat satisfied smile that made me want to laugh. At the far side of the room there was a door with a window in the top half and a key pad on the handle. Just to the right of this door was another very large window looking into a room containing some generally unhappy looking individuals, some of which were currently watching the guy between our two rooms being searched. It was clear to me that he was going to be put into that room, which I gathered to be a detaining room, and felt bad for him even though I didn't know what he'd done.

When they were done with me, they gave me another piece of paper which they said explained why I'd been fingerprinted (upon reviewing the paper I discovered that it didn't explain anything at all, really), had me collect my stuff again and lug it back out to the open immigration area where I was told someone would be with me shortly. This shortly was probably the shortest shortly all morning, lasting only about 10 minutes.

The lady that came to get me seemed very nice. She led me and my luggage back into the immigration offices, asked me some questions on the way, smiling and then led me through the door into the same room I looked into while I was being fingerprinted. Those same men I'd spied searching that knowing, amused guy earlier had me empty my pockets and proceeded to scan me with a metal detector. The nice lady then offered me some water, which I accepted, and then locked me up in the adjoining room with my Solo style cup of water and the generally unhappy looking people. She said she'd be back with me in ten minutes.

The room was very unappealing; there were eleven red padded benches with four dirty seats each, six of them slanted diagonally in the center on the room facing the caddy-corner TV and away from the window looking into the immigration office area, two facing the immigration windows on the opposite side (just to the right of the TV), one at a ninety degree angle to the right of those between the two bathrooms and two on the right of and running parallel with the immigration windows. On the wall opposite the bathrooms were two tables bolted to the floor, four chairs chained to the floor, and one book case full of religious books bolted to the wall. There were blankets, pillows and hoodies piled randomly on the various benches, all grungy and dirty looking things that I wouldn't want to touch. On the bench nearest the chained down plastic chair I was sitting on, there was a small carpet, and when I wondered how you would figure out which way was west, I discovered that there was a compass on the floor. Also scattered around the room were newspapers written in Japanese or Chinese and tiny leather bound copies of the New Testament on the tables and bookshelf.

I brought a book in with me, Pattern Recognition, figuring I could get a little bit read, that it wouldn't be too long, that they just needed to sort something out and realize that I wasn't going to blow anything up or live in their country for longer than six months, and sat there to read. There were seven other people in the room who seemed friendly enough, and there was one guy in particular that seemed very eager to talk.
There was the guy that had been being searched when I was being fingerprinted who was light skinned and appeared perhaps eastern European and a bit gruff; he sat/slept on one of the benches parallel with the window. There was an old Japanese or Chinese man sitting very quietly on the bench nearest the bathroom facing the window who didn't talk to anyone and laid down to sleep after not too long. There was someone sleeping under a comforter on the other bench facing the immigration window who later turned out to be a very young looking Jamaican guy, perhaps 18 or 19, that had been in there since 3:00am. There was a very large black woman from Barbados who had been in there since about 4am and paced around the room for fiending for a cigarette. There was another person under a blanket on one of the benches in the center of the room who turned out to be a young Chinese/Japanese man; I never heard him speak. There was a quiet and contemplative black man in his late 20's/early 30's who seemed extremely calm, cool and collected; he read a book most of the time, the title of which I was never able to make out because he had it folded back the whole time, but when I spoke to him he told me that he was from Nicaragua, his flight had been cancelled, and he was just waiting to go home... he had been in there since the previous morning. Then there was the talkative guy who turned out to be from Israel, had been locked up for seven hours and was fiending for a cigarette. He was locked up because one flight had been cancelled and he missed the other. He asked where I was from and then proceeded to tell me about people he knew that had gone to California and asked me questions about the US in general. I didn't feel particularly talkative at first because, after all, I wasn't going to be in there for too long. Some others joined in the conversation, though, and we all sat around and chatted for a bit. It was kind of fun.

When my immigration officer came back to get me, the people I'd been talking to asked me if I was going to get out. I told them I didn't know, although I was hoping they'd decided I wasn't dangerous after all, and wished the others good luck.

My officer took me into an interviewing closet and asked me a lot of questions; she wrote down every word of every question and every answer. It seemed to be very, very upsetting to them that I had entered their country for these two reasons: I didn't have a return ticket yet, and I had my HC degree with me. I did my very best to explain both, telling her about Carrie being pregnant, telling her about Japan, telling her about interviews, telling her about just wanting to travel a bit, etc., etc. At the end of the interview, she brought me back to the room, told me she'd be back in about ten minutes, and then locked me up again.

By now there were five new additions to the room -- four Japanese/Chinese people obviously traveling together and who were either tied to or from the same area as the old guy -- the woman in this group looked very upset -- and one lighter skinned guy in a suit who left within about 15 minutes of being there.

I waited another 45 minutes. Unfortunately I was becoming far too tired and preoccupied to read, going over the same paragraph several times without knowing what I'd read. I got into more involved conversations with the other convicts and learned a little more about them, where they were from and why they were in there. The young Jamaican and Japanese/Chinese guys woke up, and while I was speaking to the Jamaican guy, he was very smiley and upbeat, as Jamaicans tend to be, despite the situation. It seemed to be a common theme that flights were missed or cancelled, resulting in being locked up. My officer poked her head in the room 35 minutes later than stated, led me back toward he interrogation room, whipped out my journal and asked me some questions. She immediately led me back into the room, left me there, came back, asked me another question from across the room, said it wouldn't be long, and left.

I didn't see her again for about an hour and a half or so, and by this time I was convinced that there were going to kick me out of the country. Honestly, I was becoming extremely restless and annoyed about being locked up and becoming increasingly impressed by the Nicaraguan man's calm, patient, satisfied disposition. I was very tired, somewhat drained, and becoming increasingly nervous. I wanted to demand my rights, see a US ambassador or something, speak to the chief immigration officer myself, show them my bank balances, give them the phone numbers of people who know me and know I'm not staying in the country past May and explain to them, once again, why the hell I was there in the first place. I was trying to figure out what I was going to do when they told me I had to leave, who I was going to call, how I was going to appeal, how long I'd have to stay in there.
The one thing that kept me from feeling panicked, though, was the amazing inner peace that the guy from Nicaragua displayed. It was a weird kind of warmth and had a very calming effect on me that kept me smiling, even tempered and unruffled.

When my officer finally came back, she wouldn't look me in the eye, and I was sure I was going to be sent back. She told me to get my things and follow her, which I did, back to one of the interrogation rooms. She told me that not having a return ticket, not having any English money on me, having my degree on me and not having a job to go back to were all terrible strikes against me, and that I was very, very lucky that she was in a good mood that day because most immigration officers would have given me three days to get out of the country and it would have put a huge, terrible scar on my immigration history. Instead, she stamped something into my passport and wrote "6 MONTHS" next to it and explained that this would necessitate me getting a return ticket before traveling anywhere else, because if any UK immigration officer saw this in my passport, they'd give me just as hard of a time and probably send me back.

I finally made it out of the airport at 11:00am UK time, exhausted, annoyed, and much, much less happy than I had been upon arrival. It was a good experience, though, I think, because it taught me a few things about dealing with such situations and people, about the way different people react to things, and about remaining calm in personally detrimental situations. I remained completely cooperative, outwardly happy and calm, pleasant, genuine and honest the entire time, and in the end, I think that helped me a lot.

However, I also learned the following: #1, do NOT wish immigration officers a good morning, because in immigration, it is NEVER a good morning. #2, don't say "no" if they ask if you have a return ticket home, say something more along the lines of, "Yes, my father is going to book a ticket online that accommodates his schedule for the first or second week of April. He will be picking me up from the airport and is waiting on confirmation for a convention that is scheduled in one of the first two weeks of April." #3, NEVER, EVER, NO MATER WHAT carry your degree with you anywhere unless you have some sort of stamped, sealed letter of necessity from someone in your native country. Foreign countries hate your college degree being within their jurisdiction.
#4, plan ahead for bad things to happen and inform others of your excuse for not having a return ticket yet, #5, avoid words such as "but," "no," "not," and anything else potentially negative. #6, being polite, following orders, cooperating fully and smiling really does help. #7, English people don't like Americans as much as our government likes to pretend.

Where am I going again?

If you look out the window you can clearly see the beautifully sculpted model city with it's little office buildings, churches, schools and motorized vehicles. The sun is starting to go down, and the city lights are coming on; street lights, headlights, window lights... It's quaint and beautiful.

Thin pulled cotton hangs mysteriously in the air, no visible strings or attachments. It is much easier to make out features in the clouds from this angle, they look more like actual dogs with dragon heads than they do from the ground.

The landscape becomes smaller, and the thin pulled cotton becomes thicker and more dense. Eventually the model city disappears beyond the window and the ocean is largely obscured by an ever thickening landscape of deliciously comfortable looking mounds of full, round, puffy feather beds. There are miles and miles of them, and while you may find the urge to leap out onto these wonderful looking things, rolling and snuggling your life away, I have been told my various books and people that they will not support your weight. As these feather beds begin to flatten out, an absolutely alien landscape begins to form, scattered with slight hills, jutting points of white alien earth and sudden dramatic drops into numerous abysses; for some reason I expect the whiteness to shimmer. The horizon is a rainbow going from red to orange to yellow to green to blue to a very deep purple, like a widened and elongated rainbow that has lost its arch. This landscape is somehow recognizable, though, and you soon begin to realize that the shimmer is missing only because of the setting sun, and that the bears, seals and penguins are only missing because you are no longer near the coast.

As the sun drops below the horizon the rainbow thins until it is a strip of deep reds and yellows, and if you look ahead out the window, you can see the strip thin into nothing as you speed into the uncertain darkness.