When my turn came, I stepped up to the window and deployed a persona that I’d refined over countless visa interviews and “chats” with border-control officers: open posture, steady eye contact, an easy smile with just the right amount of earnestness. I had to be prepared enough to show I had a legitimate reason to visit and enough funds, but not so prepared, so eager, that I came across as someone with something to hide. Desperate people, after all, are the ones who overstay their visas or, God forbid, immigrate. The trick was to exude the nonchalance of having nothing to prove while making absolutely sure that I proved everything.
The interview began more smoothly than I’d expected. One by one, the suspicions attached to my passport seemed to fall away. The consular officer nodded at the Penguin Random House letterhead, the printout of the National Book Foundation web page; appeared reassured that my flights and accommodation were fully covered; squinted and nodded at my European residence permit. Even my political incarceration took up less space in the conversation than I’d feared. The tension in her eyes seemed to ease as she saw the Times logo and profile.
I exhaled.
She typed a few words into her computer, then scrolled down her screen. Her expression tightened.
“Unfortunately, I can’t decide on this application now. We have to consult Washington first, then get back to you.”
My stomach dropped. She told me that I’d be placed in administrative processing and that the decision would be e-mailed once she heard back from Washington. I thanked her and went home. The next morning, I woke to a formal visa denial in my inbox. They wouldn’t put in writing what the system had flagged or the reason that Washington provided overnight, only that I was found ineligible for a visitor visa under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Years ago, in my prison cell in Egypt, I used to fantasize about writing a memoir. I would slip under a bright red duvet my mother had bribed the guards to let through, and imagine that everything happening to me would end up in a book. That a guard’s baton was battering not my ribs but those of the book’s protagonist. That a slap was landing on the protagonist’s face, not mine. I was the authorconcerned only with how I would render the torture my body was undergoing on the page.
For six years and three months, I wrote steadily, smuggling the pages out one visit at a time. I started reading contraband books with an eye for craft, trying to reverse engineer the lines that lingered and emulate their moves. The scribbles on a smuggled page became a potential essay, the essay a potential published article, the article a book. I would imagine it winning an award. Hours passed as I delivered fictional acceptance speeches under Mama’s duvet, revising and honing them, fleetingly unincarcerated. Prison was my horizon, but this fantasy, despite the unhealthy dissociation from my body it entailed, helped. And in prison, if something helps, you keep doing it.
After my release, I kept writing, publishing essays and political commentary about my experience and that of politically incarcerated friends, many of whom are still behind bars. Before long, well-connected relatives warned me that my name was circulating as a potential target for rearrest. I fled Egypt that same year and began working on my book while moving constantly between countries in search of the next visa, for a semblance of home. Then, in 2022, I received a full ride to pursue an M.F.A. in nonfiction writing at the University of Pittsburgh.
Source: www.newyorker.com
