In my years as
an aspiring novelist, I have written several tales (most of them unfinished) in
which a hapless protagonist would run into difficulties at the airport due to
extraordinary circumstances, in which the laws of logic that tenuously hold our
world together, as J. G. Ballard would surely have put it, suddenly ceased to
apply. In one, the main character, on his first visit to the People’s Republic
of China, was swallowed by a Kafkaesque security system and only set free (or
sent packing, that is) after he agreed, following weeks of resistance, to tell
the lie that the authorities wanted to hear.
Little did I
expect, then, that I myself would become involved in such a fantasy when I
returned to Taiwan from an overseas trip earlier this month. I write this from
a dank hovel in one of the remoter corners of the city, hiding in the shadows
for fear that the sunlight will again expose me as the fraud that I am not. As
long as the Other is still out there, I cannot be myself. It’s simply too
dangerous.
I got off the
plane bleary eyed and my joints hurting after spending nearly 24 hours at
various airports and crammed in economy class. Ours was the first landing of
the day, and so I could expect a quick resolution of the necessary hurdles at
the immigration desk. Upon reaching the dimly lit immigration area, I discovered
that I was alone there. Only two kiosks were open, and I sauntered towards the
one under “Resident Card Holders.”
It’s hard to
explain, but in recent years I have come to enjoy the immigration process; it’s
the lining up that annoys me. Where most passengers tighten up upon presenting
their passport to the agent, I can say that I am genuinely relaxed and good
humored. The predictability of routine events, I suppose, has something to do
with it.
I crossed the
red line and with a smile handed my passport and residency card. The agent, a
woman, swiped my passport and hit a few keys on her keyboard. The usual. She asked
me to look into the little orb-shaped camera on the desk, something that
travelers are asked to do on occasion. Again, there was nothing unusual in
this, so I complied. Sometimes they took your picture. Sometimes they didn’t.
The standard random little things that airports did to people.
The first signal
that something was wrong was when the woman’s brows knitted quizzically. She
rose her head to stare at me, pulled up her reading glasses, and brought my
passport, open to the picture page, to within a few inches of her face. She
looked up at me again.
“Is this really
you, Mr. C—?” she asked.
My only reaction
was to laugh. “Yes,” I said. “I can assure you that this is me.”
The woman seemed
unconvinced and again repeated the motions of staring into my passport and
comparing the picture there with the man who was standing before her on the
other side of the booth.
“I don’t think
it is.”
“I’ve admittedly
put on a few pounds,” I replied, still amused and convinced that the agent had
decided to have a bit of fun. “And my beard is longer than it was three weeks
ago. But that is definitely me. I am I.”
“Hmm…”
Motioning me to
stay put, she took hold of a telephone and without dialing delivered a short
barrage in Mandarin. A minute or so later, a male officer arrived and the pair
exchanged a few words while the man stared intently at the computer screen. She
handed him my passport, which he inspected before staring at me with narrowed
eyes. By this point, I was no longer amused. I suddenly became keenly aware
that I needed a shower.
“I’m sorry, but
you are not him,” the man said, holding the open passport up so its inside
faced in my direction. The picture of me stared defiantly back at me, and for a
second it seemed like I was in fact starting at a stranger. “This is not Mr. C—.”
“Of course this
is me,” I said, my voice rising. I turned around, fearing that a line of
impatient travelers had by then formed behind me, but was shocked to see that I
was still alone. “How can you say this is not me!”
The man emitted
a laugh, but his eyes contained no humor.
“Because,” he
said, his head shaking contemptuously, “the real Mr. C— entered Taiwan the day
before yesterday using a legal passport.”
The room started
to spin. Very slowly it spun, but enough to make me feel like I was about to
throw up. It was one of those moments when the fabric of reality seemed to have
unraveled, like the split second before a terrible car accident shatters the
normalcy of routine life. In that brief but eternal instant, one finds himself
seized by overwhelming doubt: Was I wrong
all along?
No, surely it
wasn’t so.
“What is this,”
I asked, laughing. “Operation Shylock?”
“Now don’t be
silly,” the female agent retorted, evidently not amused by my reference to
American literature. “That was a work of fiction.”
With that,
powerful hands grabbed me from behind and I was dragged away from the
immigration area and deposited into a small detention room.
Hours went by,
during which I was visited by a number of agents who asked me a series of
questions about my true identity and the reasons why I was trying to enter the
country illegally. Was I a terrorist? A secret agent? Did I traffic drugs?
Firearms? Round and round it went, with no apparent issue. I didn’t know what
to do. It was as if gravity had ceased to exist, and try as I might I could not
bring back the Newtonian forces that would make everything normal again.
Someone brought food, but I didn’t touch it.
I may or may not
have dozed off for a while. When I came back to my senses, a new agent was
standing above me. He was smiling broadly.
“Good news,” he
said as he helped me get off the little couch I’d been slouching on. “They’ve
cleared the whole thing up. An unfortunate mix-up, really. You are free to go,
Mr. C—.”
My two pieces of
luggage, which I had not been able to claim since my arrival, stood by the
door. I seemed I was indeed a free man. I walked right by him without saying a
word, grabbed my suitcases, and exited the room.
“Wait!” the man
came running after me. “Your passport.” I took it sullenly and walked away. I
dragged myself over to the taxi area, grabbed a cab, and gave the driver the
address of my apartment in Taipei, where I lived alone. The world was normal
again, everything was as it should be. The industries, houses and temples, all
grayish blue against the verdant mountains in the early morning, zipped by
outside the window, all in their proper place. Even my passport had been
stamped.
The cab dropped
me off just outside the four-story apartment complex I’d lived in for several
years. I was home, finally, looking forward to the grounding that home provides
us after extended travel overseas, not to mention the nightmare at the airport
that I had just awakened from.
Grabbing one
suitcase by the side handle, I unlocked the front door and began ascending the
four flights of stairs (mine was one of those 1950s-era buildings that didn’t
have elevators). I reached my floor, panting. I’d drop off the first suitcase
in and go back downstairs to bring up the second after a bit of rest and a
glass of water.
Then just as I
was about to insert the key into the lock, I heard it, which sent cold chill down
my spine. The unmistakable sound of the TV playing inside my apartment.
