Embassy

Part of acquiring a residence visa involves getting a letter from my home country's embassy. A letter that says, essentially, "We don't actually provide letters giving permission for residents to study, live or marry abroad. This is a personal decision, and we have no objection to it." Maybe the country simply wants to know that I am enough of a US citizen to be allowed into the embassy.

I've heard stories about going to your embassy, how it's a piece of home turf away from home. I got to experience it, though it wasn't exactly as I'd expected.

It was a little sad standing in line outside and realizing that most of the people in line were there because they had the hope of visiting my country. They clutched FedEx packages or other folders, presumably holding all important letters of invitation or other documentation. When they called for citizens to step forward, it wasn't that many. There was a brief moment of awe when I got past all of the security and saw my flag flying in the courtyard. Nice.

But when I entered the room for Visa and Citizen Services, the people who worked there were locals, and the posters and signs were mostly in Arabic. Well, naturally. Since visa services would be for locals. So I didn't have quite the thrilling sense that I was temporarily on home soil. I felt like I was here, only things were maybe slightly more efficient. It still took two and a half hours start to finish to get the form letter that tells me my country doesn't object to me studying, living, or marrying abroad. (Whoopee! I can get married here now!) It was a couple of hours of watching local families be called forward to the visa services windows, questioned, and sent back to their seats . . . to wait, to hope. I felt a little guilty that it was so easy for me with my passport. I think my apartment mate and I were the first ones finished. It hadn't dawned on me how hard it is just to travel to my country until a South African friend pointed it out. It's especially hard for people who live here, with the way the world is today. I told my language teacher that she should visit me sometime. She replied, "It's hard for me to visit A------." Riiight.

The experience did make me thankful again for my citizenship--hopefully not so much proud (though I am) as grateful. I mean, I really had little influence over where I was born. It's one of those unchangeables. What would it be like to only dream of visiting my country, instead of calling it home? Sometimes I'm sad to look around at the dirt and hard things and think that what I see is all the people here know. That they probably like it only because it is all they know. Then I'm happy to think that they like it, and I get to enter into it, too.

I wonder if that's how Father thinks when he looks at us--sad that we are so content walking around in our trash . . . yet happy because he got to enter it, too. He'd be happy because he entered it and rescued us from it, so that we could be forever citizens of the best country yet. A country whose embassy we are all the time . . . even though we have never yet been there.