After two days of waiting it out, the U.S. Consulate reopened today and I took my complaint of racial discrimination to them. If they helped me, then my name is Lawrence Welk. And a one, and a two we've a new American to screw. Take it away boys!
(Check out this music video!)To briefly recapitulate, two nights ago I was removed from a bus at the Edirne border (Turkey) en route to Greece and returned to Istanbul because tea-drinking goat-licking, racist Turkish patrol refused to believe a black man could be an American citizen. This unlawful act apparently is all relative: The American consular simply furrowed his brow, sighed, and explained that the Turkeyhead border control could do as they deemed fit and that the U.S. had no right to intervene. Oh? Giving way to whims and prejudices now, are we? Clearly numbnuts is out of the loop on the whole Iraq and Kurd thing.
...all too pleased if Americans just stayed home and remained as uncultured as our dishonest Monkey-and-chief
By now you've probably wondered a dozen times over, Why doesn't the consulate just send a communique to the border officials that Citizen X is all right to pass? Because, logical ones, consulars don't want to work and don't like to help. Rather, they like to perpetrate the illusion of being there when you need them. It's total bunk. Like the concentration camp motto: Work will make you free. Consulates are as effective as a limp dick. State Dept does not want to help in any way, shape, or form and would be all too pleased if Americans just stayed home and remained as uncultured as our dishonest Monkey-and-chief.
Then the consular tried to massage the incident by persuading me my passport was damaged and, thus, understandably rejected---so I should buy a new one. Oh? So what if, I pursued, I'd fallen in the sea and the passport was soggy wet or I'd escaped from a train accident and the edges of the book were charred or I'd kept the thing in my pocket for so long a natural bend formed in the thin book? Would this legal, authentic, universally recognized document of identification be rendered null and void?!
Uh no, he slowly and lowly uttered with another shrug of the shoulders.
Buying another passport was not an option. Firstly, nothing is wrong with the current one. Secondly, a new passport doesn't address the problem of racism. If those Turkeyheads wouldn't accept real passport #1, which is validated with pages of stamps and stickers, including entry into Shitstanbul, then why would they suddenly reverse stupidity and accept real passport #2? The very fact of the latter's newness would, if anything, work against me. The other problem with buying a new passport is that it ain't cheap ($67). Moreover, the whole matter smacked of an Oriental scam common in these parts:
Come on in and have a good time -- but you have to pay much American money to leave.
No, I don't think the State Dept is in cahoots to extort tourists. I don't think much of the State Dept.
That the consulate was not bothered by a U.S. passport being so arbitrarily refused slightly un-nerved me. What is the point of having the document if its value is relative? I asked. And if Turkey can irrationally decide to not honor passports and visas -- as the consular said they have the right to do -- then what is to disqualify other countries from doing likewise? In which case a European tour would necessitate one carrying spare passports just in case one encountered plundering jackasses at, say, the Italian or German or Serbian or Greek borders. I felt like I was talking to the glass partition rather than through it.
I don't think much of the State Dept.
I shall keep the letter as comic relief. Perhaps frame it.
It shall be a constant reminder of how much my government cares about me.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment