United Nations

By the time I could think it all through the whole thing was over. My assailant had pinned me to a wall, pushed his bulbous forehead hard into mine and had rifled through my wallet. He had threatened to take me prisoner, touch me indecently and made wild and false accusations against my person.

Before I knew it I was back in the car, my wallet was $6 (USD) lighter and the last drips of adrenaline were leaving my bloodstream revealing the previously masked emotional turmoil that had been stirred up by my encounter.

The first clear thought that came into my mind was the question “Why didn’t I get his name??!” – I was filled with my frustration at my inability to think clearly enough at the time to take down details such as this.

You’re probably thinking that it’s not the usual question posed by the victim of a physical assault but that’s because of various presuppositions that you make when you hear of someone being assaulted in this way.

The first assumption is that an attack like this must have been carried out by some faceless thug, probably donning a hoodie and tracksuit bottoms. The type that mothers with young children cross the street to avoid. The type that you see on your street corner, staring menacingly at every passer-by.

Although my attacker was unquestionably a ‘thug’, he was very smartly dressed and would, I should imagine, not be the type to sit on a park bench outside the Spar waiting for his big brother to emerge with a bottle of White Lightening and packet of 10 Marlboro Lights. If anything, he would probably have reported his brother to the police for furnishing a minor with alcohol.

The second assumption is that, were you to ask the aggressor for his personal details, he would at first sneer, then diagnose you as psychotic, before delivering a swift yet effective blow to the jaw rendering you powerless to both defend yourself and/or jot down his home telephone number.

The fact is that this ‘gentleman’ was obliged by his employer to give me his name. In fact, ironically, he would have been breaking the law by not supplying me with the requested information.

Physically abused and threatened by someone in a smart uniform who is obliged by law to give me their name – I can hear you from here – “It’s a Police Officer”, well you’re not too far off but despite many a teenage night spent listening to Rap music and wishing to be like Dr. Dre - I’m not black. In fact, I’m one of the whitest people you’re ever likely to see. If I were to stand in front of a bright light you would be able to see the full digestive cycle of my turkey sandwich from glorious beginning to messy, messy end. In direct sunlight I gleam and shimmer in a way that sees anyone in my line of sight squinting and straining like Oriental needle-threaders! It has been known for teachers to advise their children that the best way to view me is to make a pin-prick in a piece of card and then align with it another piece of card onto which my distorted silhouette is projected.

All of which should, due to the police’s policy of only infringing the human rights of ethnic minorities, lead you away from the thought that a police officer affronted me in such a vile way.

Surely you know now - It HAS to be an Immigration Control Officer!

You’re right and now that you’ve proved to me that your powers of deduction are adequate, I’ll fill in the blanks.

It was May this year and as we drove towards the border the mid-afternoon sun was beating down on the distinctly unair-conditioned vehicle that had housed the four of us for the last hour or so.

My companions on this trip were my best friend - Mo, her sister Kay and Kay’s fiancé Christopher. Kay had been kind enough to drive us on our trip to a theme park just the other side of the border. Everyone of my party was a native of the country we were currently in except for me, the only Brit.

The reason that I’m not mentioning either nation in this regaling of our experience will, hopefully, become apparent.

As we approached the border check-point I became nervous, as I always do when crossing a border but especially when crossing this one. We sat in a short queue of vehicles and finally our turn to head the line-up came.

As we handed all four passports over to the border guard, the redcurrant-backed emblem of an EU passport stuck out like a sore thumb! Thankfully I could speak the language.

“So, you’re British?!” he boomed from his tiny box that must have doubled as an oven in the stifling heat.

“Yes Sir” I replied cheerily. (I always think it best to approach these situations with a silly, inane grin as if Nitrous Oxide had been pumped directly to my Cerebellum. This, I wrongly assumed, would be pacifying to anyone, no matter their poor working conditions.)

“What’s this?! Why is it here?!” he shouted with angry intent, pointing at an old VISA, long since expired.

“My old VISA, it’s expired.” I said.

“You know what this tells me?!” I had no idea. “This tells me you’re illegal!”

“Uhh...what!??” I said as the emotions of concern, embarrassment and fear contorted my face in a way that, when combined with the grin, must have looked as though I had chosen an inopportune moment to practice my own form of ‘Extreme Gurning’.

“You gettin’ smart with me!” he screamed “You think this is funny!?” I presume in response to my ridiculous facial expression which had, encouraged by the increasing levels of terror I was experiencing, become a caricature of its former self. I now resembled an old lady with a formidable under-bite trying, unsuccessfully, to pass the sweaty remnants of yesterdays un-ripe sprout binge. If I were him, I would have shot me on the spot.

I had just managed to sputter “Um...well...No!?” when he barked instructions to pull the car up next to a large fearsome building off to the right for ‘further questioning’.

As we pulled up, I was busy apologising profusely that my nationality had caused such a palaver, when up came an armed officer who ordered us out of the car so that he could search it. Quite what he was searching for we didn’t know but we were in no position to argue. All of us were then told to enter the building.

The building was white and didn’t have many windows.

As we entered, the first thing that you noticed was the temperature. It was freezing! I don’t mean they had efficient air-con, I mean it was freezing!

We were in a busy waiting room. Most of the other people were Middle-Eastern in origin, a few Africans and us.

It didn’t take long until the situation, aided by the extreme cold, had us all shaking as we stood waiting, uncertain of our fate.

A tall, strong looking man emerged from a room off to one side of the waiting room. He beckoned for Kay to enter and they disappeared from sight.

5 minutes later Kay emerged from the room looking extremely shaken, she stood off to one side, obviously unsure and fearful about what she was allowed to do as well as what she had just been through.

The same man then beckoned Mo into the room. Mo emerged, again looking severely shaken.

As I looked across the waiting room at them, you could tell something was wrong. They deliberately weren’t making eye contact with me and if they did, it would be met with a disappointed shake of the head.

Whatever it was that was being said in that room was about me, yet I still had no idea what I could have done.

The officer emerged from the room once more and walked up to where I was stood.

“Peter?” he asked, I responded accordingly and he ushered me into the other room.

The room was a small office with two desks at right angles to each other sat in the middle of the room. Another officer that I hadn’t seen before was sat on the desk that was slightly off of centre. I was told to stand against the wall as the first officer sat on the desk directly opposite me.

The second man stood, then shut and locked the door we had just entered through, he had not done this for the two girls. I was really starting to fear the worst as I waited for my ordeal to begin.

“When was the last time you smoked marijuana?” he asked abruptly and with noticeable fury in his voice.

“Before you answer” he said “I just want to let you know that here we respect things like honesty and integrity. If you’re open with me then we’ll see what we can work out for you but if you try and come into my country and lie, then I’ll make this all very painful for you and your friends!”

The question had fazed me. I was bumbling around for words as though I’d suddenly been transported into the body of Hugh Grant whilst he limply describing the fact that he loves some girl or other. The fact was that I’d smoked a cannabis joint the day before with Mo at her house. Although I felt that it would somehow incriminate me if I admitted to this, I felt it best to be honest given the threats of seconds before.

I stammered a pitiful “Yesterday, well...last night.”

He slammed his fist on the desk and stood to look out of the window.

“Peter, Peter, Peter.” he tutted “What did I say about lying?”

As I wracked my brains to think of what on earth he could mean he asked “Have you ever been to jail, Peter?”

I shook my head frantically and said in a blind panic “N...No!!”

“Well, I think you’re just about to find out what it’s like..”

The muscle memory in my face obviously wasn’t too put out by this statement as my face, once again, twisted in confusion.

“Tell me what you’ve got in the car!” he said. “Nothing!!” I replied, shocked at the very thought.

Suddenly, the smaller less authoritative man sat on the other desk piped up and whined “You better start talking!”

This angered me as it harked back to the days of schoolyard bullies with an army of pathetic hangers-on shouting “Yeah! Whatever he said!” whilst cowering in safety behind their burly protector.

Even while spurting out the inevitable “But I haven’t done anything!” my mind was playing tricks on me. The fear and threat of jail suddenly left me doubting myself. Had any small residue of the previous nights excesses somehow found its way into the car? Had someone set me up?!

My train of thought was interrupted by the blow I had taken to the middle of my chest. The officer had thrust his hand into my chest causing me to lose my breath, I had been flung a full foot back into the concrete wall behind me. I was frozen to the spot as he rammed my skull back into the wall by flinging his forehead so hastily at mine that it very nearly constituted a head-butt. My nose was being bent to one side by his which was pushing hard against me.

“Don’t you lie to me Peter! Don’t you lie to me!! We’re gonna rip your friends car apart and take them all to jail unless you tell me what you’ve got in that car!”

That statement must have got under my skin because he was able to detect an unconscious stiffening of my body.

“Don’t you push back on me!! I’m going to throw you in jail so fast you won’t know what’s hit you!”

Trust me when I tell you that stiffening up was the last thing on my mind. In fact, I strongly feared that my only achievable state would be ‘categorically flaccid’ for the foreseeable future. If that self-righteous ‘been-everywhere, done-everything’ feather out of Gump had (as it is it’s tendency to do) floated neatly through the window and rested itself delicately on my brow, I have no doubt that I would have collapsed like a poorly constructed house of cards at a Gamblers Anonymous meeting during an earthquake.

My legs were like jelly.

I protested my innocence as the officer seemed to suddenly calm and took his seat behind the desk.

He demanded that I empty my pockets and I did so without delay. Well - when I say without delay, I mean apart from the nervous fumbling in my pockets and the few moments of crazed, out-of-control wallet juggling that started because of the pitiful shaking of my hands and finished with me clumsily falling forward and throwing my multi-national change all over, not only the desk, but also his lap.

He looked up at me sternly and with a look on his face as though I’d just taken the treasured picture of his family off of the desk, pointed a greasy finger onto the glass covering the face of his wife before asking “Oo’s that ugly cow!?” and urinating in his oversized coffee mug.

I scurried back quickly, meekly and while whispering “Sorry” repeatedly, so quietly that only I would have been able to hear but was unable to raise my volume through dread.

The officer seemed to regain his composure and, at the same time, realised that no hardened criminal would put on such a pathetic display of cowardice when faced with such threats of incarceration.

As he pawed through my possessions with his fearless sidekick flapping around behind him, I wondered how it was that I came to be in this situation. How (and indeed, why) had I left the sanctity of Britain and ended up pinned to wall by an immigration officers sloping ape-like brow?!

My brief moment of reflection was shattered by the voice of the officer as he asked me to perform one final task.

“Pull your trousers up!” he ordered.

I thought perhaps that I looked a little too shabby to be allowed into the country so I quickly obliged.

“More...” he barked, so I pulled them higher. And higher. And higher.

He continued to motion for me to lift until the crotch area of my trousers was so tight around my unmentionables that it, contrary to the version of this story that I tell my girlfriend, looked like somebody had shrink-wrapped two baked beans and chilli. It was not pleasant.

It was humiliating in the extreme for me, but it seemed to offend him in the most primeval of ways. For an unnecessarily long time he winced and squinted as if half way between a spasm of vomiting repulsion and a child-like snigger. There was a slight movement of his right hand that suggested that he was unconsciously on his way to a full-on, arm-stretching finger point and jaw drop but, luckily for me, he caught himself and forced it back down from whence it came.

The sight of my hitched-up linen trousers-come-hotpants and knocking knees seemed to dilute the situation even further, but still I feared it was off to the big-house for me.

He stood and asked me to go and stand at the main desk outside to await my fate.

When I got outside I realised that this was contrary to what the others had been told because they daren’t even glance at me, even for a second. They squirmed uncomfortably when I looked over at them and never once did their gaze ever rise enough to see my face.

Whatever it was they’d been told, they believed it and at that point considered me as somebody who used their vehicle to commit a crime. They were my friends and they remain my friends, I can’t blame them for how they reacted.

I was actively kept separate from them and, as I learned later, the mixed messages they’d been given had confused them into thinking they couldn’t even sit down.

As I stood at the main desk, shaking in the freezing tundra created by the over-worked air-conditioning units, I was ignored by everyone behind it. It must have been at least fifteen minutes before one of the officers walked over to me and took my passport from my hands without even a grunt of acknowledgement.

I stood there praying that the next words I heard weren’t goin’ to be “You have the right to remain silent...”

The officer walked off and entered the room in which my trial had taken place. I saw him talking to the man I had been interrogated by and they, in turn, looked up at me. The door was shut, leaving me out in the cold.

My final moment of horror came as another officer entered the room, looked at me and, for want of a better word, pinged the rubber gloves he was wearing against his wrist. A shudder of resignation went through me. This was it.

Not only had I been accused and, apparently, convicted of drug-trafficking.

Not only had my friends been turned against me.

Not only was I going to be physically assaulted.

I was now going to be entered via the ‘Exit Only’ door in a vain attempt to pull out something other than last nights curry.

A million thoughts went through my mind of how I would react.

I had reached the point where I’d decided that if I was going down like this, I was going down messy. I resigned myself to, as one last act of defiance, defecating on the invaders hand before he could conduct his narcotics lucky-dip and then, upon entry, laughing and making out that I was enjoying it. I, foolishly, thought this would lead to him regretting picking me to bully, actually it would more likely have led to heavy internal bruising.

Just as I’d started limbering up my bowels for my pre-emptive and, I like to think, symbolic air-strike against ‘The Man’ an officer came out, handed me my passport and said “Ok, well all you need to do is pay me your $6 VISA payment and you’re free to go.”

“Wh...free to go!?” I blurted.

After all that, the questions, the allegations, the donning of rubber gloves, that was it? Have a nice day, see you later?!!

Not wishing to encourage further invasion of our privacy, I thought it prudent to keep my mouth shut, pay the money and run.

I walked over to my friends and told them we were free. The ice thawed instantly but we still walked out of the building in silence. When we got into the car there was a brief sigh of relief but no ranting about our experiences. It wasn’t until later in the journey that we began to open up about what had gone on.

Each of us had our own story, this was mine.

It seems that due to my being from the United Kingdom, I was singled out for the worst punishment. I vowed never to visit the place again.

So, where was I? Was I trying to cross the border into Iran and held at the mercy of the Revolutionary Guard? Or maybe, attempting to enter a corrupt, South American dictatorship?

No, no, the country that put a British citizen through this disgraceful ordeal of human rights violations on the premise of nationality was – you guessed it – the good ol’ US of A.

Yep, our chums on the diplomatic stage, our closest allies, the country that the UK has stood shoulder to shoulder with on the front-line. It is US Border Guards that commit these acts.

As you stood in the waiting room of the building in which we were herded, you couldn’t fail to notice the photographs of George ‘Dubya’ Bush that hang on every wall, or the gigantic ‘Stars and Stripes’ flag that flies from every mall, every corner, every building site. Nor could these sights fail to remind you of images of a pre-invasion Baghdad, with giant images of their dictator looming over every street, a constant reminder of your obligation to be loyal and to obey. It has shades of Orwell’s ‘1984’ running right through it.

So as we question which country it is that has a megalomaniacal ‘above-the-law’ dictator at its helm, maybe we should look at a place where the president’s friends can be let off jail time because they are just that – the presidents friends;

When we look at history and wonder which nation invaded another purely to access its natural resources and gain a military foothold in the region;

And as we ask which state uses its authorities to intimidate and threaten law abiding people;

Maybe we’ll all look a little closer to home next time.