The immigration officer at JFK airport entombed in his glass cubical, apparently oblivious to my presence, was gazing suspiciously into his crystal ball which was flashing my identity, my past and my present, what was my purpose of visit to America, my profession, my political leanings — in short my whole life.
“How old are you?” he finally shifted his gaze from the computer screen and addressed me. I stated my age.
“You don’t look it. Which media company are you associated with?” The profession column in my passport indicated that I was a TV compere and writer.
“I am a freelance writer, journalist and a media person, self-employed if you like.”
“What is the purpose of your visit?” the inevitable question.
“To see my first grandson, Noffel, and to participate in his first birthday party, to hug his mom, my daughter Dr Anni, who resides in Orlando, Florida, and to visit my son Seljuk who is at Columbia University doing his masters in International Relations.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing else when my kids are around, but I have plans.”
“Do you plan to give any lectures in United States?”
“I am not qualified for such prestigious activities.”
“What kind of books do you write?”
While I was elaborating what kind, a PIA staffer spotted me and embraced me in the typical warm Pakistani style. The immigration office did not approve of this spontaneous interruption. “Are you famous?”
“Kind of.”
“Do you know Pawaize Musaroff?”
Now this was a tricky one, this Musaroff was some Russian Czar or a cocktail, so how could I know him or it. “I beg your pardon, but I don’t understand.”
“Pawaize Musaroff, your president, do you know him.”
“He knows me.”
“How come?”
“Well, only a few weeks back he invited me to the President House for an exclusive dinner.”
The officer looked doubtful, although my statement was based on pure facts. However, I conveniently forgot to mention that there were, beside myself, more than 300 ‘intellectuals’ in this mass dinner party. Why go into details?
“Why did he invite you to the President House specially?”
“Well, he wanted to discuss the Pakistan-India rapprochement, and war on terror, etc,” I said casually, this statement was also partially correct because the president, while addressing the 300 ‘intellectuals’, was also addressing me, although from the other end of the room.
“Where do you plan to stay in New York?”
“With my son, somewhere on Broadway”
“Which street?”
“I don’t really know, he will be outside the airport and he should know.”
“Are you sure he will be there?”
“Yes, he is my son, he will be there.”
The immigration officer stamped my passport and handed it over to me and said: “Enjoy your stay in the USA.” I was granted an indefinite stay on my I-94, about four years that is as long as my visa was valid.
“Is that all?”
“Yeh.”
How could that be all, the interview took hardly a couple of minutes, I was not grilled, so to speak. I was not bodily searched or humiliated or forced to take off my shoes, etc. I was rather disappointed, how could I relate the American atrocities on the airports if I was treated so properly. I had heard that some of our ministers and generals were bodily searched and were made to take off their shoes and boots. Well, maybe I looked like a gentleman.
After collecting my luggage, I was expecting and hoping that the custom officials will rip apart my suitcases. But, alas, there was another heartbreak, the opulent black lady just waved me off. Pushing my luggage trolley, I stepped out of the JFK terminal into ‘The city of the yellow devil’.
Maxim Gorky, whom a very literate friend of mine always pronounced Maximum Gorky, author of a classic novel like Mother, visited New York in I906 and stayed in America for some months. He wrote a small comparatively unknown book The City of the Yellow Devil about his impressions of a New York one hundred years ago. The book also contains some of his interviews and letters to his friends in Russia and Paris. Gorky was a staunch socialist and viewed this Capitalistic city with pessimistic and prejudiced eyes, however, his creative genius cannot be doubted. It is possible that the picture he has painted of New York was true to its colours a hundred years ago. Let us view this city of yellow devil through Gorky’s eyes.
“They have again started reviling me in the newspapers. I published an article about New York in one of the local magazines and entitled it ‘The city of the yellow devil’, they did not like it. I imagine I will be kicked out in the end. Still, I will get my money.”
“Over earth and ocean hangs a fog well mixed with smoke, and a fine slow rain is falling over the dark building of the city and the muddy waters of the roadstead. ‘Who is that?’ a polish immigrant girl asks softly, staring in wonder at the Statue of Liberty.”
“The American god,” someone replies.
“The massive figure of the bronze woman is covered from head to foot with verdigris. The cold face stares blindly through the fog, out to the waste of ocean, as though the bronze is waiting for the sun to bring sight to its sightless eyes.
“This is New York. Twenty storied houses, dark soundless skyscrapers, stand on the shore. Square, lacking in any desire to be beautiful, the bulky, ponderous buildings tower gloomily and drearily. A haughty pride in its height and its ugliness is felt in each house. There are no flowers on the windows and no children to be seen....
“Everything is running, hurrying, vibrating tensely. And everything — iron, stone, water and wood — seems to be protesting against a life without sunlight, without songs and happiness, in captivity to exhausting toil.
“The people’s faces wear an expression of immobile calm, not one of them apparently is aware of his misfortune in being the slave of life, nourishment for the city monster. They think they are free, it is the freedom of blind tools in the hands of the yellow devil — gold.
“English culture is an extremely interesting thing. What amazes me in it is that political freedom exists along side utter slavery. Corpses are the breath of life to them, and they worship authority like savages.
“An American will never refuse to accept a dollar even if he has been dead for two days.
“Asleep and muttering deliriously in its sleep is the lurid city of the yellow devil.”
Gorky was paid a very handsome amount of five thousand dollars for his writings on New York, a princely sum, with which a hundred years ago he could buy at least two mansions I am sure, talk of an American accepting a dollar even if he was dead for two days.
The immigration officer at JFK airport entombed in his glass cubical, apparently oblivious to my presence, was gazing suspiciously into his crystal ball which was flashing my identity, my past and my present, what was my purpose of visit to America, my profession, my political leanings — in short my whole life.
How could that be all, the interview took hardly a couple of minutes, I was not grilled, so to speak. I was not bodily searched or humiliated or forced to take off my shoes, etc. I was rather disappointed, how could I relate the American atrocities on the airports if I was treated so properly. I had heard that some of our ministers and generals were bodily searched and were made to take off their shoes and boots. Well, maybe I looked like a gentleman.
