Page 19

This past week the Iranian authorities granted me another month's stay with a visa extension on the 19th page of my very nearly full passport, along with the prospect of a third month after that, thus putting off the dreaded return to India.

Visiting the offices where these things are processed was an experience of its own as the place was literally flooded on both visits with refugees from Afghanistan and Iraq.
As we entered the offices, to the right were hundreds of men waiting patiently together, most looking exhausted and all holding any manner of paperwork, pink files (later I would receive my own - previously marked with an Iraqui name), passports or other forms of identity, and stories I can only imagine.

Inside, another hundred or so lined the corridor and steps in single file, quietly waiting to be processed further up the stairs, twenty at a time.

They come for work, for the hope of prosperity that their own economically depressed and war torn countries cannot offer them, bringing what's left of their families and what little they have to carry with them; received by Iran with shelter, food, and other aid, hoping for citizenship.
I've no idea how many are allowed to stay, or even what circumstances make them suitable candidates - but seeing all of them shuffling in in shoes that had walked hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles, to a nation they hoped would offer more for the lives they dream of touched my heart and brought on a sense of shame for my own daily comforts and ease of movement around the planet.

I wished I could talk with them, learn more about what brought them here, what drove them from their place of birth - aside from what is still a very real war waging in both Afghanistan and Iraq with both local citizens and American soldiers dying weekly - but language barriers and protocol refused me the opportunity. Knowing that it is my own country ravaging theirs, my government which has deemed the bombings and destruction necessary, my leaders who are making the decisions which drive these people from their villages, land, and homes brings a deeper sense of sadness than I can describe. Apologists are useless in this era of war, my voice is small and cannot regain for them the lives they knew. I cannot piece together the bodies of their children, their parents, or their hearts with my regret. I have a passport worth more, in some ways, than what these people will ever earn - but it is useless against the spreading tyranny of my own government.

I still see their faces, their eyes - so tired...and pray for them, that they will find the peace for which they are searching.
And I wonder about Iran - Bush's agenda - the next stop on his mad tour of oil harvesting, monopolizing, colonization, and death, and I pray the Salavat in Arabic as Hamid's mother taught me to do, with the gorgeous prayer beads she brought me from Mecca - certain my voice is all the louder for it.