06 Apr 2009 |
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Damola Awoyokun Thursday, 6th of January, Booth 11, British Deputy High Commission, Lagos. Blossoming with promises, the year was still a virgin, although with the look of things, it would lose it in 24 hours. Besides the array of visas on my passport, besides the fact that I just came back from the UK last December, I was refused a visa. Reason: the Entry Clearance Officer (ECO) credited me with the “intention” of not taking up “employment” as part of my working holiday in the UK based on a “balance of probabilities.” Simply, if allowed to the UK with a permit to as well work, I will not work. As I scribble these lines, I am still laughing. An able-bodied Nigerian in the UK will not work even when his visa says he could! When Nigerians go without a permit to work, they still cut corners and work; in my own case, they said I would not work. Second and last given reason of refusal: that I will not come back. If this were my intent, I would have applied for settlement or HSMP. However, the numeral after six is more than seven. Act 1 Scene 1A: Getting into booth 11 for the interview, I was surprised but not amused how young the ECO was. She must be brilliant to have risen quickly to that position. Though concealed, I was delighted at the hope of communing with someone brilliant because they are rare, endangered species nowadays. Two intelligent talkers seldom meet. Ah, blessed are those that do not hope for they shall not be disappointed. Asking for my bio-data was cordial. She typed while I talked and talked like a distinguished orator, a direct descendant of a Roman Cicero or a parrot depending on whose side you are. Then the demons in her head took over: ‘wait, wait!! I am typing. You are too fast’. Stunned at that level of anger which critiqued courtesy and did not commensurate with the supposed sin, I apologised. ‘Why did you spend so long in the UK the other time?’ ‘I later incorporated research and tried to accomplish a play for the BBC.’ ‘Did you get paid?’ Knowing where she was going, ‘It’s a competition.’ ‘Evidence of the play?’ I showed her. ‘Evidence it was a competition?’ ‘Sorry about that, not here at the moment please.’ Upping her annoyance unnecessarily again: ‘How am I supposed to believe you are not lying?’ ‘I didn’t know I am supposed to print it from the internet or tear a poster down here. You can find out if you…’ She repeated. ‘How am I supposed to believe you are not lying?’ Coupled with that word lying that has become a recurring nonsense, I returned fire with fire. I noticed she was happy. Ah-ha! Sensing a ploy, I promised never to be seen provoked. The unimpeachable thesis is that she was propelled by an unresolved state of emotional disequilibrium. Or what else could explain why without cause, she bled rage in uncontainable torrents as if we were both children of a long feuding polygamous home. Act 1 Scene 1B: Another angle. Her problem, our problem started early. Going into her booth, our eyes met and held. And they grew uncontrollably warm to themselves. I knew she might want to guard against emotional blackmail. She is too attractive for silence. My greeting and smile were curtly. She did not respond. I offered myself a seat anyway. Courteously, her cherubic lips parted, ‘no-no. Sit straight in front of me I want to see your face properly’. That I met the chair by the side when I was not even one of the first five to be interviewed that morning meant that request was not usual. Foolish me, I still tried to take everything objectively. I positioned myself weluwelu according to her desire. Of Anglo-Asian descent, Ms Joia Roy is sweetly pretty; busty for her slim frame; her voice with a petite Dhramendha – Dus Numberi accent, had an effect that lingered on in my ears long after she’d finished any sentence. Even the most boring of sentences coming from her lips had a splendid way of bursting into sparks. Her nose was arched like base of Farringdon Bridge, annoyed with Waterloo Bridge that it also did not cross the Thames. She donned an almost sleeveless tight blouse whose fence-high neckline was not as generous as its tightness in bringing out her endowments. Hers was a gracefully yellow smooth and sleek skin, like the chaste petals of a charming flower when the morning sun first touches it. Her slender fingers commanded the computer keys but with elegance; there was one that stood apart refusing to join the rest: the awaiting-husband finger. It hosted a pearled silvery ring with a blackish striped circumference. “O sweet Ms Roy,” Marlowe, the great English playwright came to my mind, “make me immortal with a kiss. O thou fairer than the evening air clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.” Other fingers stopped work too checking me out. Our eyes met again. And held. How could this goddess of classical beauty deconstruct herself into a conclave of anger and other obnoxious sentiments? How? Sure, she’s disturbed romantically precisely from when I entered the booth and could not help it, and her actions were taking too much directives from that inner disturbance that I was feeling for her. Suddenly, I remembered that I ought to be angry too. Act 2 Scene 1: ‘Produce the evidence?’ ‘I cleared all the money before I left’ ‘Why?’ She wanted to know why my application says my income varies as a writer. ‘There is no point being away where money is needed and it’s remaining elsewhere.’ I directed her to the statement of account from my UK bank. ‘Also because I needed to pay for my airfare.’ ‘But you wrote that your sponsor will fund your trip’. ‘Yes, but I did not say he will pay everything.’ There she went again: ‘you are lying’. That word infuriated me. Little did the swan know that the fury boiling in me reached 9.5 on the Richer scale, that it worth a Tsunami disaster. I just sat there unnaturally calm. New Year, new behaviour. And my application kept burning. How she arrived at her conclusions at times was embarrassingly ill informed and naïve. In the printed outcome of the interview she wrote, “He closed his account” when I actually said “cleared my money.” They the British originated the language not commonsense. It is not ordinary semantic gymnastic. It is from here she built the basis of my not coming back coupled with the fact, that I spent more than 2 weeks during the prior visit. Yet there is none of my visas, even the UK one, where I surpassed the given time. She did not give a representation of the exchange, she gave her own presentation. Whose narrative is going to be believed? The High Commission should upgrade all booths such that interviews could be taped down, both video and audio for record and investigation purposes. Less than 2 months old in the country, unprovoked, she always liked to be seen as a strong tigress, a no-nonsense warrior. My dear Joia, many have gone before you. ‘I am not convinced of what you are travelling for’. I started my defence presenting my reader’s pass to the prestigious British Library that houses my research, my membership cards of Croydon and Merton libraries, my UK bank cards, etc. Act 2 Scene 2: Her almond eyes were still fixed on typing on the computer screen when slowly her fingers moved and tucked themselves into the base of her boobs - my eyes dutifully followed - and yanked the lower rims of her bra. It is sounded: paa. Freudian slip? Her surplus package or stimulus vibrated from their Guantanamo bay. Her ambitious self-assertive nipples were in combat-ready positions like snipers, well cushioned. Oh! God na helele! Pretending my arm on the table wished to support my head, I covered the unborn smile spreading on my lips. She aborted it. ‘Excuse me’ she bawled, ‘take away your hand, let me see your face.’ She made for my passport as if she wanted to confirm my identity. Na lie. She’d confirmed it twice before. Act 2 Scene 3: Besides saying I’m lying, she outright called me a liar. How can I exchange my integrity for a visa? When dealing with women, bring your whip, Nietzsche says. Unfortunately, she had the whip, she had a hammer, I was her nail. Whereas the High Commissioner in framed homilies hung round the consular section said: We are committed to serving you with courtesy and respect. We ask you to treat our staff with the same courtesy and respect. We shall not serve a visitor who behaves aggressively or use offensive language. Mr High Commissioner and Chris Dix, the tigress of booth 11 is guilty of these offences while I treated her with courtesy and respect including admiration edging towards mutual bliss. Call she should to order in the least. I have attended an interview there before; the ECO was so gentlemanly, very warm, that the exchange oscillated between the formal and the informal. We even discussed the republic of literature into which anyone can enter without any entry clearance permit and my credentials as its worthy citizen were treated with esteem. Tigress, you may care to know, I invited the officer out for a play. Act 2 Scene 4: now feeling high on the moon in self-congratulations, she rose from her seat, and swivelled to get herself another round of drink. My assessment of her back view was total. Whereas she had one thing in abundance, she lacked the other with pitiful severity. Elaborate. It was as if her admirably busty north has been throwing down the bucket into her south, her well, and had drawn up all the lasts of waters that made the well to be called a well. Act 2 Scene 5: ‘How can you write a novel for so long, two years?’ To me she has completed her descent into unreason and dignity did not request of me to follow her there so I refused to answer while my application kept burning. The more she got emotional, the farther she walked away from reason. Act 3 Scene 1: Ask which Nigerian was interviewed alongside the most electrifying speaker in the UK, Prof Stuart Hall aired on London’s capital Radio discussing the relationship between power and instrumentalized knowledge. More, we were those who took Margaret Hoogde, the British Minister of family and children to task about her proposed compulsory contraceptive injections for schoolgirls because of their high rate of pregnancies. Ask who pointed to the errors and the misplacement of focus and analysis, thereby starting a public debate, at least in Croydon borough, on the Home Office sponsored Poppy report on human trafficking and prostitution in the UK. Some evidence of these and others I had presented which Tigress flung, yes flung into the connecting hole between us insolently. She was just damn rude. Difficulties, yes; problems, yes, but fall, never! Drafting her rejection judgement, I sat there with the grandeur of all the dignified poses of Queen Victoria or like a cracked statue in the basement of British Museum depending on whose side you are. Like Gunter Grass’ Oskar in his masterpiece The Tin Drum, I was determined to smile at all costs. My smile maybe sorrowful but it was still a smile; folding my arms and crossing my legs, I waggled one delicate black shoe, size 6, and savoured the superiority of the forsaken. I do not believe in God, now I miss him; particularly that one that dealt with King Pharaoh. She: the shattering image of Shiva, a challenge, my accusation, an encyclopaedia of insults, timeless yet expressing the madness of a shark as if on punishment posting. Act 3 Scene 2: The following day had rarely opened its eyes that passion’s hangover drove me through the Third Mainland Bridge down to Victoria Island to see my Tigress in Booth 11. She was again clad sleeveless like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s but without the pearls; an ocean blue dress had taken over the place where the black one used to be. She was lost in distant concentration trying to pick faults in her interviewee’s documents who was not seated ‘straight in her front’ but by the side. I was amused but not surprised. Whether she likes it or not, she and I are still going to sit together lip to lip eating a bowl of pounded yam with emu funfun. For a better interview, we shall drive in a topless car to the sunny beach then to my house, to my own booth 10 – since my toilet door now bears the sign ‘B-o-o-t-h 11’ – and pour water on her bridal feet. Then the contest shall be 1-1 ‘goalless’ draw. Sparks have flown, what remains is follow-up. One is elected into romantic passion by secret ballot against which there is no appeal. It is an offer she cannot refuse.
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