Scenes from the Diaspora

 It was a typical day at the airport: everyone was in a mad rush to get out. I dragged my suitcase to the curb and joined the queue of migrant workers, domestic helpers, mail-order brides and tourists at the gate. The security guard glanced at my passport and ticket and, satisfied that I was not a wanted terrorist, waved me into the squat building. The next queue was for the x-ray machine; as usual there was a delay because everyone had too much baggage.

It’s mind-boggling how much stuff Filipinos bring when they travel — a lot of it in huge cardboard boxes mummified in duct tape, with their names and addresses written in big block letters. Why do we need to have all our worldly possessions about us? Is it the primal fear that a typhoon will wash away everything we own? Is it anxiety over the transience of earthly things? Or do we secretly yearn for a nomadic existence, for the freedom to walk the earth without having to worry about our property? 

I suspect that some of those boxes contain people who couldn’t obtain the proper visas, but wouldn’t let that bureaucratic snafu impede their career plans. No mere stamp on a passport would stop them from being caregivers in Canada, English teachers in Duluth, construction workers in Qatar, advertising copywriters in Dubai, bar hostesses in Tokyo, maids in Singapore, transvestite beauty queens in Dublin, folk singers in Tonga, dishwashers in Queens. The important thing, the only thing, was to get the hell out. 

* * *

At the next security check the plainclothes guard was wearing a Rolex the size of a dinner plate. “Passport, please,” he said briskly, then he examined the little book to make sure it was the real government-issued document, and not something I bought under a bridge for P500 from a toothless man in a greasy undershirt who also sold birth certificates, driver’s licenses and university diplomas. He also looked at my airline ticket to convince himself that I was in the airport for a reason, and not just to swindle some poor schmuck flying in from Syria or Diego Garcia with his hard-earned dollars stashed in his socks. Yes, at this airport, the natives are assumed to have criminal intentions. Which should be reason enough to let them go, but first their determination to flee must be tested. 

I stood in line behind a girl with dyed blond hair and an inch of black roots. She was wearing an acid-washed denim jacket that matched her jeans, and teetering on three-inch platform sneakers. She must’ve been in her mid-20s, and she was hanging on the arm of a white man three times her age. Maybe he was 30, but had never heard of moisturizer — or deodorant. He smelled like a vat of blue cheese that had committed suicide. I’d never seen this couple in my life, but they were the stuff of documentaries. The fake blonde is from a seaside village regularly ravaged by typhoons. She’s one of 12 children of an illiterate fisherman and a woman who sells charcoal in the public market. Her sisters were knocked up in their teens and married off to louts who swill coconut liquor all day, beat them senseless at night, and knock them up on an annual basis. One day an Internet café opens in town. Before long she’s chatting online with a retired geezer who says he’s looking for an old-fashioned girl who will love and obey him. Two months later he flies in to meet her, and now they’re going to be married in Dusseldorf or Wyoming or the Australian outback. She gets to escape. God bless the Internet.

Blondie must’ve noticed that I was watching her because she turned around and smiled at me tentatively. Then she clutched the man’s arm tightly, as if to protect him from female predators. When she looked at him she didn’t see a portly man with a bad comb-over and a complexion like spoiled meat; she saw Her Chance. The expression on her face was less romantic bliss than relief tinged with excitement. I wished her well. True love is too much to expect even under less desperate circumstances, but I hoped they liked each other. And that he wouldn’t take her to some remote spot, push her off a cliff, and collect the insurance money.

“Your husband,” said the woman stamping passports at the immigration window to the fake blonde. Blondie giggled and tightened her hold on the white man. “My fiancé,” she announced proudly. The man smiled uncomprehendingly as the two women conversed in Tagalog. 

“You hit the jackpot, girl!” said the Stamper-Woman. “You’re going to be an American citizen!” 

Blondie tittered. “God is merciful,” she said. 

Stamper-Woman indicated the man by scrunching up her lips in his general direction. “He’s kind of old, isn’t he? You’re not going to poison him for the inheritance, are you?” 

“How can you tell?” Blondie cried, then they shared a conspiratorial laugh. The man looked from one woman to the other, puzzling out the joke. Blondie’s expression became serious. “He’s my stiffing stoon,” she told Stamper-Woman. “I want to be an American so I can bring my family to the US.” Stamper-Woman nodded sympathetically. “We have to take care of our families.” She stamped their passports and bade them good luck.  

“Vacation?” Stamper-Woman asked me. 

“Um... film festival,” I replied. 

“You’re an actress?” she said. “You look familiar. I’ve seen you somewhere.”

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