Sinthujan Varatharajah: Essay
Was it a silly game, or just a bad memory?

We were four of us.

Three of them sisters born in the same city, on the same island, to the same family with the same surname - and yet, in this moment of history, with three different travel documents: a Sri Lankan passport, a German passport and a UN refugee travel document. We were standing within a busy crowd of people who were all, more or less neatly, lined up in front of of a long row of desks. The line’s pace was torturously slow. Few meters further into the queue, it almost organically split. It separated into two. We found ourselves at a juncture.

The scene is set in a nameless airport.

Before arriving here, we had shared a bed and a car to the same airport. The boarding cards we held shared the same flight number, airline name and destination. Even our seat numbers were neighbouring numbers. And yet, in this very moment, we were forced to part way. As if we were strangers.

We had arrived at a border.

We were four of us. The German passport holding sister reluctantly turned to the left and queued up in the EU lane. Physically at least. Emotionally she hadn’t moved a centimeter from where she had stood seconds before. Her eyes remained on the All Other Passport lane, where she had to leave her sisters with their Sri Lankan passport and UN Refugee travel document respectively behind. She was visibly in discomfort. She was worried.

You couldn’t count her worries, there were probably not enough fingers on one hand to do so, but you could get a sense of from the deepening wrinkles plunging their way through her forehead. You could even see them from across the other All Other Passport lane. The three sisters were only few meters apart. They could effortlessly still talk to each other across the cordon in their first tongue, Tamil. And yet, despite that they could see interact with each other, there were worlds between them: and a physical barrier underlining this distinction. The EU sister tried joking with her non-EU sisters across this barrier. It was her way of trying to ease others’ anxieties. Over the years she had learnt to master this particular skill in every possible life situation.

At first sight, the two lanes weren’t all too different to each other. Only when looking more carefully, you’d come to understand some of their differences. One very important one was that they moved at greatly different speeds. While the All Other Passport lane constantly looked like it was bottlenecked, the EU one was so well greased that people flushed through within few minutes.

The EU sister physically stood out in the EU lane. She wasn’t the only one to notice that difference. So were some of the white passengers whose eyes showed clear signs of irritation and annoyance. It wasn’t certain whether these feelings were caused by her talking across that line of separation in a language they were unfamiliar with and therefore changing directions of communications. It may have also been an irritation over what she was doing in the same fast lane as them in the first place. Maybe they were doubting whether she had the right to be in that lane in the same line; whether she misunderstood their meaning and was about to cause a delay in their journey. But the EU sister didn’t have time to notice. She was pulled into the queue, moving further towards the desk, much quicker than she had anticipated and wished for. Her wrinkles became more difficult to detect from where we stood. But her eyes were further fixated on her sisters.

Though I held the same passport as the EU sister, I transgressed and stayed behind with the All Other Passport sisters. I held my EU passport in one hand and the non-EU ones in the other. I carefully looked over the All Other Passport sisters’ travel documents. Their material, colour and weight were distinct and different to mine. I put my German passport underneath their Sri Lankan passport and UN Refugee travel document and began studying the latter: I let my eyes glimpse over their expiry dates and their many stickers as well as stamps. It was a procedure we had already repeated at home we shared, in the car on the way to this airport and one that we would continue on board of the plane again.

Everything seemed okay, but that wasn’t comfort enough for the All Other Passport sisters. They remained anxious. Almost as if they didn’t believe the validity of their own travel documents. It didn’t help that they hardly spoke any English. It probably made things worse. Their frail bodies were shivering. And yet they tried to hide their nervousness with a fake smile. A nervous dark-skinned passenger is no desired passenger, they know. I tried comforting them, but I wasn't fully sure myself if all will in the end be okay. At least for them.

While the EU sister was within minutes already successfully crossing this very border, the All Other Passport sisters and I kept on waiting across, on the other side, enviously looking at her at a distance. The EU sister looked back at us, indicating with her head that she'll see us on this side. . The white border guard, who minutes before had okayed her, looked rather annoyed at her; standing in the way, blocking others from passing while trying to communicate with us in the other lane. She was stalling the queue and irritating a number of white EU travelers behind her who clearly had no sense of why she was talking to someone in the other queue; why a family would be split up in two different passport lanes. ‚We'll see you on the other side, we whispered towards her‘. She didn’t hear us.

Unlike the EU lane, the All Other Passport lane was less white. It looked like one could imagine the UN to look like. It took a while until it was finally our turn to show the pale man our multicolored passports. The border guard didn't let us pass through as a group of three. He indicated with his fingers that only one person at a time could come through. The All Other Passport sisters were appalled. My translation aid wasn’t of help anymore. I quickly pressed their documents into their hands and pushed them ahead of me. ’If they'll ask something, I'll come and help. Don't be scared', I said. I stood behind them. ‚Don‘t worry, I’m here’ is what I said in this language that the border guards didn’t speak or understand. He didn’t take notice.

It took several minutes before both of them were cleared. Each of their documents were scanned, studied, their faces matched with their passport photos and then okayed. My eyes followed their footsteps until I was asked by the white man to move through. It took less than one minute for me to pass through — few seconds more than for white Europeans. The procedure was almost the same for all three of us, and yet the pace and quality of it differed vastly.

My aunts were already waiting for me behind the immigration counter. They stood there, seemingly lost, almost as if someone had abandoned them. I took their hand luggage and travel documents and stuck them back into my jacket pocket. We walked towards the EU sister who was awaiting us at the electronic door leading towards the boarding area. She looked as anxious as she did before. At the sight of each other, their facial expressions suddenly changed. They started to release shy smiles: 'We're through', they said, waving away the fears that had just moments before occupied them.

Was it a silly game, or just a bad memory?



Foto: Lilian Scarlet Löwenbrück Sinthujan Varatharajah is a political geographer and essayist based in Berlin. Their research focuses on statelessness, anti-colonial resistance and geographies of power. Varatharajah's exhibition “how to move an arche", on refugee movements through the divided city of Berlin, was part of the 11th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2020). Their first book will be published with Hanser Verlag in German in spring 2021.