Cekmi and His Silly Passport Dream

The day I would be getting my passport was the day I felt so significantly liberated, because I would be finally released from a prison (not that I hated my country so much, I loved it), and I thought a passport was not just a travel document issued by a national government that identified the passport holder as a national of the issuing country, and a passport was not just another piece of document produced by the country’s immigration office, because with a decent passport, I would be civilly granted the holy pass to cross the holy port, giving me the vast opportunities in life, to see the wonders of the world, to become part of the concoction of the human race, to make the experiences shown on Travel-and-Living channel look possible, and to make me a proud citizen of the world.

And all these privileges come to life after thirty years of my small-scale life.

Can you believe that? What a shame. My friends have been doing it long long long time ago, traveling and all that jazz. Thinking that I had never been out of the Peninsular Malaysia for more than thirty years made me feel so uncivilized and uncultured, for my sister had been to Cairo when she was 19, for Adle had been to the Great Wall of China after he graduated from the university, and Taufik had been to the UK after his SPM, and all of them had that passport, but me. Goddamit. Now that I was so old and passportless, this revelation suffocated me for I was afraid of the dread possibility that, what if I would never get the chance to see the world, or what if I would never get to see the globe, would I die passportlessly?

Fuckin’ no.



Gimme That Damn Passport

So I took a leave and woke up very early that very morning, getting to the Wangsa Maju Immigration Office as early as 7.30 a.m., only to be greeted by a short and plump lady at the parking lot, asking me peevishly “Got a passport-sized photo young man?” I told her off for I got my own photos already, readily-prepared weeks ago. But this lady wouldn’t give up easily I could practically kick her ass.

“Can I see you photos young man? The immigrations officers are very strict. They can reject your photos, you know? Can I see?” Okay you blood sucker, take a fuckin’ look at my photos, I am sure they are very clear and shiny you could see your own fat ass in them.

I got rid of the busybody lady, bye bye. As I was walking to the immigration office, I felt like I was a foreigner in my own country. The office is located at Wisma Rampai, the old building that scared me to death. It was so third-worldly I thought I was in an Indian movie surrounded by angry gangsters with parangs in their sweaty hands and all that. The awfully-designed building looked so frighteningly worn out and abandoned. The whole place looked so cruel, which was probably due to the everyday brutal immigration affairs. Photo shops were lining up, and there they were, the worm ladies, just like the lady whom I just met, who worked for these shops, roaming wildly like cheap third-class whores around the areas in the parking lots and all the spaces they could fit their fat asses in, looking for potential customers who were stupid enough not to prepare their passport-sized photos before coming here and were thereafter doomed into the big asshole ladies.

When I reached the office entrance, there were six well-mannered civilians lining up. I joined the queue. The office would be open in 30 minutes. I waited patiently, thinking of the documents needed for the passport application. A copy of I.C. Checked. A copy of Birth Certificate. Checked. Three passport-sized photos. Checked. Fuck those ugly photo ladies. An application form. Checked. Phew! I hope the process wouldn’t take a day. My friend assured me the other day that I would get the passport by afternoon. I was hoping that I would not go through another administrative bullshit, when a Chinese man joined the queue behind me.

“Get a passport?” he said, smiling at me.
“Yes, first time.”
“Wei, did you download that application form?”
“Yes. Why? Cannot ar?”
“Cannnnoooooot! You see, they want only one-page form. See. You got two pages. They will reject. I also download. I really not satisfied, why they provide the form online when the form is useless. I complained oredi. Shit.”
I was a bit distracted with this latest information, and asked, “So what to do now?”
“Get a new original form from that lady. There!”

He pointed to a lady, the same asshole lady I met a few minutes ago! I felt so mad, rushed toward the fucked-up lady, asking her about the application form. She said, “If you want me to write for you, two ringgit! You can get the form inside the office too. One ringgit.” Goddammit. I paid two ringgit to the kicking-ass lady, not letting her to write for me. I joined the queue again, grumbling to the Chinese man: “Why did she take two ringgit for a single piece of form and, for god’s sake, for a writing service!? Hello! As if I cannot write.” The Chinese man smiled.

The office opened exactly at 8.00 p.m. I got my lucky number.



Citizen of the World

1007.

It was my lucky James-Bond number again! I was not sure whether it was a pure coincidence or my consecutive lucky fate. This is exactly my staff number in the college and this was also exactly the once-upon-a-time winning number for a lucky draw contest and this was exactly exactly the wait-for-your-turn number I got in the EPF office recently. What a good omen. Indeed it was. I was really lucky that day. The immigration processes ran smoothly I couldn’t believe that I finally got my much-anticipated passport within only 30 minutes. Fantabulous. The officers were unbelievably friendlier than I had thought they would be, unlike those foolish ladies working like hell in the administrative hell in UIA. The lady officers in the immigration office were so surprisingly hospitable and charming. They even asked me the none-of-your-business questions: which part of Kelantan I was born; where I wanted to go after getting the passport; did you know I was born in Kelantan too? Fine, at least they didn’t hassle me with the thesis details, which if they did, they would be definitely damned like those makan-gaji-buta ladies in UIA.

Paid RM300 plus RM2 for a maroon passport cover, I held my 32-page passport with pride and prejudice. Why does a citizen of the world need an artificial passport when he is born with a natural passport to be part of the world? Oh, what in the name of heavan was I babbling about, when I desperately needed right now was a physical passport with 32 pages that last for five years, given that I would not go around the globe in 80 days and use up all the pages, which would drag me here again and apply for a new three-hundred-ringgit passport, since renewal is no longer allowed.

And there I was again in the immigration office at 8.30 a.m. on the 22nd of June 2007, holding a Malaysian passport smilingly. A passport. The passport. Cekmi’s passport. It was extremely thrilling to repeat the word. Passport. Hey, look at me world! Miss World! Mawi World! Star World! World Trade Centre! World Health Organisation! I just got myself a passport! Yo yo… Listen to this mantra:

“These are to request and require in the name of the Supreme Head of Malaysia all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary.”

Welcome to the world Cekmi.





Footnotes: 10 Passport Trivias

Do you know that…

1. A passport came to existence to support the concept of a nation-state system propagated after the First World War, thus ending the Islamic Ummah of Ottoman Empire where a passport was previously irrelevant for a Muslim who was by Islamic law a World Citizen (I learnt this from my history professor at the university, which information is not acknowledged in the Wikipedia, the internet free encyclopedia)

2. The term ‘passport’ does not originate from sea ports, but from medieval documents required to pass through the gate (‘porte’) of city walls.

3. Biometric passports were first introduced in 1998 in Malaysia, not in the USA nor in the UK (Malaysia truly Asia!).

4. Hong Kong and Macau have their own passports, separate from the People’s Republic of China.

5. Malaysia does not accept Israeli passports, except with written permission from the Malaysian government (interesting, huh?).

6. Many Muslim countries do accept Israeli passports including Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia, Indonesia, Turkey, and former Soviet republics with Muslim majority: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (Kelantan?).

7. Many countries allow travel without passport, including the citizens of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries (Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia)

8. The pope in the Vatican is always given the privilege of ‘Passport No.1’, which is reissued with the same number for every successive pontiff.

9. The British monarch does not have a passport because British passports are issued in the monarch’s name.

10. Wesley Snipes was detained at Johannesburg International Airport for allegedly trying to pass through the airport with a fake South African passport.