You have reached Jeffries and Associates, attorneys at law. We’re sorry we missed your call. Please…”
I need to punch something. The TV screen, the wall. The window, if it will break. I need something to break. My fist has to bleed. Some bone in it has to crack. I need to hear it. I need to hear my howls echoed back to me by the walls, these fucking walls. El a’ama! I need to stop howling, stop shaking.
“You have reached Jeffries and Associates, attorneys at law. We’re sorry we missed your call. Please…”
Please pick up! Pick up, Paul! My thoughts thrash around the room like a goldfish mad in its bowl. Dusty rays of sun through the glass, and a fly. And I… The screen on the phone turns dark. No answer. Paul!
I cannot unclench the phone. In my other hand: my passport, mucking, fucking passport. That I can throw. I hurl it at the TV, but it just falls, pages fluttering, to the ground. Pathetic, and the news has moved on now to other things, the weather, done with the travel ban, done with me.
“Fuck! Fuuuuck! Yil’aankon!”
Yil’aan who? Fuck who? There is no one here but me, and my passport. Pass-fucking-port. Which port? Which country will take me now?
“I was in!”
I scream at the muted screen, cough, retch, choke on saliva, snot, and tears. I had a fucking visa! You took it away from me! I groveled like a dog for that visa!
The room swirls. I grip the phone.
“You have reached…”
“Hello?”
“Paul! The news… The judge…” I croak, lungs raw, throat burning.
“I’m so sorry, Hadi,” and I know it’s over. “The ruling is clear: If the visa was already canceled—”
“No!”
It blasts out of my chest.
“Don’t tell me you’re sorry, Paul! Tell me what we’re going to do now!”
“Hadi, at this point, there’s really—”
“I could return to the embassy. You could call the State Department…”
“They can’t help, Hadi.”
“Well, who can, Paul?!”
Silence. As he breathes, the walls around me appear to crumple, shrink, as if the air were being sucked out of the room, as if air were escaping through the receiver, swelling the space between Boston and Amman.
His voice comes from far away:
“Maybe, in time…”
“What time, Paul? I have no time! My Jordanian visa expires in a couple of weeks. Then what do I do? Where do I go?”
My own voice races desperately out of the room, through the phone.
“I have a wife and son waiting for me! I need to go home!”