‘Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.’
André Malraux
I’d been in Fiji just twenty minutes when the shit hit the fan. The trust I’d invested in my new passport vanished the moment I handed it to the immigration officer at Nadi Airport. He flipped through it from back to front and then from front to back, scanning each page with a laser light. I could read trouble in the lines of his brow before he spoke.
‘Come with me, please,’ he said in a clipped voice.
I was directed to an adjacent room, a featureless cube that had a desk, two chairs and a bench set against the wall. There I was handed over to another Fijian official – a woman. She, too, examined the passport carefully before placing it on the table and turning her eyes to me, taking in the sight with a searching scepticism.
‘Are you a Solomon Islander?’ she asked.
Time slowed and I found myself treading water in the deep end. She had my passport in front of her and yet was questioning my nationality. She didn’t believe I was who I said I was.
‘Yes, of course!’ I replied with a little snort of a laugh.
‘Where are you travelling to?’ she continued evenly.
‘I’m going to Canada.’
‘Then why have you come this way? Solomon Islanders never travel through Fiji to get to Canada. Everyone goes to Australia first, and flies from there. Or they get a connecting flight out of Port Moresby. So why are you the only person from the Solomon Islands to fly to Canada through Fiji?’
It was quite an opening salvo but before I could answer she threw more grenades my way: ‘Why don’t you have a return ticket from Canada to Honiara? And why is it that you are flying today when your passport was issued just twenty-four hours ago?’
When she laid them bare like that, her doubts made sense, and my confidence in my own wing-and-a-prayer approach seemed foolish indeed. I had made the classic mistake of only planning for the obstacle in front of me – getting out of the Solomon Islands – without considering the bigger one that awaited me on the other side.
Without a backstory at the ready, I had to invent one on the spot.
‘Normally, I wouldn’t come this way but I had no choice,’ I said as coolly as I could manage. ‘I’m taking a vacation to stay with friends in Canada over Christmas and this was the only ticket I could find, because of the holiday rush. All the regular routes were sold out.’
Her return stare, guarded with a touch of cynicism, even disdain, showed my job was not yet done.
‘The reason I had to wait until the last minute to book my flights is because I handed in my passport for renewal and it was held up by immigration in Honiara. They’re slack back at home, they let things sit on the desks and only work when they’re pushed. It drives me a little mad, between you and me.’ I almost gave her a wink but decided better. ‘So yeah, it’s a fresh passport, but it’s a renewed passport. I got it yesterday and booked my tickets immediately to make it to Canada for Christmas. To see my friends, who I miss dearly.’
Luckily I had the advantage of being able to speak in English, which allowed my mouth to keep up with the fairytale that was flying out of my brain. But the officer, whose English was as good as mine, cut me short with a new application of pressure. ‘Then why don’t you have a return ticket?’
‘I’m in the process of getting one. Because of all the last-minute rushing around, I haven’t had time to shop around for a decent return fare. If I don’t get that sorted out here, I’ll do it in Hong Kong.’
‘This is not a matter for my discretion. If you don’t have a return ticket from Canada, you won’t be allowed on the plane in Hong Kong. They’ll simply put you back on a flight to your last port of entry, which will be Fiji. You’ll end up back here with me.’ She waved her fingers in the air as if to say, ‘Welcome back.’
I glanced at the phone on her desk. At any moment, this formidable border-control officer might pick it up and call immigration in Honiara – triggering a chain reaction that would quickly pull me into the abyss. Just as importantly, it might drag Rendi and my other helpers down with me too.
This uniformed woman, who in the past fifteen minutes had become my most forbidding nemesis, leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms, sizing me up again like a cop might a criminal. Her body language was clear: ‘I know you’ve done something wrong. I know you’re a fraud and I’m going to find out what you’re hiding. I’m just taking my time.’
To regain a feeling of control over the situation, or at least over my own body language, I considered the arguments in my defence, with a growing sense of manufactured outrage. After all, I was no criminal – I was Michael Waradi from the Solomon Islands. I had a passport and a legitimate reason to be travelling on an unusual route, and what’s more I had every right to do so if I wanted.
‘Listen, if the problem is that I don’t have a return fare then I can just get one.’ My shrug indicated that doing so was as easy for me as sneezing. ‘If that will satisfy you. As long as I’m in Canada for Christmas.’
‘That may be, but we’re going to wrap it up for the day.’ She squared a pile of papers on her desk. ‘At this point I can’t allow you to pass. And since there are no flights back to Honiara tonight, you’ll be staying in Fiji overnight. We’ll take this up again in the morning. If you can’t figure it out by then, it’s a return flight for you. Back to Honiara.’
Back in the transit lounge, I texted Shahed with shaking hands, telling him I had eight hours to buy a return ticket from Canada. My brother had already gone to extraordinary lengths to raise funds for my expensive voyages. He had virtually no chance of paying for more, particularly since holiday season prices for flights to and from North America were now astronomical. Still, he said he’d do his best.
As I lay on the bench, trying to sleep, I reflected upon how grateful I was to have him as a sibling. My feelings were not always like this. There were moments, growing up, when I had frankly wished for a sister. Shahed and I were just too similar, and our areas of interest and contestation overlapped too closely. If there was a ball lying on the ground, I would grab it, and so would he. We competed for everything.
Now that we were in different worlds, with different battles to fight, we were a perfect team. We shared a sixth sense, an almost telepathic understanding of each other. When to act, how to act, what to tell our mother and father, and what to keep strictly between us, confidences that could be shared without the need for words.
Since my days of being locked up and on the run, Shahed had taken care of me. He had saved my life, more than once. My wish now was that I could let him know what he meant to me, and one day return the favour.
Throughout the night my phone hummed with incoming text messages as Shahed kept me informed of what was happening. As hard as he’d tried, he could not raise the needed funds from the people he knew. We did not have rich friends or relatives, and the holiday pricing meant the fares were going for thousands of dollars each.
With every passing hour the window to freedom narrowed further. By 3 am, still quite awake, I’d accepted I would be returning to the Solomons in a few hours’ time.
Around 4:30 am my phone hummed again. Shahed said he’d found a feature on a travel website that he thought might do the trick. For a small deposit, the Expedia website allowed customers to book a ticket and hold it open for twenty-four hours. If you didn’t end up completing the purchase, you’d lose your deposit and the ticket would go back on the market. Shahed’s plan was to conjure up a bit of illusory paperwork by paying the deposit in order to generate what looked like a confirmed return ticket.
It was a clever plan that bent the rules, with a tricky flair that I could appreciate. He really was my brother.
‘Once you pay, they send you a confirmation. I’ll email it to you to show as proof of a ticket. They have no way of checking whether you actually bought it or not,’ he explained in the Rohingya language of our childhood. ‘We have to try it. It could be our last chance.’
Around 7 am the rattle of a key in the door signalled the resumption of my interrogation. The same woman from the previous day was back. She handed me a glass of water.
‘So, did you manage to buy a return flight?’
Tapping into my inner Michael Waradi, I calmly showed her the booking confirmation from Expedia on my phone. ‘Yeah, I bought one. You can see the details here.’
‘Okay, but that’s not necessarily a ticket, is it?’ She cast her probing glance at my phone’s screen. ‘It’s just a confirmation. And it’s not even a return flight to Hong Kong or the Solomon Islands – it says here it’s from Toronto to Manila.’
During the small, desperate hours of the morning, that happened to be the only fare Shahed could find that came remotely close to looking like a return to the Asia-Pacific. It had been a case of Toronto to Manila or nothing.
This time, I was ready with a plausible reply. There was a work conference being hosted in Manila after my holiday, and I had to be there. ‘As for this, yeah, it’s a confirmation to hold the seat. Because it costs more than $3000, and it exceeds the limit on my credit card, I need to go to a bank and a travel agent to finish the payment. I can’t do it here, on this phone.’
A pause while she took in this latest complication. To my astonishment, her hand moved to stamp my passport. There was a catch, however. Normally, people from the Solomon Islands were given no limit to their length of stay in Fiji. Since my flight to Hong Kong was leaving later that afternoon, and maybe as a warning to me that this shrewd officer could not be won over so easily, she noted ‘valid for one day’ on my passport.
The caveat was fine with me. Staying in Fiji had never been part of the plan. Weak with relief, hunger and prolonged agitation, I flagged down a taxi outside the terminal and fell into the back seat for the short drive to a $15-a-night motel, the Tropic of Capricorn, that I had booked days ago. Even though I was flying later that day, having spent the night in the airport I could use some rest. Plus, I did not want to be within sight of my interrogator, in case she changed her mind.
The taxi driver, mistaking me for a local, bombarded me with questions in the Fijian version of Hindi. My knowledge of Urdu, a related language, got me as far as realising he was asking me…something. I pretended to sleep to cut the conversation short.
At the Tropic of Capricorn, I was treated to a bunk bed in a communal room, with the showers down the hall. I spent the hours before my return to the airport texting Shahed to make arrangements for what would hopefully be the final leg of my journey. There was no point trying to sleep, given the noise generated by my two roommates, who I guessed to be tourists from Scandinavia, having sex just out of sight.
Despite running into a slew of troubles in the previous forty-eight hours, my odds of success seemed better than ever. For one thing, thanks to the interrogation, my passport was no longer suspiciously fresh. It had a history, having been used to allow me to leave one country and enter another, and its validity was established by the dated stamp on its once-virgin pages. Armed with this document, I felt better positioned to make it to Hong Kong.
A few hours later, the low clouds drained the colour from the landscape as the taxi took me back to Nadi Airport. Like in a film noir or a bad omen, the rain fell the entire time I was in Fiji.
Stepping into the terminal was like returning to a movie set, with all the elements of yesterday’s high-tension drama still in place, and only the faces changed.
I passed through security without incident. As I approached the immigration counter, my nervous system was awash in adrenaline. My interrogator, at least, was out of sight. I handed my passport to a male officer, who took note of what was written inside and asked me to wait in a separate line. He disappeared into another room with my passport.
Something had gone wrong. The Fijian female staffer, who had all morning to investigate her doubts, must have contacted immigration in the Solomons. At this moment, the man with my passport would be reporting back to her. ‘Yes, it’s all over. We’ve got him.’
My heart was in my mouth and my knees began to shake. I steadied myself by leaning against the counter, with the practised slouch of a regular traveller.
After a few minutes the officer returned, stamped my passport and told me to have a nice trip. I smiled back at him, but on the inside I was howling, ‘Holy fuck! Why did you just put me through that?’
The flight to Hong Kong was with Fiji Airways. I made my way through the international terminal to the departure gate printed on my ticket. With my mind still hot with the radioactive dust of my latest close call, my eyes took in a few details: the passengers, and the view through the large windows, the curtains of rain sweeping across the runway.
While waiting for something to happen, for a movement in the line, or an announcement over the PA, I overheard someone in the lounge talking about the flight. The man said he really wished it would leave soon, since he really had to get to – and then mentioned a city that was not Hong Kong.
Alarmed, I stepped out of line and headed for the check-in desk.
‘Um, sir, you’ve been waiting in the wrong area,’ said the woman on the other side.
‘What?’
‘There was a change. Your plane is boarding at a gate on the other side of the airport. It might have even left by now.’
In my foggy state, I had missed a major development. My flight had not only been subject to a change of gate, but a change of aircraft.
I have never run so fast. Every footfall was a frantic exclamation mark, a dotted line into the unknown, either out of the South Pacific for good, or back to a life of detention. A single moment, a second before or after the plane’s departure, could spell the difference.
As I neared the correct departure gate I grew dizzy from lack of breath. The final push was worth it. I was among the last few people to get onboard. Any later and the door would have closed.
Twenty minutes later the plane punched through the blanket of rain clouds wrapped around Nadi, and climbed into a pale blue sky. The route to Hong Kong took us on a course past the Solomon Islands, Bougainville, Papua New Guinea and Manus Island. I was glad to say goodbye to each one of them in turn.
It had taken me six months on Christmas Island, three-and-a-half years on Manus, and six additional months as a fugitive, but I had managed to escape from Australia’s ‘Pacific Solution’. I had no intention of ever going back.