Windbreaker, who is still crouched down before me, comments on my Japanese: “It’s pretty good. You been here long?”
“Too long,” I answer. “Fourteen years this spring.”
“Where are you from?”
“The States.”
“The U.S., huh? Where?”
“Oregon.”
“Olé . . .”
“Oregon. It’s on west coast of America, just north of California.”
Normally, I don’t miss “home”, but on a day like today . . .
“Ah, California. I know California.”
I have had to endure the very same conversation ten thousand times since coming to Japan. I know what the next question will be before Windbreaker does.
“You don’t, em, . . . look American,” he says, craning his neck to get a better view of the gaijin before him.
“You tell me: what is an American supposed to look like?”
“Well . . .”
“I’m half Lebanese,” I tell him. “Half Lebanese, half French.”
“But you are American?” he says, making a notation on his pad. Many of the cops are carrying small notepads and scribbling away. None of them are the same, though. Not like the standard notepads the FBI in American movies have. Makes you wonder if they have to cough up the yen to buy their own.
“Yes, I was born in America,” I said. “You know, the Great Melting Pot and all that.”
To the average Japanese, it probably sounds like I am trying to pull a fast one by “claiming” to be American. As if the cachet of being a Yank is so great that I would lie about my nationality. If anything, it is an embarrassment, especially with a reckless cowboy like Bush in the White House.
“Can we see your passport?”
“Yeah, hold on.” When I stand up to get it, the older cop in double-breasted suit stops me with a hard tap on my arm. He gives some orders and that annoying little man with the salt-and-pepper hair and dreadful pencil mustache comes over. His name, I’ll learn soon enough, is Nakata.
“Where is it?” Nakata asks brusquely.
“It’s over in the living room.”
“Where in the living room?”
“I’ll show you.”
“Don’t move!”
Nakata gives the other cops instructions to clear out of the way. The longhaired cop with the video camera follows along behind me. Another cop with a camera takes stills: one shot of me pointing towards the living room. Another photo of me pointing towards the bookshelves and cabinet, then one of me opening the cabinet and pulling out the folder I keep important documents in.
When I hand Nakata my passport, he asks, “Have you got any other passports?”
On the urging of a mother too proud of her country and family to ever renounce her own nationality, I have kept a Lebanese passport wrapped in a handkerchief in the side pocket of a pair of shorts along with about three-hundred-thousand yen in euros and U.S. dollars in a suitcase that is tucked away and gathering dust in the back of my closet. If my mother has taught me anything, is that it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
“No, of course not,” I answer.
“We’re going to confiscate this, okay?” Nakata says, agitation rising in his voice.
“Yeah, sure. Go ahead.” I reply and return to the sofa in the back room. Never has it occurred to me to actually use my Lebanese passport. Not until today, that is.
The first posting/chapter in this series can be found here.
Rokuban: Too Close to the Sun and other works are available in e-book form and paperback at Amazon.