welcome to Canada?
I was born in Canada, been living there for 5 years now. i use the canadian passport when i travel.but i just got back from beirut. i had to pay.
the customs officer makes me carry my two 30 kg bags up on the table and opens every single item one by one. my underwear is on her table now, my books are being scanned, and my heart slowly fills with rage. humiliation.
as i look away for something better to look at than her fucked up bitter face (i think that she needs to get laid), i realize that there's another lebanese girl and an arabic man on the other 2 counters. that's it.in the 1 and a half hour i was stuck there, 80% of the people there were arabs (i love coincidences!).
she finds nothing to screw me up with in my bags, so she decides to take my watch. a gift from my dad. my watch! i've had it for 5 years! (oh but how can i prove it? she asks)
"should i come naked into the country? dont i have a right to wear my watch??",
"i have the right to confiscate it until i prove that it's really five years old. if you brought it in at any time after you entered canada for the first time you need to pay its taxes".
" but you can see that it's a old watch, and i told you i got it as a gift for my graduation before i moved here",
"I'll leave it for the experts to figure that out". fucking bitch "you'll get notice about the decision in 3 weeks".
"and what if i dont want to give it to you?"
"i'm gonna have to arrest you". (grin). whore. my mistake. I should have let her arrest me. next time.
she would go and come back and leave me waiting for 15 minute intervals, just to suck any life out of me.the way she talked to me and looked at me, for the first time i felt the discrimination that people talk about and that i havent yet encountered. she used a 5 yr old watch to rape me.i was standing there and cursing this country. for a few moments she created so much hate in me, that i wanted to break everything nice i encountered just to get back at her. i wanted to kill her, and destroy everything beautiful in her "free fucking country".
ohhh. still wondering how you help create hateful terrorists? keep it up.
posted by Laila K at
07:36
31 Comments:
are you fucking kidding me??! I'm enraged!
Did they really take your watch?
delete that ps laila at the end of your post. no need to justify injustice. any professional person knows that this is not the right way to "do your job".
that's being disciminatory, unethical and racist. i would have never handed her the watch, had i been in your situation.
i would have also writen a good article about this experience and submitted it to the local press. this subject would interest a lot of conscious people out there.
ghassan, they did. she said "there are too many little diamonds on it", which means a lot of taxes can be paid, and she can be petted on the ass by her boss.
Jimmy, you're right, i removed it. the first time she asked to see it i had absolutely no idea that it was a possibility she would take it. and even if i decided to get arrested, she would have taken it anyway. the problem is that practically what she was doing was perfectly legal. she was in power. how else could she humiliate?
Damn! That's horrible! In my 10 years going in and out of Canada, I never experienced anything like this! And here I was thinking that "Canada is not the same as the US". Guess I was wrong.
I guess that as Arabs, no matter what passports we travel with, we will always have to face this issue.
My sister was once stopped at customs in Poland for half an hour. They asked her a million questions: why are you coming to Poland,who are you coming to see, how long are you staying and where, etc.
My brother also experienced a similar situation in Frankfurt airport. We were checking in for a flight to Montreal and they made us wait for 20 minutes while they ran some checks on my bro. The reason? The airport employee did not hide the truth "it's because of the name, we need to check".
And I had my own passport scrutinized so many times at Amsterdam airport before boarding a plane.
And we all have Canadian passports!!!
Think about it this way, guys....we are special!
We are "randomly" get picked up for security check everytime we appear in an airport.....
For me, with the cedar tree shining on my passport, I feel something is wrong if I don't get checked...last time, at charles de Gaulle, I wasn't picked up, and I felt I had to talk to them....it's a tradition!
What happened to you, Laila, is really weird though....
did you get the watch back?
All I have to say Layyoul is this. I already told you in person but I'll reiterate. What the ho did, is meant to humiliate you and piss you off if you want to allow yourself to be humiliated and pissed off. It's simple, whatever she is doing to you, whether warranted or not, is legal, and as such you can't stop her. But, there is a fact here, your watch is older than 4 years old. That's a FACT. She can't change facts, and you should know that, and because of that you shouldn't stress out. What is the bitch gonna say? you can contact the manufacturer, send them your serial number of the watch, and get the date of production. If you just go with the flow and let things take their course, all you lose in the end is some convenience. So, while I hate the bitch for what she did, I hate even more seeing you all pissed off because of a bitch, so next time please just let the bitch do what she wants, and go with the flow. You can always t7asle 7a''ik after you're on Canadian soil.
fucking bitch!!! she took your watch!! oh my god
i would never ever have given it away. i really still believe moments like that in our life are made to define who we are. i'm sorry you had to go through this sweetie.
i had a humiliating experience myself coming back in this country once. i was thrown in the 'room' in JFK with all the other arabs for a good 3 or 4 hours. i felt like crying and screeming by the end of it.
i really think you should write about this like jimmy said.
DS, tell me about it..
hashem, funny, no they still have it!
LC, i get ur point
mirvat, you can't "never ever" give it to her, even if i decided to get arrested she would take it, she knew she had the law on her side. when i handed it over to her she said she wants to have a look at it and that she'll be right back. she came back without it, i was stuck.
That was a horrible experience.
I liked the line at the end of the post about keeping enraged terrorists...perhaps we should look at how we treat certain people in this, as you say, 'free' country.
you mean she actually did not return the watch?? ouf... I bet she was old with blackheads covering her face, w m3anseh kamein :)
eric, it was enraging..
eve, it will be returned in 2 wks after the "expert" tests it! and no, she's a bitter fat blond bimbo.
i wish u could tell her to stuff it but that watch is too precious for that bitch
they once threatened to deport me back to leb coz i didn't have my return ticket at hand (!) and he emphasised that he held more power than ANY judge in this country while i had to suck it up and take it with a smile
When dealing with customs officers, it's best to diminish any possible tension. It's gotta be like: Yes, sir, yes, Mam, you want want to see my underwear, here it is.
Any tension or questioning of authority will just make things worse, and worse.
Canada's tyranny is taxes. They make you pay GST on any purchase above 20$ you bring into the country. Can you beleive the paperwork involved to collect 7% on 20$? Ridiculous.
Ever notice how it's called "Canada Customs and Revenue Agency"? The same people who collect income tax let you in the country.
I really hope you don't have to pay taxes on that watch!!! If you do, just see it like a parking ticket, the faster you pay it, the faster you forget it.
rouba, yeah i agree :)
zoombots, i think you missed the point. it's not about her taking the watch..it's just a watch in the end and i understand the laws involved. it's about the attitude that was used, it was racist and discriminatory.she completely ignored everything i said. and to say yes mam to that bitch? not in my blood.
she is very weak...
let us know when you get your watch back..
Sorry for your bad experience. I do have a wholesale business on the side. Once while I was ending a bulk purchase of shirts in a store in Cleveland, a policeman who works there as a security guard starting watching me. He kept going back and forth until he approached me and said “I saw you buying those shirts, so I thought about doing my job". He asked for my SSN, name, address, phone number, origin, and my driver license. He asked why I was buying such quantity. What am I going to do with them? I just couldn't believe that people could be that paranoid. Maybe you can make tanks from Tommy shirts. I wonder what can be done with the Polo ones.
nour, exacly, she has issues..i will let you know so we can all celebrate :)
vox populi, i will get it back for sure,they're just examining it now, and yes real but very little ones :)
thanks samer, i was just venting a bit..and they're afraid of tanks? man, they're the experts!
Thank you for the greeting!!
What a bitch!
Venting out her frustration on you!
I agree with Jimmy, something must be done and tellnig the media about it is a good way to do that.
so that's why shipping something off amazon to canada is more expensive than sending it half way across the globe.
as for racism allegations, that only works if you're a sista or from "wled el 3amm".
delirious, yes, i'm already looking into it (and welcome)
jamal..inno, ye3ni, you know what i mean :)
laila I can feel your pain sister and I’m not even Arab. I’m a tanned skinned Puerto Rican with an Arab last name who is always being mistaken for Arab. A few months ago NYC started doing random bag checks in the subway thanks to a terrorist threat. I lost count of the number of times I was stopped and had my bag looked through while my fellow white looking passengers were waved through the turnstiles. There were times when I was stopped several times in one day. It got to the point where I was walking into the subway and handing my bookbag to the nearest officer just to save time. I will say one thing they always treated me with respect even though I knew and they knew that I was being stopped because of my appearance. I wish I could say the same for the customs official in Michigan ohhhh man I wanted to beat that woman down. She even had the nerve to inspect my tattoos...I've never been one to keep my mouth shut so I turned to her and said, "Is this turning you on? Do you want to kiss me now, honey I'm not into women can you please stop feeling me up?" She ended her harrassment quickly after that.
Laila, I'm so sorry you had to experience such a terrible moment... it really is extremely angering and enraging. I know the law is technically on her side, but you have rights too... is there a way to get her name, get her supervisors name, and take the grievance to a higher level? Although probably a short article in the local press is a good idea... Even more fun would be to go back to the airport Michael Moore style with a (small) documentary camera and demand to speak with her and her supervisor... but perhaps they would confiscate the camera? So you would need another crew filming the confiscation of the first camera. Then we could screen the whole thing at the Tribeca film festival. Yes? :)
Mia, good for you girl!
FZ, that's hilarious, great imagination!
actually she only has a number on her label, i guess they know that people would love to go after them and stalk them so they dont provide names..i'll let you guys know if i hear back from the few local newspapers that i contacted
Samer, the reason that the security guard needed all that information for buying those shirts is the same reason that they ask for all that shit when you buy a lot of sudafed--you never know what some crazy asshole is going to do with bulk quantities like that! Did you know that with that much cotton you can destabilize the global textile industry and threaten our american way of life?!? huwwa majnun.
Laila, I agree with Jimmy. Get whomever you have to on the phone and try to get an editorial submitted in your local newspaper. Express your perceptions and the way the experience made you feel. Let everyone know about the bias that you experienced, otherwise nobody is going to know or care. It's one thing to make good faith, honest efforts to increase security, but when positions of power are abused and used to intimidate or humiliate someone because of their ethnicity, the people need to be made aware of the abuse.
Group hug, Kumbaya, and action! I miss you guys. Seriously.
Sadiq, I agree, absolutely. thanks for stopping by.
beej:
"Tyler Durden: How's that working out for you?
Narrator: What?
Tyler Durden: Being clever.
Narrator: Great.
Tyler Durden: Keep it up then"
They stopped me in Montreal once, and I also got stopped in Chicago once.
I've been stopped in Beirut twice. They said sorry to me after they didn't find anything.
Oh, yeah. I also got stopped in Istanbul on my way out of the country.
I guess I look like a drug dealer when I travel, or something. The slick hair and leather jacket didn't help in Istanbul.
They started ripping everything apart until they came to my hotel receipt. I'd stayed at an incredibly swanky palace (although my friend hooked me up with the $107/night special holiday deal), and they stopped searching me when they saw that.
we could also do a dramatic re-creation using actors :) i'm still preoccupied by the use of numbers instead of names, there's something so 1984 about it...
Post a Comment
<< Home