Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

The first time it hap­pened I was fu­ri­ous, near­ly spit­ting with anger. The sec­ond time I want­ed to cry. Why was this hap­pen­ing to me? The third time it hap­pened, I had a com­plete melt­down and a de­layed pan­ic at­tack that last­ed about four hours.This time, armed with some Xanax and the knowl­edge that it prob­a­bly would hap­pen, I was fine. When the US Bor­der Con­trol agent at Mi­a­mi In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port said those four dread­ed words, "Come with me, please," this time, I fol­lowed him with sangfroid and a smile.In 2001, I re­turned to T&T from my Al­fred Friend­ly Press Fel­low­ship to the Wash­ing­ton Post. I thought the world was my oys­ter. With­in a few years, I would trav­el all over the Caribbean, to the US and Eu­rope for work as a jour­nal­ist. I don't know why–maybe I felt I should be pre­pared for any­thing?–but I would walk around with my pass­port in my bag, visa stamped and ready to go.

One night–I don't re­mem­ber ex­act­ly when but it must have been more than ten years ago–I went to a par­ty on the spur of the mo­ment, straight from work. I left my bag in a friend's car, parked some­where on the West­ern Main Road in Care­nage. When we re­turned to find the back seat sprin­kled with shat­tered glass, we re­alised that thieves had bro­ken in­to the car. They had made off with the car stereo and my bag, with my ID, bankcards and pass­port in it. I re­port­ed the theft to the po­lice and du­ly no­ti­fied the US Em­bassy that my pass­port, with my visa in it, had been stolen.I got a new pass­port and a new visa, new ID and new bankcards, and I thought it was back to busi­ness as usu­al. How wrong I was.Since then, near­ly every time I have passed US Bor­der Con­trol, es­pe­cial­ly at Mi­a­mi, I've been in­ter­ro­gat­ed about this stolen visa. My most re­cent en­counter was al­most far­ci­cal."Have you ever been no­ti­fied that your visa was found?" the agent asked."Has it been found?" I asked op­ti­misti­cal­ly, on­ly to hear, "Please come with me."

The first time this hap­pened, I was on my way to the Cay­man Is­lands to pro­mote my book Trinidad Noir. I was late for my con­nect­ing flight and grind­ing my teeth in anger when the Bor­der Con­trol agent asked seem­ing­ly ir­rel­e­vant ques­tions about this long-lost visa.Hap­pi­ly, I had a copy of said book in my bag and quick­ly pulled it out to show the se­nior agent in the in­ter­ro­ga­tion room to which I was tak­en. He stamped my pass­port, shook my hand and sent me on my way.The sec­ond time, a few years lat­er, I was made to sit in a stain­less-steel-and-glass wait­ing room for about an hour while I war­i­ly eyed the toi­let with its trans­par­ent walls and hoped my or­deal would soon end. I didn't want to pee in front of strangers. I thought I was be­ing pun­ished for "fly­ing while black"; many fre­quent fliers who are non-white ex­pe­ri­ence the same thing.

The third time it hap­pened was last year on my way to the West In­di­an Lit­er­a­ture Con­fer­ence in Mi­a­mi. I took it on the chin, or so I thought. But when I was leav­ing Mi­a­mi, just pass­ing through the air­port pre­cip­i­tat­ed a pan­ic at­tack that last­ed all through the flight home.Last week I passed through Mi­a­mi on my way to Malaysia just fine–a sin­gle ques­tion, breezi­ly an­swered, and a quick stamp be­fore be­ing sent on my way. But on my re­turn trip I got pulled out to stand with a dozen oth­er peo­ple against a wall at Mi­a­mi Bor­der Con­trol.

It wasn't the de­ten­tion room, but it was even more hu­mil­i­at­ing some­how to have the hun­dreds of peo­ple lined up wait­ing to clear the bor­der look at us and won­der whether we were drug mules, ter­ror­ists or in­ter­na­tion­al crim­i­nals.

Xanax, an an­ti-anx­i­ety drug, helped me make light of it. I chat­ted to the man on my left, an eth­nic-Chi­nese Venezue­lan on his way to his daugh­ter's high school grad­u­a­tion in New York, and the man on my right, a Hait­ian-born US res­i­dent who had been the neigh­bour of one of the Boston Marathon bomb­ing sus­pects. We all got through even­tu­al­ly.I got home to find a no­tice of bag­gage in­spec­tion in my suit­case. I hope the TSA agent en­joyed go­ing through my stash–lit­er­a­ture on ma­ter­nal mor­tal­i­ty, mid­wifery, con­tra­cep­tion and abor­tion that I had car­ried in my bag from the Women De­liv­er con­fer­ence in Kuala Lumpur.