YOUR COUNTRY DEFINES YOU, ESPECIALLY AT THE AIRPORT

In 2016 I travelled to New Orleans together with my two colleagues. We flew via Detroit, and even though it was a stopover, we still had to recheck-in our luggage and go through the border control.

My colleagues were German and Dutch, so they joined a "quick" line, while I, with my Azerbaijani passport, had to wait in a separate queue. All seemed to be going well. Officer "greeted" me without a smile on his face, asked the basic questions, and then out of nowhere asked me to follow him. I thought "Fun! Is it because I am from a Muslim country?". I silently followed. I couldn't warn my colleagues, so hoped they would wait for me. In a nutshell, in the waiting room, another officer explained that initially they only saw the expired US visa instead of the new one, so they had to make additional checks. They let me go after 20 minutes. The real fun was happening outside the waiting room.

While the officer was questioning me, my colleagues passed the border control without any problems. When they saw my luggage making circles on the luggage belt without me being anywhere around, they realized that something was wrong. They approached the officers:

- We lost our friend

- What do you mean?

- We saw him talking to your colleague over there, but now we cannot find him

- How does he look?

- Tall, dark hair

- Where is he from?

- Azerbaijan

Two officers looked at each other with big question marks on their faces:

- Where is it?

Up until this point, the conversation was chill, but it all changed after my colleague's answer:

- It is next to Iran

Now officers looked a little tense. Out of all our neighbouring countries, she picked the one which was most "welcomed" in the US 🤦🏽‍♂️ But I don't blame her. Out of 5 bordering countries, 3 were not really friends with the US (Iran, Russia, Turkey), 1 can be confused for a state (Georgia), and 1 is also not well known (Armenia).

Luckily, the moment she mentioned Iran, I was leaving the meeting room, and there were no further questions asked. Who knows what would have happened next? 😁