gehört.

The immigration officer was standing there and the line was too big for him to look at everyone’s passport. I was standing close to you in the crowd. I never felt good at borders. I always wanted to erase them with a staedtler eraser and then draw smileys over them with pink stabilo highlighter – if only I was gigantic enough to do that.

We approached the end of the line – and him, this immigration officer, as the person guarding it. As you pass, you showed your passport. I got mine in my hand already, that ugliest document in the whole wonderland. The officer looked at me, and as you passed I vaguely heard him asking you, “Gehört sie Ihnen?” in a slightly different accent than yours. You nodded. Couldn’t hear what you said.

This all happened very quickly and I was then in front of him with my passport open showing the photograph page of it. He, however, just waved his hand as though to let me pass and as though my passport didn’t have any importance to him. You took my hand and we walked away.

I was bewildered. He didn’t even look at my passport. Magic! We talked about the vague thing I heard. Yes, I heard it correctly. And yes, you confirmed that I belonged to you. And yes, my passport was waived.

It was one of those rare gem moments of confused feelings. Half of me was victorious knowing that he didn’t feel the need to look at my passport. Half of me was quite mad because in the process, it was the fact of my belonging to someone that made me think I wasn’t a threat. A bit of me felt happy that you confirmed that I belonged to you. But I also felt like I was chained to you who owned me like a dog. I felt like cutting lose and declaring a revolution, and bringing everyone to the much-longed-for promised land.

But then we had ice cream and laughed at the fact that once upon a time a few weeks earlier you sneaked me into another country to have ice cream and hotdogs with fried-onion; and nobody cared. Live on, I decided. Just live on. So I lived on.