Benjamin van der Spek Photography
The Stamp
No. 18 The Stamp
Some words make people grow. Other words make people small. The loud and angry words used by the man with the stripes on his shoulders made the guard at the departure hall shrink, smaller and smaller… I almost felt sorry for the guy as he opened the doors for us.
‘Right, we’ll call it a draw.’
Finally we were able to change our boarding passes. Now all we needed was to get through customs, board our flight and we’d be on our way home.
I passed through the passport check and waited for my brother further back in the cue. The customs officer took a look at my brother, leafed through his passport, put it aside and told my brother to wait at the back of the cue. What just happened? Time passed and I started to get worried. I surely did not want to miss our flight.
There was a stamp missing in my brother’s ‘service’ passport. It was missing an entry-stamp. Apparently some customs officer had had a bad day. Not this one. This man revelled in this inconsistency."
One supervisor appeared, then another. We tried again: "This is a service passport. If there is a problem, please contact the embassy." Reasoning of diplomatic pressure was clearly not going to work. To solve this problem we would have to return to the main police office in Quetta(!), fill in the proper paperwork and get the right stamp. I tried to stay calm and explain. “There is no time. We have a funeral to attend to.” I looked at my watch.
“Our cousin passed away on what was supposed to be her wedding day and now you are preventing us from being at her funeral because someone forgot to place a stamp somewhere!!”
Family ties play a large role in Pakistani society and there is a clear sense of importance of both weddings and funerals. Although rules are rules, maybe there was still a small heart in these robots. The supervisors negotiated in Urdu and decided to split up, one taking the ticket, the other taking the passport. We quickly decided to do the same and stick on the men like flies. Time was ticking.
The Stamp
No. 18 The Stamp
Some words make people grow. Other words make people small. The loud and angry words used by the man with the stripes on his shoulders made the guard at the departure hall shrink, smaller and smaller… I almost felt sorry for the guy as he opened the doors for us.
‘Right, we’ll call it a draw.’
Finally we were able to change our boarding passes. Now all we needed was to get through customs, board our flight and we’d be on our way home.
I passed through the passport check and waited for my brother further back in the cue. The customs officer took a look at my brother, leafed through his passport, put it aside and told my brother to wait at the back of the cue. What just happened? Time passed and I started to get worried. I surely did not want to miss our flight.
There was a stamp missing in my brother’s ‘service’ passport. It was missing an entry-stamp. Apparently some customs officer had had a bad day. Not this one. This man revelled in this inconsistency."
One supervisor appeared, then another. We tried again: "This is a service passport. If there is a problem, please contact the embassy." Reasoning of diplomatic pressure was clearly not going to work. To solve this problem we would have to return to the main police office in Quetta(!), fill in the proper paperwork and get the right stamp. I tried to stay calm and explain. “There is no time. We have a funeral to attend to.” I looked at my watch.
“Our cousin passed away on what was supposed to be her wedding day and now you are preventing us from being at her funeral because someone forgot to place a stamp somewhere!!”
Family ties play a large role in Pakistani society and there is a clear sense of importance of both weddings and funerals. Although rules are rules, maybe there was still a small heart in these robots. The supervisors negotiated in Urdu and decided to split up, one taking the ticket, the other taking the passport. We quickly decided to do the same and stick on the men like flies. Time was ticking.