Hugging our treasure troves of identity

Returned triumphant today Identity Card in hand!  Spent the morning in a long line of Nigerian, Somalia, Eritrea and Syrians and waited for an hour to collect it.  Began by feeling very sorry for my fellow queue members.  It seems work permits/ID officers, the world over; seek to instill Job-like patience in their clients.  I remember in Greece having a practical suitcase of documents, wedding certificate, utility bills, passport, qualifications - translated in Greek and stamped by relevant authorities (25 pounds per document), my birth certificate, work contract, bank statement, drivers licence, rental agreement only to be asked for my grandmother’s birth certificate!  No wonder all around me people clasp to their chests their own paperwork.  Armed with documents signed and stamped, those without such armour gradually feel a growing fear as they approach the official window. Some lose heart and scurry away from the field of battle and with each one that flees the rest of us hug our precious paperwork a little tighter. How precious they have become, shielding us from the public humiliation of failure and defeat.

One Somali woman cloaked in a long chador dropped her papers by accident.  Her head covering had caught on the corner of a sheet causing an avalanche of documents in all directions.   Everyone is shocked by her carelessness and she throws herself on her knees on top of the paperwork obviously expecting others to seize this treasure trove of identity.  Frantically, she retrieves them eyes scanning in case she has missed a vital one.  The rest of us hug our armour a little closer to our hearts in case we too falter on the eve of battle.

By now I am not so sympathetic to my fellow ID hunters.  An hour has passed and the three men in front look and sound like a Nigerian drug cartel.  The large lady pushing me from behind, with a colourful head scarf, has not only a horrendous hacking cough (with my luck it is probably Ebola) and her face is covered in weeping sores especially around her mouth and nose.  Now, I am suddenly of the opinion there should be two queues one for EU citizens and the other for non-EU characters.  I have noted the lack of UK queuing etiquette in front.  One fidgeting man with a woollen hat filled with hair braids thinks he is entitled to allow all family members, friends and passing acquaintances to jump in beside him in the queue.  I am impressed at how quickly one’s sympathy can turn to resentment in the mist of inconvenience and discomfort.

Much of Southern Europe has experienced this sea change.  As the economic situation deteriorates people have turned on immigrants/refugees with depressing consistency.  It appears inbred in our species that when things become difficult we need to blame someone.  Usually, we round on our governments who in turn will find a convenient scapegoat to deflect that anger on.  The invading foreigners are a good bet.  Easily identified and fairly defenseless they make handy targets for our discontentment.

The Mediterranean islands are becoming the front-line of the exodus of despair from Africa and the Middle East.  Many don’t make it to these shores and meet a watery death instead.  We never hear their last gasp for air as the sea consumes them.  But the rotting corpses create their own gas and this final fermentation of the life force raises them from the depths.  Their rotting bodies expose the vile/violent regimes that they have fled from and the corrupt/distracted governments to whom they flee for safety.