Paranoia set in before I handed over my documents, and in retrospect, I wonder if the uniformed border guard smelled my delusional fears as I sat in my hatchback waiting to cross into the United States of America.

I had no reason to worry, because absolutely everything about me was legal, and on the level. But I needed to drive to Chicago from Winnipeg, Canada, that day, and if I were turned away at that desolate and windswept prairie crossing straddling Manitoba and North Dakota, I didn’t know what I’d do. I’d heard rumors of arbitrary refusals and I worried, without reason, that I would be denied access.

Pulling up to the guard window, I handed over my U.S. passport to a thick-necked and balding watchman.

“Where are you heading today?” he asked.
“Chicago,” I answered.
He frowned.
“Who’s car is that?” he asked.
“Uhhhhh,” I uttered, a moment too long, “it’s mine.”
He flipped through the pages of my passport.
“Have you ever been convicted of a crime?” he asked.
“No,” I answered.
“Pull up to that bay over there,” he said. “Someone will meet you with your passport.”

They were suspicious, I thought, as I did as he said. I parked in front of an aluminum-slotted rising door, and keyed the car off. Taking stock, I tried to calculate the risks. I created a checklist of suspicious items on or about my character.

1. I was crossing the border with two passports, two different license plates, a temporary driver’s license, a newly acquired vehicle
2. My U.S. passport displayed numerous trips to Jordan, Egypt, and Israel. My Canadian passport was two weeks old. Getting a new passport is an easy way of erasing the evidence of previous travel.
3. I was ostensibly moving from one part of Canada (Winnipeg) to another (Toronto) but had elected to drive through the United States and spend the night in Chicago.

The metal gate shuddered and rose, and two female agents with the Department of Homeland Security beckoned me to drive in. The hall was concrete, with steel examination tables. The door clanged shut behind my car. I stepped out of the car, and one of the agents told me to approach the long examination table. She stood on one side, opposite me. Blonde, fair, and plain-featured, she was a study in practiced apathy, but beneath that veneer I sensed insecurity on her part. She donned a pair of latex gloves. My passport lay on the table between us.

She instructed me to remove my wool coat and place it on the table, which I did. With a pen-light, she went through its pockets, extracting gas receipts, reporter’s spiral-bound notebook, two pens, keys, loose change, and my Canadian passport. She extracted a computer printed receipt from the breast pocket, read it carefully, and asked me to identify it.

It was from Dynamo Computer Repair, and I told her that they had fixed my laptop computer. She raised an eyebrow, and my stomach knotted. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she wanted to portray absolute confidence in her survey. If she wasn’t hunting something specific, anything could fall into her cross-hairs. Looking through a rifle scope, everything seems like a target. She seemed equal parts robot and redneck.

“Have you ever been convicted of a crime?” she asked, echoing her colleague.
“No,” I shook my head.
“Have you ever been to court?” she asked.
I paused, picking my words carefully.
“I have been inside a courtroom, and I’ve watched trials, but I’ve never been summoned to court,” I said.
“Have you ever been pardoned?” she asked.
“Pardoned?” I said, not understanding. She raised the same eyebrow again.
“No, I’ve never been accused or convicted of a crime. I’ve never been pardoned,” I blurted.
She instructed me to empty my trouser pockets, and turn them inside out like a child caught pilfering candy. I then had to turn around and do the same with my back pockets. Another agent approached me and asked if there were any weapons inside my vehicle before they searched it.

I was lead to an anteroom from where I could see them inspect my car through two-inch glass. With heavy Mag-Lites, they went through the cab. They pulled out my old license plates, and my vehicle registration. The blonde robo-redneck popped the trunk, and took a special interest in two book atop my suitcases: “The Looming Tower” about al-Qaida and “The Assassin’s Gate,” about the invasion of Iraq. I had a bookmark in the Looming Tower, and she flipped to that page and scanned it carefully.

I was asked once about the extra license plates, then twice, by the same guard. My first female interrogator opened the trunk of my car and tugged to remove the lighter of my two suitcases, which she rolled over to her examination table. Unzipping it, she found herself face to face with my black-and-white Palestinian kuffiyeh. She took it out, and felt the fabric, at which point I mentally thanked Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake, and Kanye West for popularizing the garmet. But I suddenly remembered that there was, in fact, a photograph of me floating around the Internet arm-in-arm with a young Palestinian male, with a similar scarf draped across both our shoulders, standing against the unmistakable grafitti-ed concrete of Israel’s separation barrier.

Robo-redneck closed this valise and went for the second, heavier one. She couldn’t lift it out of the trunk. She seemed to shrug and then simply unzipped the the suitcase where it lay. Here she found the purple-bound softcover edition of Al-Mowrid. She picked it up and walked right over to her colleague.

“An Arabic dictionary,” she said, holding it up. This didn’t phase the other official, who continued to spy beneath the the carpeted seats of my Escort.
The woman tried again.
“Look,” she said, tapping her colleague on the back to get her attention. “An Arabic dictionary.”
Her colleague glanced up, and shrugged.

The dictionary went back into my trunk, which was zippered shut. It wasn’t inspected more thoroughly — the suspicious little book actually deterred further search. And the heavy suitcase never left my trunk, meaning they never once inspected the spare tire compartment of my vehicle. That’s where I’d hide my Sem-Tex, or cocaine, or 14-year-old migrant sex-worker from Southern Europe.

The search went on for an hour, cutting deeply into my daylight driving time. It was late October on the Canadian Prairie, and I had 16 hours ahead of me.

I was beckoned out of the holding room. Robo-redneck held up her right hand, where she held, in her fist, a Mandarin orange which my great aunt had packed me for lunch.

“You cannot bring citrus into the United States,” she said with absolute certainty. And that was it.

Or almost.

Three weeks later, I once again approached the U.S. border, this time across the Peace Bridge near Niagara Falls. Once again, my car was loaded with all my worldly belongings. I approached the guard booth, tapping my hands on the wheel with anxiety. I rolled up to the window and handed over my passport. The guard glanced at it, and asked me where I was headed.

“South Carolina,” I replied. He ducked down to look through my window at my empty passenger seat, piled with maps, electronics, and food.

“Is that an orange?” he asked.

I looked over and saw that it was — a piece of offending fruit.

“Yes, yes, I’m sorry,” I blathered, picking it up and handing the contraband over. The guard paused, unsure of what to do. I asked him if he could just dispose of it for me. He looked around his small post.

“I used to have a garbage somewhere, but I don’t know where it went,” he confessed.

There was another pause, and I held the orange, still extended, between us.

“Well, are you hungry?” I asked.

He laughed.

“Yeah, I’ll take that,” he said.

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