Middle of Everywhere - Mary Bray Pipher [48]
The next day I sat at my phone for two hours rapid-repeat-dialing the INS. The line was always busy. I double-checked the number and called to make sure it was in order. A telephone company supervisor told me that every day she received many complaints like mine. She sighed, "We tell customers to consider that line inoperative." This was frustrating enough for me, but it creates an impossible situation for refugees who have only ten-minute bathroom breaks and a pay phone at their factories.
In despair, I called my senator's office. A special staff member whose sole job was to deal with the INS said he would look into things. Two days later he called back to say there was no way for the prints to be done locally and that the lines in Omaha were even longer than the ones in Hastings.
He said Sadia was being sent to Hastings because there had been a glitch in the computer program that assigns fingerprinting locations by zip code. Many refugees were told to go to faraway stations rather than to the one nearest them.
Two days before we left for Hastings, I called to make sure we would be received. There were no phone numbers on Sadia's letter so I called directory assistance and asked for the Hastings INS. No number was listed. Then, because the stationery also had a Department of Justice insignia, I asked for a Department of Justice number. None was listed for Hastings. I called the toll-free Customer Service number on the letter and was told by a recording that the number was no longer in service. Eventually I reached the Omaha office of the INS. I spoke to a grumpy man who said there was no Hastings office. When I tried to read him the letter, he hung up on me. I had now spent the entire morning on the phone trying to track down this Hastings office. Not only had I been unsuccessful, but by now I was unsure if we were even supposed to go to Hastings.
I called the Department of Justice in Lincoln and finally reached a live human being. She said she would give me a phone number if I promised not to give it to anyone else. I thanked the woman profusely and hung up, feeling hopeful for the first time that day. But when I called the number, it was out of service.
I had entered the twilight zone. This was a mess for me and I am a native-born, English-speaking clinical psychologist with a telephone. What was it like for a desperate refugee with no cultural broker? I again called my senator's office. They must have some secret number because someone called me later and said, "Go to the Hastings police department tomorrow."
So we went. When she heard that we had to go the police department, Sadia immediately associated the place with torture centers. But she got off work and pulled her daughter from school. We drove the three hours to the Hastings police department. It was anticlimactic. A kind middle-aged woman helped them. In one half hour the fingerprints were taken and we were on our way home. I had learned something about how our government works and Sadia was grateful she hadn't been tortured.
PART TWO
REFUGEES across the LIFE CYCLE
Chapter 5
CHILDREN of HOPE, CHILDREN of TEARS
Home is where you hang your childhood.
—WRIGHT MORRIS
In southwestern Minnesota, there is a quarry for pipestone, the rock used by all the Plains Indians to make peace pipes and many other sacred objects. It is a soft, carveable rock that glows red at sunset. Pipestone quarry was a sacred site where all the tribes came together in peace. While they were there, a truce existed; all the tribes mined side by side, then parted to fight on other ground.
Pipestone is a good metaphor for schools. Schools are the sacred ground of refugees, and education is their shared religion. At school, the Croats and Serbs study together, as do the Iranians and Iraqis and the southern and northern Sudanese. Outside school, groups may feud, but inside school, they will be respectful so that they can all