Responses

Ideal Situation:
UAE Immigration Officer: This is your passport?
Me: Yes.
UAE: It doesn't look like you.
Me: It is my passport. It's an old photo. I cut my hair.
UAE: (Smiles and stamps passport)

Actual Situation:
This is a much longer conversation, and involves mention of how my name is mis-transliterated on my visa, and how, since all of my photos in my passport are either a low-quality visa photo, or an old one where my hair is long, there is question of if I am who I say I am.

US Immigration Officer: What were you doing in the Middle East?
Me: Going to school. I attend New York University Abu Dhabi.
US: Hm. What are you studying?
Me: Theater.
US: Why?
Me: Because theater is a newer art form in the UAE - we can experiment and create new theatrical paradigms, and draw on the material of a new environment to make work.
US: (Smiles and stamps passport)

Actual Situation:
In reality, I am much less coherant because I am getting off a 15-hour flight and just want to go home. Again, a much longer conversation, while I try to explain about NYUAD, and theater.

Stamps in my passport: US, UAE, Canada, Nepal, Oman, India, Ghana.

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