My passport starts getting wet from the sweat. I hold it tighter and tighter, like it is going to disappear soon. So fragile, so beautifully useless. Like a film degree.

I am at the airport. Late. Strolling a suitcase, a backpack and film equipment, all heavier than me.

I arrive at the Air Canada counter and show them my passport. I say it’s an e-ticket. And that I prefer window.

“Sir, where is your visa for Canada?”

“But I’m going to Paris.”

“Yes, but via Toronto.”

“I need a Canadian visa to be able to switch planes in Canada?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because your citizenship is Brazilian.”

Ouch.

For the first time in a long time, I feel the sting of foreignness again. Kind of like when I went to the American embassy at age 16 to get a visa to live in America, and they asked me as I left the gates, “How much did they give you?” Like I was begging America for a chance to live, for a longer expiration date for a promise of happiness. And I said, “one year.” To which they responded, “That’s it?”

All of a sudden Paris starts to look very far away. But I think, I have a passport and a credit card, that should be able to take me anywhere, right? A visa to enter and a Visa to swipe. Perhaps I have the wrong passport and a maxed-out credit card though. But there is always a way.

“So how can I get a visa for Canada so I can fly to Paris?”

“You need to go to Detroit.”

“What?”

“I believe that is the nearest Canadian Consulate.”

“But I need to be in Paris tomorrow.”

I am afraid that won’t be possible, sir.”

So I go back and forth between Air Canada and United Airlines five times, from terminal to terminal, hauling my suitcases and holding on tight to my passport. It is green, so everyone stares at it, “Not American, obviously.”

I am sweating. My passport starts getting wet from the sweat. I hold it tighter and tighter, like it is going to disappear soon. So fragile, so beautifully useless. Like a film degree.

This isn’t fair, I think. The place where you happen to be born limiting all the options in your life. Like you chose your hometown. Like you should beg permission to move around the planet. And hope they like your face during the visa interview, so they can let you breathe their over-developed air for a while. Get to know peanut butter, buy Snicker bars and Vanilla Coke, and realize some of us will never know misery.

I cry to the Mexican lady at the United counter and she says, “This may work. You can take a straight flight to Paris at 5:55 so you don’t have to go through Canada, since you don’t have the right documents.” Nor the right passport.

I make my way back to Air Canada to finalize the transaction and pass a huge line of white American kids about to go on a field trip abroad. Some 9-year-olds talking on their picture phones and listening to their iPods. All wearing braces and none carrying a book, safely oblivious to anything that suffers. Anything that requires effort.

They will never know what it is to be begging to be let in, I think. And I envy them. I both envy them and I pity them. Because I know character and dignity are like muscles. If you don’t exercise them, they get atrophied.

And as I finally land at Charles de Gaulle International Airport, I think, underdevelopment is a fucked-up kind of blessing.

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