Chapter 2: Plant response to elevated CO2 - DRUM - University of ...

It’s a video test I’m not happy with. A test that I’d like to have retaken,
recreated or even destroyed. I’d never like to be an immigrant in a crossover
movie.
My first step in America the difference is obvious, the lines are clearly
drawn: I stand in the line of immigrants and tourists. The line is dense, closely
packed; it smells. Maybe I do too; I have been flying for 24 hours. Mumbai‐
Heathrow‐ Washington DC. 24 hours of watching the sun, like an intractable
infant, wake up, stretch out its first rays when it should really be asleep. My
body still struggles to register the shock of jet travel. The Americans — the
permanent residents and the citizens stand in a line that is loosely strung: people
at large, American distances from one another. The line is perfumed, it moves
quickly. The INS officers there smile and make small talk. At our line people get
fingerprinted and shot at by webcams. People in my line enter with shoulders
slouched, leave shoulders straightened. In the other line, people’s shoulders
never slouch. I look straight ahead beyond the line to the precautionary fire
extinguisher and beyond the huge glass window see the anxious groups of
people waiting, communicating by signs and signals to their people in my line.
Their people signal back and try to look relaxed, but their fingers cross and
uncross, and the Mexican man ahead in my line is now standing before the INS
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