A border crossing.

I move in and out of both mind and body while I crossed the border into Bangladesh. Heat and swaying palm trees, bicycle rickshaws pedaling by and colorful trucks of an airy blue and yellow adorned in Bangla script. Beggars mingling with waiting crowds. Large pure white clouds drifting above, juxtaposing the trash strewn on streets below. Long tiled corridors, empty and dimly lit within the shade of 3:05 p.m. A few pulsing fans in the ceiling above the waiting lines. Muslim men in caps and long white robes, and Bengali women in traditional salwar suits. Waiting room couches filthy and stained in another dim opening tucked out of late afternoon heat.

A guard shakes my hand at the iron entry gate. I make eye contact, smiling from the corner of my mouth. He cocks his head to the side and beams in return. I enter a crumbling courtyard, but caught up in a merger of past and present, fail to take everything in.

[What would my family think if they were standing beside me? What would they notice in different ways than I do? What would they point out? What colors would they see?]

The boy who has led me across the road and through the gate now leads me through an archway with 'ARRIVALS' painted in bold white yet obvious brushstrokes. We step into the foreign passport line. There are two or three people in front of me but my young red-shirted attendant takes my passport, steps to the side of the waiting line, and slides my passport beneath the dirty window. It is grabbed on the other side with a reaching right hand while the line continues to function according to order. A man waiting in front of me turns his body ever so slight and reaches back with a happy question: "What is your country?"

"America," I tell him with a returning smile.

"Oh!" he smiles with all possible teeth showing. He gives me his name. He is from Assam and he too is on his first trip into Bangladesh. The usual questions pass with the speed of expectation. His passport is stamped and handed back.

"Maybe see you there," he says. With a smile to say goodbye he walks away.

I rest my hands on the counter. In his mode, the officer behind the glass pages through my blue passport with its faded golden United States emblem on the cover. *Stamp*...*stamp*. A departure card is torn and set into place. *Flip*, my book of stamps is closed and passed back to me. I can now enter Bangladesh.

My young attendant appears at my side again. He takes my passport from me and inspects its pages as he walks a steady line to the door. Whether fulfilling his positional duties or performing his job to personal standards, I do not know, but I stay with him in each step and hold an expectant palm in front of his chest; asking without words. We walk outside and satisfied he sets it in my hand. "Thank you," I tell him. There is no response.

There is a feeling of elation and a sense of power in the moment your passport is stamped and you cross the imaginary and yet real lines that separate one country from the next. Some people do not have this privilege, not out of any fault of their own but because of politics. I have the privilege and I am honored in every stamp that is added -- every stamped press from a generic ink pad to a generic passport page contains the symbolic potential to become something much more. Bangladesh accepts my footsteps with waiting.