Mektab Al-Hijra wa Jawazat : The Office of Immigration and Passports

Before 14 days after your arrival in Syria have passed, you must report to the Office of Immigration and Passports. My friend and I decided to go there together in hopes to team up with our Arabic and figure out what exactly we need to do since this office is known to be a bureaucratic nightmare. As we approach the building there are "Six-Flags stlyle" lines out front in the 100 degree weather. Luckily we find out that we have to go up to the third floor. We ascend the narrow stairwell, dodging kids, women fully covered in black, some scantily clad tourists and several groups of men who are congregating on the landing for a smoke break.



The third floor is complete chaos, and to be honest my stomach started churning with guilt. The room is full of Iraqi refugees who have fled to Syria trying to get the right documents and permits to stay here. The counter that extends the length of the room is really only suited for regular business, not to withstand the current refugee crisis that Syria is experiencing. To make matters worse, there is no que for the window and so everyone is sort of rushing the counter the way that a crowd pushes towards the stage at a concert. But we don't have to wade through the crowd yet. We are told to go make copies of our passports, three passport size pictures, a special stamp and come back to fill out our paperwork.



Luckily the stamp man down the street has copies of the paperwork that we can buy. We return to the office and sit on the stairs to fill out our paperwork. It's interesting and quite sad that way the colonialist period still leaves its mark on the countries of the Middle East. The papers were in Arabic on the right side and French on the left. (In Jordan and Kuwait there was always an Arabic/English option) Knowing know French and very little official Arabic, I was happy to have my Italian friend along who knew enough French to get us by.



We wade through the crowd to turn in the originial papers. Then we are given more. We fill them out and wade through again. The man behind the counter does some scribbling and stapling. Then tells us we need to take the papers upstairs. Upstairs consists of four rooms, and we have to ask an officer to direct us to where exactly we're supposed to go. He points us to the office of some important man who signs our documents and sends us back downstairs. We give the papers back to the same guy behind the counter, and somehow we're still not finished! He then points us to a room in a corner where we hand someone our passports and he tells us to wait for 5 minutes. Once we have our passports back we return yet again through the crowds to the window where we hand over our passports. The man says come back tomorrow and they will be ready.



"Are you kidding!?," I think to myself. "There must be about 200 people in this room right now and somehow they are going to find my passport again tomorrow!? Yea right!" But sure enough I return the next morning and the very same officer from the day before is there and pulls out all the American passports out of a file in a drawer and hands mine back to me. My Italian friend couldn't come with me, but she told me to see if I could get her passport back too. So I figure I'll try my luck and ask the officer if I could get hers as well. He asks for her full name, opens the drawer again, pulls hers out and hands it over to me! No questions asked! I couldn't believe it! I wasn't sure if I should be happy or horrified. I love Syria and all of it's nonsensical ways!