Faces of Fear

Faces of Fear(Zoya Gesina)        There were about twenty of them, seated in the lounge at the Taiyuan International Airport in Taiwan's capital, Taipei.  Not one appeared to be under eighteen or over forty. They were a rather organized group, with each member clutching a plastic bag bearing the International Organization for Migration logo, with his or her name written across the top in a dark sharpie.  Being an immigrant myself, I knew I was looking at refugees, most likely Hmong, judging from their appearance. 
           If fear had a face, the entire lounge was looking at twenty of them.  Few, if any, of those poor souls, had witnessed life before the fall of Saigon and the subsequent reunification of Vietnam under the Communist regime.  The Hmong community, the male half of which had fought on the American side, was forced to flee for their lives, settling in refugee camps in the neighboring Laos and Thailand.  Nearly every one of the refugees in that group had been born and raised there, before taking the leap of faith and boarding the Malaysia Airlines flight, hoping for a better life in the United States. 
           As it turned out, not one of these new Americans understood a word of English.  We queued up, our color-coded boarding passes in hand, to be directed to the gate.   We had started our journey in Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur, and were making a refueling stop in Taipei before our long-haul flight to Los Angeles. As the first Hmong man, apparently the leader of the group, approached, the guard asked:
"Are you getting off in Taipei, or continuing on to Los Angeles?"
Bewildered, the man, most likely repeating the only word he understood, replied: "Taipei!"
      The guard, clearly in a bad mood, snapped back:
" Let me see your passport!"--- he drew a rectangular shape in the air with his fingers.  When the terrified man understood and complied, the guard glanced at his boarding pass, and barked:
"You are  going to Los Angeles! Get into that line!"
         The rest of the group quickly slid over to the other line simultaneously, as if they had rehearsed this before.  Whatever had gotten into that guard, there was one thing I knew for a fact from my own immigration experience: there would be immigration officers waiting for them when we touched down in Los Angeles, with an interpreter.  I also hoped that wherever they settled in the United States, they would receive better treatment than at the hands of that rude guard.  Immigrating to a new, absolutely unknown land, is an act of great courage, and people who face their fears to accomplish that deserve nothing less than respect.