Editor’s Note
Are you more of an Arab if the words on your passport are typed in Noto Kufi Arabic and are you more of an Indian if your passport is typed in OCR-B font type? And what if you’re both? Such questions and more started crowding my mind as soon as I read Shanai Tanwar’s “passport control”. As a savarna Hindu in a Hindu-dominant nation state with a permanent address and a relatively uncomplicated relationship to the words, “citizenship”, “identity” and “homeland”, the balance of my life is seldom hinged on these questions. But then comes a poem like Tanwar’s that forces you to take off your naturalized glasses and take cognizance of the bizarre state of affairs.
In “passport control”, Tanwar takes something as inane & seemingly unthreatening as font type—something us poets and writers like to obsess over, from Times New Roman to Garamond—and makes it politically charged. What an absurd notion it is to think that having a certain typeface on your passport can either put you up as for something or against something; how it can make you more of something and less of another thing; it reminds one of Saussure’s signifier and signified, and how inherently arbitrary language and its many facets can be—that more than ‘the twenty-one-hour flight across the atlantic’ or more than ‘the silence of brown bones breaking’, the semiotics of typography can influence one’s course in life.
—Kunjana Parashar
The Bombay Literary Magazine
“The font used in the Indian passport is a modified version of OCR-
B, specifically tailored for machine readability.”
a machine is a machine is a detective device is not the human body is not a machine—
the readability of my muscles, my blood type, my imagination, my memories,
my homelands, my beauty, my trauma, my harmony, my anger, my journey
is not specifically tailored for machines.
“While there isn’t a single, mandated font for all Canadian government
documents, including study permits, Helvetica (or variations like Helvetica
Neue or Helvetica Now) is the official typeface for the Federal Identity Program.”
the official type gifts me a face suitable for government eligibility—
the twenty-one hour flight across the atlantic is not enough; the story of my
customs declaration, mother’s tears, immigrant grief, surge priced plane rides
is not single mandated for the Federal Identity Program.
“The primary fonts used for the Emirates ID, based on the UAE design system, are
Roboto for English content and Noto Kufi Arabic for Arabic content.”
arabic is not english is not hindi is not my mother tongue is not arabic is not Roboto—
the silence of brown bones breaking, the difference between being an “expat” or
a “migrant,” the failure to secure citizenship over generations, remittances
are not designed for content in either language.
my brain empties itself onto the train tracks;
it oozes neuronal fluid from where the grey
matter meets itself, a twisted cacophony of flesh
without colour
take me across the border and leave me there
but jaaneman, we are not wanted here
we have wheat in our skin and the sun
embedded its tropical marking on your
face several generations ago
my brain empties itself onto the train tracks
and i think of the mind / body problem
if i were me, in a different body would i still be me?
pick up my brain from the railway lines and store it where
it will be safe—where it can imagine a life without the stare
of border officers as they struggle to pronounce my
foreign name /
my mother conjured these syllables for me
with love, ishq, pyaar, mohabbat, chaahat;
how can something so innate be so foreign?
my brain empties itself onto the train tracks
notice how it drips with the same spinal fluid
that crawls up your vertebrae, too
if i were me, in a different body would i be you?
mama says, lose yourself another student with my skin
but don’t lose your passport has lost his freedom today
visa stamps all over my name lahiri says, it’s the third and final
remind me of my cross-continental migration; i am to be a bird, perpetually in
—value flight—
in dollars, pounds, dirhams, rupees— —a skipping stone across
in other news; the stocks fell yesterday the pacific, atlantic, indian and arctic
a monkey is in parliament, you must— —a victim to geography and
you are dancing for him several secondary searches
mama says, don’t lose your papers another student with my skin
in case of emergency, how could i land today? was sent from the border, to her homeland, away
Acknowledgements
Image credits: George Tooker (1920-2011). Government Bureau (1956). Dimensions: 19 5/8 × 29 5/8 in. (49.8 × 75.2 cm). Medium: Egg tempera on wood. © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.
Author | Shanai Tanwar
Shanai Tanwar (she/her) is an Indian poet and journalist. Her poetry has appeared in Cordite, Existere, Plenitude, The Temz Review and others, alongside bylines in Al Jazeera, Brown History, The Globe and Mail, THIS Magazine, Maisonneuve and elsewhere. She loves the mountains and has a divine connection with black cats. Shanai is a Master’s student studying Modern Literature and Culture at King’s College London. [Text source: Shanai Tanwar]
