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Letters to Artvoice

Dalai La Lai

We left Toronto early on Tuesday morning, heading to Buffalo, New York to see the Dalai Lama, a 90-minute drive. Me, Mary and three of her friends: father, mother, child—Tenzing, Yangki and their son, aged seven. They did not have tickets to the venue but were certain they would get in nonetheless, implying there would be “special tickets” for Tibetans, and anyway they heard there would be a Jumbotron they could watch it on from outside if they didn’t.

We stopped along the way just outside Toronto, in Oakville—Starbucks for the adults, Tim Horton’s for the child—two bagels with cream cheese. Small talk in the car afterward—Tenzing and Yangki were born in India and had lived in Toronto for several years.

We approached the US Customs and Immigration booth at the US border, all of us handing over our passports. The officer carefully scanned them, then wrote a note on orange paper and fastened them together with an elastic band.

“You’ll have to go to the Immigration building over there. Just follow that officer (who had appeared 100 feet directly in front of us), park your car, go inside and wait for your name to be called.”

Which we did.

The Immigration building was filled with a milling mixture of mostly disheveled Tibetans in groups of friends and families, everyone greeting each other as fellow Tibetans do everywhere. Some sunburned, down-on-the-heel somewhat, looking like they had just stepped off the night train from Darjeeling. Others, much more polished. The women were all in their national dress, the men western style. The occasional monk in saffron robes, persistently offered one of the six or seven chairs and physically pushed to sit down into it, which they did.

US Immigration officers, armed and dressed in black, behind a long counter piled with computers and other technology. Portrait of George Bush on the wall.

Snatches of conversation from the Immigration officers initially a bit frightening: “…you have no visa to enter, it’s not up to me…your passport expired two years ago…is there someone here who will translate for you? I can give you a visa now, it’s $275. I talked to the chief, he’s not willing to waive the fee, there’s nothing we can do…how do you want to go back to Canada? We can call a taxi for you, it’s $23, or is there someone here who will drive you back across the bridge? Do you understand what I’m saying? Yes?”

Eventually Tenzing and Yangki were called forward: “…you were deported in 2003, did you go to your immigration hearing? No? There’s nothing we can do, you are not permitted to enter.”

Tenzing had applied for asylum in the US and had eventually been denied and deported. Settling in Canada, he had not bothered to appear at the hearing, he told me afterward.

Forty-five minutes later: “…Richard Soren, please come to the counter…you are permitted to leave. How do you know those people…where is Mary Duncan? Okay, do you know these people were deported on an earlier occasion? If you did know, we could charge you both with reintroducing an undesirable alien.”

“Can’t they eventually have a second hearing?” I asked.

“No, the judge’s decision is final. They cannot enter for the rest of their lives. We’ll need to keep them here for about eight hours, then we’ll send them back to Canada. You are free to go.”

It was an emotional saying good-bye. Yangki was crying, but they understood it was their karma, not anyone else’s. We returned to the car and proceeded: angry, bitter.

The sun came out, it was going to be a windy, sunny day. We arrived at the Brookfield Mall, where we had a permit to park all day. Macy’s, JC Penney, acres and acres of parking lot, asphalt and concrete. The special buses were ferrying people to the stadium at UB. We arrived into a sea of moving people, went through security and into the stadium.

Philip Glass tinkled on the piano for an hour. There was some Tibetan chanting and horn-blowing. The Dalai Lama appeared and talked for about 90 minutes. Near the end, in a gust of wind, his saffron-colored visor was carried off his head and away.

It was a marvelous experience, and a beautiful afternoon.

My face got sunburned.

Richard Soren

Toronto

THE NEW SABRES LOGO

That was the softest, most fawning interview I’ve ever read, like a high school job (“Puckstop,” Artvoice v5n38). We all know the team management gave the bronx cheer to the fans who spoke up about the crappy and lame graphics job on the new uniforms. Even national media picked it up and endorsed the fact that we are now outdone by everyone and anyone in the league in terms of design. It is so weak. Buffalo as a small city with small-city resources should not show their smallness by this kind of endorsement that we are bush league.

So, why did you not challenge the management by saying this:

When the enterprising and passionate fan created a Web site that asked for passionate fans to comment on the crappy design, and the fans responded in a record turnout for a small market, why did you show such incredible disdain, arrogance and indifference to the persons who fill your seats?

Larry Quinn played your interviewer because the interviewer was either too naive or afraid to bring up this most obvious topic.

Jim Neubert

Foster City, California