How Not to Do Your French Visa Part 2

​I advised Moez that we needed to leave more than 30 minutes before my appointment. After all, it’s Tunisia and one never knows what can happen between our apartment and the place of destination. Additionally, with it being the lunch hour – God knows the amount of traffic we might have to face.
 
However, Moez was assured that it would take us a maximum of 20 minutes to get there.  He was late in picking me up because of the traffic. This was already less than reassuring. Driving like a madman, he was true to his word. We literally arrived at 1pm on the dot, coming to a screeching halt on the sidewalk.
 
I hopped out and went around a mass of humanity waiting to get through the gates.
 
“We have an appointment,” Moez informed the man at the gate.
“So does everyone else,” said the guard.
“Ours is at 1pm.”
“So is everyone else’s.”
“What?!” Moez exploded. “Then why don’t you let us in?”
 
I went to the back of the line while Moez yelled at the guard. Then he parked the car in the lot across the street and came back to argue with the same fatigued individual. He waved me to come over to him, and I figured someone had discovered a mistake.
 
In fact, I was the one mistaken. Everyone waiting at the gate was there for a 1pm appointment – just like me. I was shocked, thinking there was no possible way they had that many employees to take what looked like 100 people.
 
“They told me that if I didn’t arrive on time, they would cancel my appointment,” I said to the guard.
“If they aren’t ready, then it’s their fault,” he replied.
“That’s reassuring,” I muttered, not convinced.
 
I stood there with Moez pacing back and forth hurling insults at the company, drawing sympathy from the crowd now agreeing with him, and also drawing the interest of security. It was quite cold, and there was an icy wind. I was still sick from the flu, as were others, and I began to shake in spite of my coat and thick scarf.
 
“Is this what they call a ‘waiting room?’” I questioned. “They ought to be ashamed of themselves.”
 
Moez switched the subject to this un-humanitarian concept and continued to hurl insults. Meanwhile, I lifted up my eyes to the people waiting, and I felt my anger burn.
 
As an American, I can set my dossier on fire, buy a ticket that same hour and be out of the country headed to the greatest country on earth. I didn’t need the visa to live and to live well. The people waiting with me were not so lucky. They were stuck in a country that didn’t care about them, didn’t help them, and allowed them to be treated like animals by their own people working for a foreign power. The reason they were waiting in a mass, in the cold, the rain and the wind was because they were Africans. Both the Tunisian administration and those waiting knew the crowd wouldn’t complain for fear of not getting their visa.
 
We waited for 15-20 minutes before the demigods came to work and began to take people. As I reached the inside, shivering and yet relieved, I noticed we had yet another line in which to wait.
 
We were finally allowed into the final line – some 30 minutes or more after our appointments – and stood there as the line to our right began to fill up. We moved little by little, and then completely stopped while the new line that had appointments after ours was taken.
 
I shook my head but said nothing. What good would it do? Moez was calling, I knew, but I had to switch off my phone. It had started drizzling, and I angrily considered those outside. I watched as a few elderly women were brought through the line after – I was later told – they had collapsed due to being treated like water buffalo.
 
My thoughts drifted back to my time in Dubai. One never even saw an Emirate in a line. They had their own offices and were treated with the utmost respect by their own people due to the importance their government placed on them. It was a stark contrast to the way the Tunisian government and people treated their own.
 
At some point, the line began to move when a young woman realized that she had to go to work. As I stood waiting for the last person in front of me to be taken, the man next to me looked at my passport. I have great peripheral vision, and I could tell he was staring curiously at it. Finally he turned his back to me to murmur something to the woman with him. I chuckled. It never ceases to shock Tunisians that I wanted to live in France for awhile when I could be in the USA.
 
I stepped up to speak to the woman behind the counter. She held my passport and looked at me inquisitively.
 
“You don’t need a visa to go to France,” she said.
“I do if I want to stay for more than three months.”
 
She conceded and asked what type of visa I wanted. After checking the system, calling upstairs to the 3/4 –gods room, she informed me that my request was incorrect. She told me it was clearly my fault and not theirs and that I would have to request a second meeting.
 
The idea that this private company could simply draw a line through the incorrect visa information and enter the correct one was completely foreign to everyone. The idea that I had selected the correct visa and their system had changed it – something I had actually remarked on the night before – was also not something they could understand. It was simply: “You are wrong, we are right. Good-bye.” If I had been wrong and chosen the wrong visa, I might have been more forgiving.
 
I realized that this reaction could also be due to my being American.  After all, how often does a woman from Tunisia get to lord it over an American? What she didn’t realize was that at the end of the day, I get to go home to a country that provides me everything, while she gets to go home to loud imams, barking dogs, no freedom, no ability to go anywhere without a visa and men who don’t want to marry Tunisian women.
 
I took up my dossier, shrugged and said: “I will go to the States and do it. How do you get out of this joke?”
 
By the time I found Moez, I was fuming. They treat their own people like cows, they don’t know how to work, their system is crap, and I am done! When my eyes fell on the time, I got even angrier. I had been there for more than an hour and a half – to be told I was wrong and they couldn’t help me.
 
“I will go back to the US to do this visa,” I announced. “I am done with these people and this country.”
 
So, we went back home and bought the tickets back to France.