Siham put her makeup on in front of the mirror and prepared for work. “Remember not to look up at the solar eclipse this morning.” She said.

“Mhmm.”

“And don’t forget to pick up our translated marriage certificate.”

“Mhmm.” I rolled over and shaded my eyes with the pillow.

She turned the light out, kissed me, and left to work.

An hour later, when I was awake, standing, and scratching myself, she called. “Hi honey, Sandy says I can take the morning off work and do the visa application.”

We parked under a palm tree, two houses down from where the Canadian flag flapped atop a blocky white building. Siham, with her documents tucked into a mint-green folder, was let through the Canadian consulate’s big metal door. I wished her luck a moment before the guard clanged the entrance shut.

For the next two hours, I tapped on the steering wheel, listening to the mix of Arabic and French music from Morocco’s national radio station. When Siham finally emerged, she was distraught and seemed to be trying to restrain tears. I started the car and pulled off the side of the road.

“What happened?” I asked.

She climbed into our Honda Civic and managed to choke out a response. “The woman said she probably won’t issue me a visa. She said there were too many discrepancies?”

“What are you talking about?”

“She says my accounts showed three different pay rates.” Siham’s voice wavered. I tightened my fists on the steering wheel and continued onto a busy road.

“That can be explained,” I said, “you took a week unpaid leave so we could get married in Oujda. The other two were your first pay checks at the new job and the accounting department was sorting out your pay rates.”

“I know!” Siham said. My sympathetic ear seemed to calm her; a change from the hostile, accusatory voice of the female immigration officer. “The woman asked if we planned to live in Canada. I said yes, but not right now. Then she asked why, if we wanted to live in Canada, were we not applying for sponsorship?” Siham took a deep breath. “She told me if I want to go and stay in Canada then I should be applying for a resident’s visa.'”

I gritted my teeth and gripped the steering wheel, stopping at a traffic light.

“She says it doesn’t make sense to apply for a visitor’s visa when we intend to live in Canada." Siham shuddered. "I tried to explain to her that we only want to visit right now, but she said, ‘Then why did you tell me you wanted to stay?’ Before I left, she said there was very little chance she would issue me a visa.”

Siham’s eyes began to water again when I stopped infront of her office. “Don’t worry,” I said, “There’s still a chance that when they review the application, they’ll realise they made a mistake. We gave them everything they asked for.”

I returned home and sat down in front of my laptop. I felt helpless and upset that some stamp wielding bureaucrat made her mind up based on a few questions where the answers didn’t fit the mould. It feels like both me and my wife have been accused of lying and trying to cheat the system.

Siham married me, a wandering Canadian travel writer, who is not yet published, and doesn’t know where he’ll be in a year. Our future will change depending on my success. If, within the next year, I don’t get published, I’ll have to take a serious look at my life. Perhaps we will return to Canada to start anew.

On the other hand, if I’m successful, I plan to travel with Siham, down the west coast of Africa and write another book.

Either way, we don’t expect to live in Canada for at least another year, more likely two or three. I suppose it’s hard to understand that in a two minute interview. All we want to do is visit my family for a few weeks. I think it’s important that my family know my wife so they can better understand why I fell in love with her. They only met SIham for a few brief and hectic days at our wedding in June. If we are rejected, I don’t know what I’m going to do.

Someday, perhaps we will settle down in Canada. But I wonder why we should be forced to pay the exorbitant sum of more than $1500 in order to apply for a residence permit that will likely be expired by the time, if ever, we decide to move there.

Should I apologize for not having the stability of a nine-to-five job, or that I am not able to say where I’m going to be one year from now?

Perhaps I’ll still be here in Morocco, stuck in a rut. Maybe I’ll be in England, rebuilding a car for the next journey. There’s a chance I’ll be on the road again and interviewing white Zimbabwean farmers who sought refuge in Nigeria. I don’t know, and neither does my wife. Siham humours my dreams and talks me out of my more ridiculous ventures - like taking a camel trip from Marrakech to Mecca.

It scares me to think that someone’s hand is lingering over a big rejection stamp. That they might exert their authority, frustrate our lives and take a chunk of my money as a slap in the face. One hundred and fifty dollars for the application!

For her to marry me, a Canadian, and have that as a barrier to visiting my home country doesn’t make sense to me. To reject an otherwise perfect visa application on the grounds that she is married to a Canadian and therefore must harbour the intent of staying in Canada shows both discrimination and irrational paranoia.

It’s 3:00pm. She just called from work. I’m going to take her to back the embassy to get the result. Perhaps they took a second look and made the right decision.

Rejection

I feel violated, as though I’ve just been conned by some guy on the street. My stomach is wrenched in anger and I keep pulling my hands away from the keyboard to ball my fists. It’s not a conman on the street though. It’s a faceless bureaucrat behind a locked iron door with a little swinging window, like the one at the edge of the emerald city in the Wizard of Oz. In my scenario, the little munchkin says, "it will cost you one-hundred-and fifty dollars to apply for entrance." The moment he has the cash in his hand, he says, “Sorry, request denied!” and slams the door in my face.

I do not know how to confront these people. The neighbouring Consular Services part of the embassy tells me to deal with immigration. Immigration won’t let me past the French only speaking guards at the door.

What makes Siham a perfect candidate for a visa? Well, to start, the USA didn’t have a problem when they issued her a ten-year, multiple-entry visa. Nor did Spain, France, or Thailand have a problem issuing her a travel visa. Not once has she overstayed. Nor had she been rejected by an embassy or consulate, until today, by the Canadian Embassy. Their excuse on the rejection form: We don’t believe you have the intention to leave Canada once you arrive.

I, her husband, am a Canadian. Our reason for going to Canada is to visit my family for the holidays. To make things even more confusing, I’m told by reliable sources that if we were not married, there is a good chance Siham would have been accepted.

They think we are trying to sneak in the back door and avoid the costly and time consuming process of a spousal visa application. We are not, but I can sympathise with people who might want to try. The visa application process, I’m told, can take up to two years. Meanwhile, families are separated, lives are shattered and the process inflicts hardship and suffering on those unfortunate enough to partake in it, like the woman we met outside the embassy who has a husband and two children in Canada. In her case, she cannot get permission to return.

Siham had all the right documents. They were in order when she went to the embassy. In every aspect I can think of, she is the perfect candidate to visit Canada, except that she married a Canadian! They jumped on her like a pack of starving dogs on beef jerky when she hiccupped on one question. “Do you intend to live in Canada?” Could they possibly fathom that she stumbled on the question because we don’t know the exact answer.

We live in Morocco and are quite comfortable. It’s cheaper for me to live and write here, and Siham has a good job with pay and benefits that would fit the lower-middle-class income level in Canada.

I feel many things right now, anger and helplessness are at the top of the list.

We paid $150 Canadian to do the multiple-entry application. Siham brought all the documents they requested: An official translation of our marriage certificate; her bank statements to show she has a steady job; the application; pictures; her passport; a letter from her employer.

I’m wondering what went wrong. Do they want more documents? I can give them the papers showing we own a Honda Civic here in Morocco. I can show them that we have a rental contract in Siham’s name for our apartment. Do they want proof that we didn’t do a marriage for convenience? We have six hours of footage from the various ceremonies and another thousand pictures.

Do they not believe I’m a writer? I have a knee-high stack of papers pencilled with corrections. If they want, I can hand them in as evidence. We can deliver it along with two huge photo albums from our marriage. We might need one of those big, clunky Camion trucks to get it all there. Once rejected, you can apply again. It just costs another $150 bucks. There is no set process for appealing a decision.

Do they want to see that I am financially stable? I can show them my bank statements, which prove that I have enough money to live off of for a few years. All they had to do was ask. But they didn’t, they just rejected her.

There was no second chance, there was no, “If you could provide us with these extra documents which we didn't ask for earlier, then perhaps we can postpone and review it again.” Instead, there was just the plain and simple form letter with one of the five boxes ticked. (Regulation 179) We don’t believe you have the intention to leave Canada once you arrive.

Did they do any work? Did they think rejection from the moment she walked into their office? Did they take two seconds to flip through her passport and see where she’s been and can go?

I must be the stupid one! I thought, the less paperwork the better. Stick to the essentials, give them what they ask for, be efficient and get approved. She’s married to a Canadian, it’s a done deal! Not!

What if questions are running through my head like one of those electric cafeteria signs. It makes me angrier and angrier and I’m at a loss to explain what I can only describe as stupidity.

So who do I complain to? Is there someone out there who deals with bureaucratic BS. Will this person listen to me, or will my voice be drowned out with the thousands of other people seething in frustration because some bureaucrat raised their mighty stamp, slammed it down and stole their money. Is the frustration at my home country echoed through my fellow Canadians who fell in love with and married a foreigner.

I’m going to spit out those dreaded words. Words that I thought were senseless when in Canada and every migrant complained when the toppings on their school pizza weren’t kosher or the RCMP uniform destroys their cultural right to wear a religious garb. If I knew our charters and laws, I would mention them and use this as an example to show that racial discrimination has occurred. In our case, against mixed marriages. But I don't know them, nor do I have time to filter through them.

The woman sitting behind the safety of the iron door can’t understand why we want to visit Canada and not stay permanently. Nor do I think she understands what it’s like to marry a foreigner and feel the humiliation of a rejection stamp. We feel alienated by a system we may come to rely on for our future. It makes me feel like the integrity of our marriage has been dirtied and that our ethics and character has been spat upon. All this because someone’s preformed bias assumes that we want to enter Canada and illegally stay.

A moment ago, Siham walked into my office crying. She said, “You’re father paid a fortune so your entire family could come over and see us get married. Now I can do nothing, nothing! I can’t even visit them!”

Before Siham left the interview, the woman told her to apply for a resident’s visa. But we don’t want to live in Canada any time soon. We just want to visit! But we can’t.

Perhaps they should add a clause to the file, the unwritten rule regarding persons married to a Canadian. Canada might be the greatest country in the world to live. But your not allowed to visit.