Bureaucracy & Love

Pandora's Box - memories - May 2017

A gas bullet did not but bureaucracy might kill me. 

I guess everyone got the public news that Robert & me are finally after 7 years decided to settle & to get married. But everyone is asking us 'when' is the wedding? 

We are still waiting for the 'municipality' to give us an ok to get married. After that we need to get an appointment for a wedding. Once we are married our file will be send to the 'department of foreign affairs' then I have to go back to the country that I come from and apply to change my UK tourist visa to a residence visa. That might take sometime and I have to stay out of UK until I get a residence visa. The funny thing is that I didn't go to Turkey for almost 3 years since the accident and I'm not sure I will be safe right now considering me being an icon, my case being never opened plus my interviews internationally and my Gezi theatre might bother the boss. 

I'm getting married in UK with my Turkish passport as I'm travelling with it for years so far. My Jordanian passport was expired in 2008 but of course it does inform on my 'birth certificate' that I'm Jordanian. So I will ask once we are married if I can go and get the UK residence visa in Jordan and inform my worries about my security in Turkey. Meanwhile I can renew my passport inside Jordan as I was informed that it would take forever in the Jordanian embassy in UK plus a penal for being outside the country with an expired passport. I can go to Jordan with my Turkish passport, as there is no visa between two countries. 

The UK 'municipality' will answer our marriage between 28-70 days starting 26 April (In fact we did apply on 28 March but for almost an absurd reason the translation of my divorce was not accepted so we had to do it again) My EU working visa will end at 31 July. UK tourist visa will end at 31 August. It is all very tight and if the UK municipality waits until the last day I might end up with no insurance in EU at all! My medicine cannot be sold at the pharmacy without a prescription from a neurology doctor. Usually I must see a neurologist every month for a general check since I did have a few epilepsies after Gezi Park and I take 3000 mg everyday plus endless painkillers as my headache didn't stop for a single moment since I woke up. My doctor is in Berlin and I'm advised not to leave the country before I get the reply from the municipality. I do have enough medicine for 2 more months. But after it I need to see a neurologist to write my medicine or I will end up in multi focal sympathetic epilepsies. 

To be honest it is all tragically funny; it should have been romantic with Robert and me, being in love and meeting after 7 years again, building a new life together and finally deciding to settle and get old together. I found wedding dress from the 1950s but now I will be thinking during the party we need to leave the country after this and to get me a residence sticker on my passport! This bureaucracy is just playing language-games! Frankly a gas bullet did not but bureaucracy might kill me. I'm tried of these documents & visas and being also healthily sick. I asked my mother the other day; 'when does this exile finish mother?! She smiled; trying to give me some power over Skype. She said 'Soon Lulu, soon'. She send me her Israel'i 'birth certificate' in 'Hebrew & Arabic' in 1945 in Jerusalem and the picture of my grandfather with him as a traffic police in his English uniform as Palestine was mandated by England until 1948. 

After Gezi I moved to Denmark then to Germany and now a new country with new bureaucracy while all I need is to 'heal': my brain, my pain, my body, my languages, to write, to sing, to play, how to live with epilepsy... but those are the times when I don't write a lot. When I want to write during these times I either end up complaining or swearing at the world. I'm still angry; in fact I'm furious, but still again I cannot stop thinking about Stephen Hawking is still hoping to go to space! The world is in hell, it was always like it but there are good people around me and I'm blessed to find them. So I do remember to take a breath and enjoy living & loving “