Two Pockets

The wingtip at gate C14 was catching the last light and throwing it back, white on white. Somewhere behind me, the boarding chime sounded, polite and tired.

A woman in the row ahead was holding two passports. One in each hand, as if weighing them.

The question that has been circulating is a practical one. A dual citizen, Dutch and Canadian, traveling to Slovenia with a Canadian group. Must she use the EU passport. It is the kind of question that appears straightforward and is not.

The technical answer, of course, exists. If you are Dutch, the Netherlands expects you to enter the Union as Dutch. Slovenia will not stop a Canadian for a week in the Julian Alps, visa-free is visa-free, but the EU sees its own differently. It offers not entry but return. Free movement is not a favor. It is a right, but only if you claim it with the right booklet.

We carry these facts the way we carry the booklets themselves.

What interests me more is the moment of choosing. At the check-in counter in Toronto, you are Canadian. It is easier that way. Your name is on a group manifest, your return ticket is from Pearson, the tour leader has counted you. At the border in Ljubljana, you become European again. Or you remain Canadian who happens to have been born in Utrecht. The line moves either way.

For years I watched a friend travel this way. He has two passports and a habit of patting each pocket before security, left, right, left. A small ritual of reassurance. He says he feels more honest when he uses the passport of the country he is leaving. As if departure deserves candor and arrival can take care of itself.

There is a peculiar intimacy to being a dual citizen in a group tour. Everyone else has one story about where they are from. You have two, and therefore, in the logic of groups, you have to explain one of them away. I am Canadian, but. I am Dutch, but I live in. The but is where you live now.

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I once asked a border officer at Schiphol what he thought people should do. He smiled without looking up. He said people think we are asking who they are. We are only asking what queue they should stand in.

Perhaps that is true for the state. For the traveler, it never feels that way.

The Canadian passport says you are from a place that is large and far and apologizes for the cold. The Dutch passport says you are from a place that is small and near and has made a long peace with water. To hold both is not to be twice as legitimate. It is to be asked, at regular intervals, to be only half as complicated.

On the flight to Slovenia, the group will sleep. The cabin will dim. Somewhere over Germany, the map on the screen will show a cluster of borders that no longer mean very much until, suddenly, they do again. The woman with two passports will put one away. Then the other away. Then decide.

I keep thinking about that weighing gesture. Not comparing photographs or expiry dates, just weight.

In my own bag, I keep the one I am not using tucked just behind the one I am. Close enough to feel.