When You Are Blacklisted: Amjad Nasser Speaks Out

After accepting an invitation to speak at NYU's Gallatin School, Amjad Nasser's travel to the U.S. stopped after he was harassed by United States Homeland Security at Heathrow Airport. Without any concrete details or reason, Homeland Security denied the prominent Jordanian poet and writer access to his connecting flight to New York. At Jadaliyya, Nasser documents his interrogation by Homeland Security:

I read once that the number of names on the American “blacklist” is around one million. But that was before September 11. No one knows what the number became after it. One may think upon hearing of the existence of this list that it has to do with the names of those involved in practicing, financing, or glorifying “terrorism.” Or the drug lords who destroy the youth of the world. Or the arms merchants who supply peoples’ conflicts with instruments of murder. No, the list had some of the most prominent writers and artists from all over the world who had supported the struggle against colonialism, the right to self determination, or even the struggle against local dictatorships, such as Pinochet in Chile, and others in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Among them were names such as: Marquez, Graham Greene, Doris Lessing, Neruda, Mahmoud Darwish, Dario Fo, Mandela and a large number of leftist intellectuals, including the Greek intellectual, Yannis Milios, who was invited by New York University to take part in a debate, but U. S security at JFK sent him back home after a lengthy and humiliating interrogation.

One the most outrageous incidents of American security hysteria involved detaining the American writer Diana Abu Jaber and questioning her for hours even though she is a well-known novelist. I read her account of the experience of “entering” America in an essay she wrote after being allowed back into her own country.

I have dual citizenship, Jordanian and British (this is a right guaranteed by law in both countries) and have been working in journalism for more than three decades. In fact I have never had any other profession. I have published ten books of poetry, four travel books (which means travelling to many countries) and a novel whose English translation was published a few months ago by Bloomsbury. It is forthcoming in the U.S next year. I also have a beautifully designed poetry book entitled “Petra” which was published a few days ago by an American publisher, Tavern Books, and translated by the American poet and translator Fady Joudah. I have no other activity besides writing. Yet I still found myself on the list of those barred from entering America. Thus, all of a sudden I am on the blacklist. Or perhaps I have been on it from the time of red berets, which has long gone, but without knowing. [...]

Read more at Jadaliyyah.