Is the Border Officer in a Good Mood?

Traveling With My Muslim & Queer Friend When The World Still Builds Walls

Travel, in theory, is supposed to free you: shed clothes, shed routine, shed pretense. Love it.

But travel, in practice, often just reveals who the world still thinks you are. I’ve learned this standing beside my friend at Heathrow immigration—same flight, same passports, same jet‑lagged delirium. I’m waved through: a shrug, a stamp, done. He? Pulled aside. Politely. Professionally. With a kind of cautious smile that says: We’re watching. We’re going to keep watching.

Growing up in South Africa, I thought I understood borders. I saw laws draped over people to decide who moved freely—and who didn’t. I saw privilege codified in paperwork. I marveled at how an entire system could demand proof of belonging—only to deny it with the same breath. It taught me early what it meant to pass, and what it meant to be stopped. Add in my queerness here for an extra delight!

Where Borders Become Personal

So when I see my friend pulled aside again—this time under a new version of a Muslim Ban, dressed up in sanitized rhetoric and “extreme vetting” language—I feel it. The same mechanics at work: fear disguised as policy, identity turned into suspicion, citizenship into question marks.

Islamophobia isn’t always loud. It’s not always Twitter storms or call‑out mobs. Sometimes it’s a screen that flags a booking. A hotel that “can’t find” your reservation. A car rental clerk who asks one extra question too many. The way he squeezes his prayer mat in the bag, the way he checks whether saying “Inshallah” might delay him.

And still he travels—with purpose, with kindness, with a quiet strategy earned by repetition. He doesn’t perform bravery. He just exists in a world that seems determined to convince him he shouldn’t.

Islamophobia isn’t always loud.

But let’s make it harder: can you imagine being Muslim and queer? The same friend pulls off that double truth every single day. He used to live in the U.S. He loved it. Until the current administration came for him. He saw the patterns returning—names changed, countries rotated, same outcome: suspicion prioritized over humanity. So he packed up and returned to Europe—because basic safety shouldn’t depend on pointing your passport at someone. Fuckers.

People like him don’t need saving or storytelling. They need justice. They need visas that don’t presuppose guilt. They need borders that don’t make identity an interrogation. And they need friends like me to speak—not for them, but with them. To say: this isn’t okay.

What Travel Writing Often Gets Wrong

Travel writing today is mostly “Five things to eat in Barcelona.” But what if instead we asked: what made you feel something? When did you lose yourself, or find yourself? What broke your heart? What opened it? That’s the kind of writing I want us to make—because real travel changes you, doesn’t just entertain.

I’m not trading lists or “hot takes” for this. I’m trading complacency.

Because until we can all cross borders without the added weight of someone assuming we’re dangerous, we’re not free. We’re just moving in a neat circle. And maybe the real liberation isn’t about boarding passes. It’s about dismantling the idea that some lives are less worthy of passage—and some people less welcome simply because they exist.

Until then, I’ll keep traveling with him. And keep noticing the difference between his world and mine. Our ease isn’t the same. And that’s not travel. That’s privilege disguised oh-so-well.

Oh by the way the Trump travel ban is in effect if you missed that, with more changes coming soon.. Here is what you should know plus the changes coming down the pike.

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