There’s nothing quite like spending a night in an airport detention facility due to racist immigration policies to really kick-start that existential crisis you’ve been putting off. That’s more or less the whole story in Mohamed Asem’s slim but revealing memoir, Stranger in the Pen (out on Portland’s Perfect Day Publishing).
On his return to the UK from a vacation, immigration officials at the Gatwick Airport stop Asem and direct him to the airport’s detention “pen” for further screening. To them, Asem doesn’t fit into any of their boxes. He’s a financially independent Kuwaiti man who was born in the United States, was raised in Paris, graduated with an MFA in fiction from a university in London, and looks almost exactly like former French president Nicolas Sarkozy. For those sins—in addition to the sin of having Mohamed as a first name—the authorities are suspicious enough to hold him in the pen. Ultimately, Asem is confined for being cool.
