PART I – THE SETTING

I was in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, and in several weeks I would be traveling to China over the 15,397-foot Khunjerab Pass, the highest paved border crossing in the world.  And so I needed to obtain a Chinese visa.  One month earlier I had been in India and considered getting the visa there.  But when I called the Chinese embassy in New Delhi, they assured me it would be a breeze to pick one up in Islamabad.  “Are you sure?” I asked the woman on the other end of the phone.  “Yes,” the cheerful voice replied.

I trusted her.

Islamabad, Pakistan

PART II – THE EVENT

What the woman did not say – and, to give her the benefit of the doubt, what she possibly did not know – is that the Great Wall of China is alive and well, and that it surrounds the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad.  To reach Islamabad’s fortress-like diplomatic enclave, you must, after handing over your backpack and camera to a woman whose job it is to safeguard your things, board a special shuttle bus which is waved through the enclave gate by a smiling, bearded Pashtun with a machine gun.  The bus then drops you off at the desired embassy—French, American, or, in my case, Chinese—and then you proceed to a line.  Except, that is, at the Chinese Embassy, which has no line.

I emerged from the bus into a swarm of some 200 men and three women who were pressed against a chain, begging the Pakistani police to let us into the embassy grounds, which lay beyond this monstrous wall.  It was a desperate sight.  Being, it seemed, the only non-Pakistani, I thought I’d be let through the embassy gate.  I was naïve.

For an hour I tried to understand the system.  I alone was getting a straight-forward tourist visa; others were applying for more complicated business or student visas.  Several men were traveling to Beijing for a textile convention.  And at least a dozen young people (including a female, who was escorted by her father) held acceptance letters to Chinese universities and language centers.  To stand outside the embassy was to remember that China is an emerging superpower, and people throughout the region are anxious to get their foot in the door.

I learned what many people were hoping to do in China, but I was no closer to understanding how one gets into the embassy until a man approached me and kindly offered the sickening rules: you will need to return tomorrow at 4:00 a.m. and wait to be given a token, which will gain you entrance by noon, if you are lucky.

The news left me distraught.  Another local approached, anxious to remind me that all men are created equal, “You will have to wait in queue…we’ve been here four days, so you should be patient.” That depressed me, and also made me want to say, But I’m only allowed to be in Pakistan thirty days; you live here!

Frantic—it was now 11:30 a.m., half an hour before the embassy closed—I walked from the consular section to the main gate.  Inside the glass-enclosed security guard room at the gate sat the first Chinese man I had seen.  He laughed heartily at my request for help—“I only need a tourist visa”—and shook his head as he returned to his magazine.  I paced the wall for some minutes and then returned to the main gate.  Desperate—and recalling the solitary figure who stood before the column of tanks outside Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989—I walked in front of the main security camera, waved wildly for a moment, and then stood ramrod straight, staring into the lens, my passport in hand.  It was an embarrassing maneuver—and became even more so when I slammed my passport into the ground after two minutes of no response—but these were desperate times.  Tomorrow I had to be in Peshawar, and this was the only day I could apply for a visa.  Perhaps someone with compassion would be watching the monitor.  Perhaps even someone who rooted for the students in 1989.

But no one came.  At 11:55 a.m. I returned to the Pakistani officer-in-charge and from across the chain stared him in the eye.  People began to encourage me: Try tomorrow.  Tomorrow will be better.  But they didn’t understand, and so I stared at the officer still, always mumbling please, unsure if I should appear rabid or innocent or lost or sad or mad.  As noon crept closer I began, literally, to kneel, ready to beg before all gathered.  I felt the crowd’s pity building.  Perhaps if I could win the crowd to my side the officer would relent.  I had to get to China.

A man next to me, who had been sympathizing with my plight, suddenly roared, “Thanks be to God!”  I watched wide-eyed as the officer loosened the chain and instructed me to rise.  He was a reluctant savior, but it didn’t matter.  I, who had been struck helpless and low for two hours, could now proceed on my way across Asia.  To the man who had yelled “Thanks be to God,” I responded, “il-hamdulillah,” which is both Urdu and Arabic for the same thing.  With many in the crowd now smiling, I slipped past the chain and into the open door.

I had crossed the Great Wall.

Joel Carillet, chief editor of Wandering Educators, is a freelance writer and photographer based in Tennessee. He is the author of 30 Reasons to Travel: Photographs and Reflections from Southeast Asia. To learn more about him, follow his regular photoblog, or purchase images, visit www.joelcarillet.com