(I’m SO gonna end up in Guantanamo for this post. See why I use a nom de plume?)

I was digging through some of my old stuff the other night and came across my passport from when I was a teen. I was 12 when I got it, it expired when I was 17.

This wasn’t just any passport. I’ve had a million passports (okay, probably not QUITE that many…) but this one…

THIS ONE was….

Illegal.

Okay, okay. Illegal is perhaps too strong of a word. Technically, it’s against the law to have two active American passports (unless you’re Jason Bourne, apparently) and this was my second passport–I already had one that I was using, and continued to use the whole time I had this second one. My acquiring a second passport was necessary because in order to get into some of the Arab nations surrounding the country of Israel, you aren’t allowed to have ANY HEBREW IN YOUR PASSPORT. Which pretty much SUCKS if, say, you flew into Tel Aviv first and they happened to stamp your passport, as is the norm when you land in any country! Then let’s say you were planning to travel to, say, Amman, Jordan.

Which I did. And I was.

And so in a little American Consulate in East Jerusalem, my shady passport was concocted. I’ve been an unconvicted felon ever since.

snicker

Even with the new shiny passport, getting into Jordan was no easy feat. Tensions were so high in the region (imagine that!) that even though Amman is only about an hour’s drive away from Jerusalem, the border was closed. So, naturally, being the adventurous family that we were, we snuck in.

Okay, okay! Again, I’m being a bit over dramatic! We didn’t “sneak” in, in that we weren’t doing anything wrong. The four of us (my older brother, my parents, and I) woke up early in the morning and took a taxi to the southern end of Israel and from there we walked across the border into Egypt. Once in Egypt, we boarded a rickety old bus that took us across the Suez Canal and on to the Red Sea. From there, we took a commuter’s ferry to Aqaba, Jordan where, since we were coming from Egypt and there was no Hebrew in my passport, no one was suspicious that perhaps we’d been in Israel just hours before. And we were let into the country without a scene.

What could have been an hour’s drive was a 24 hour ordeal.

Anyway, the stamps in the passport include Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Germany, Austria, Italy, The U.K. (multiple times!), and, of course, the USA.

Not bad, considering the passport was technically illegal.