322. A love letter to my new country

America Is Still the Future A love letter to my new country. By Andrew Sullivan By the time the court opened, there were around two dozen of us in line, nervously fiddling with our official papers. I was recovering from a brief but brutal stomach flu, which meant I hadn’t eaten in two days and had split open my lip in a mad, half-asleep rush to the bathroom two nights before. Ashen-white, I looked like I’d just been punched in the face. They gave us all a number, handed us a packet, and instructed us not to take photographs after the judge walked in. A man in a shiny suit proceeded to entertain us intermittently for half an hour with some almost-funny jokes. And then, at long last, the judge walked in, we all stood up, and it began. Judge Mehta told us this was his favorite part of the job, and that he had immigrated to the U.S. from India as a child. A few weeks before, my naturalization interview had been with a man with an Arabic last name — and a Redskins helmet on his cabinet. Standing around me now, my fellow newbie Americans came from all over the world: Iran, Honduras, Ethiopia, and Canada, among other countries. Only two of us, as I recall, were white. I had waited 32 years for this moment. My own immigration journey had been long and gradual and winding — and this day, I hoped, would be a day to savor, an emotional upswelling, a final untying of so many knots of feelings that had crowded my psyche since I’d first arrived here. But it was also December 1, 2016. A few weeks before, an election had taken place that had capped more than a year of gnawing, deepening anxiety in my gut. To become a citizen now was, for me, a final act of faith; but it was also like stepping into an elevator expecting to go up and then suddenly sinking. There was joy here, shot through with nausea.