A passport adrift, the owner, a gift

Goodbye passport!

“Please, respect me.” That is what she said from the bedroom where she had sequestered herself, having been seen from the car park barely half an hour earlier by my partner as he picked up a passport that appeared to have been flung out of a window on one of the higher floors of our apartment block.

I know people can be going through a lot of things, unexplainable or inexplicable, but it is impossible to fully understand the issues people face. I say this because it was an utterly bizarre situation.

Brian, on returning to our apartment this afternoon, saw a document land in front of him. He picked it up and realised it was a South African passport. As he examined it, he scanned the façade of the apartment block to see which window it might have come from, and in the corner of one window, he saw a lady; he waved to her, and she waved back. He even waved the passport at her, and she must have been waving goodbye to the passport.

No online footprint

I saw the passport, and it became clear how important the document was; it had a recently obtained Schengen visa with a year’s validity. We thought whoever might have lost that passport would be in turmoil once they realised it was missing. We searched Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, and Instagram but found no sign of the person.

If there was ever a time you needed a searchable online presence, it is now. We contacted our apartment landlord to find out how to share information with the residents of the building, and meanwhile, Brian went up to the apartment where he suspected the lady he had waved to was. No one came to the door except a young man claiming to be her brother. It was not definitive enough for us to give him the passport.

No proof of ownership

So, we went back up with him in the hope of confirming that the lady he saw earlier was the rightful owner of the passport, but she refused to come out of her room. However, while we were speaking with her brother, she made the statement quoted at the beginning.

Obviously, as gentlemen, we had no intention of invading her privacy or causing her distress; at the same time, we could not part with the document without a secure transfer to the owner or a responsible authority, such as the facilities management team of the apartment complex. In extremis, we will have to hand the document over to a police station.

The facilities management team suggested we put the passport in their letterbox, but it was insecure; we simply did not have the heart to part with the document that easily.

Consider the reasons

However, it made us question why the lady was not eager to get her passport back and whether she had deliberately thrown it out of the window out of pique or total disinterest in the visa, which had been obtained for her against her wishes.

This brings us back to the idea that people might be experiencing much more than a seemingly great opportunity suggests. Maybe she is afraid of travelling to an unfamiliar place, and I understand how daunting that can be.

Then there are instances of young women being forced into criminal activities, either as victims of human trafficking or acting as drug mules. You can never tell. Losing a passport like that might even save someone from an unimaginable fate at customs or border controls abroad.

Perhaps, the best course of action is to hand the passport over to the police so they can assist her if something suspicious is occurring. We tried to help as considerate Good Samaritans, but found ourselves in a difficult situation, and honestly, just surrendering it to the police seems the simplest solution.

Postscript

We had a torrid night, thinking the worst of the situation that the lady might be under the influence of criminal gangs who might attempt a home invasion to demand the passport, before teaching us an unforgettable lesson.

We also decided to take the passport to the nearest police station in the morning. As I called an Uber cab ride when I stepped into the elevator to see a Frenchman ask if we were in a numbered apartment.

He happened to be the husband, and he showed me the identity card of the lady on his phone. I invited him into the apartment, and as he was narrating his helplessness at the plight of his wife, he broke down.

She had thrown the passport out of the window and had some as yet undiagnosed mental health issues, which her parent attributed to some spiritual gift she has. Well, every gift is under the control of the gifted, that is scripture without equivocation. If your gift controls you, we are a different territory of personality disorder and whatever that entails.

We advised him to seek the best professional and medical help he could find, and he should approach this as a Westerner rather than trying to understand the cultural differences that might handicap him.

Having handed him the passport, we heaved a sigh of relief. On our return home, there was an ambulance in the car park, and we saw the husband in the lift with the medics. We have no idea what might have happened; we just hoped all would turn out right.