Part V Options

After hearing that instead of a diplomatic passport, Edwin was now the proud owner of a tourist passport, I started exploring options.

Perhaps we could take him to Egypt on his tourist passport, and then get his diplomatic one later. The only problem with that option, however, would be that he had an entry visa on one passport, and an exit visa on another, which evidently governments that keep track of those things (ours doesn't) don't like.

Perhaps we could bring him in on his tourist passport and use it to leave this summer, and then take him back on his diplomatic passport. However, if somebody at the border decided that they didn't like that the girls and I had diplomatic passports while he had a tourist passport, they would have free license to put Edwin and me on a plane ride back to the U.S. My mother wouldn't have been happy about playing babysitter while we tried to get back to Egypt.

Perhaps we could re-apply for a diplomatic passport. That would require Brandon to sign and have notarized another one of those pesky forms, which then would have to be sent back to the U.S. And Sunday was a holiday, which means that it would be in the mail on Monday, January 18 and at best in NC a week later - the week our plane tickets are scheduled for. And then we'd have to apply for the passport, FedEx it to DC, get a passport made, have it sent back to NC, sign it, FedEx it back to DC, have the Egyptian visas affixed, and have it sent back to NC - in 4 days.

Perhaps we could get someone at the Special Issuance Agency to find all of the paperwork from Edwin's first passport and have it re-made into a diplomatic passport. But would they do that? Was it possible? The only way we could know was to call. And so I did.