Stuck in Traffic

I've heard the foreign service testing and clearance process described as "a long journey". It's certainly long in temporal terms, but I'm not as sure that much ground is actually covered. I prefer instead to think of it taking a cab in a crowded city with a friendly, mildly drunk driver. There's a general sense of unease, punctuated with terror, exhilaration, and, occasionally, bursts of nauseatingly frenetic activity which leads you to believe that you're getting closer... until your driver once again slams on the breaks and you wind up lying on the floor in the middle of a pile of papers.

The appropriate analogy for adjudications would probably involve a traffic cop who wants to "quickly" make sure that you've never had a serious traffic violation (like aiding and abetting terrorists or forgetting to signal) anytime in the last ten years. I've been pulled over for the last twenty weeks or so while they review my file for whatever red flags were inevitably raised.

Heaven knows that the Chadhas always signal,* so I'm confident we'll ultimately receive a favorable decision. That doesn't stop me from making my bi-weekly update call to the security clearance customer service line. I don't generally like to bother people, but the advice that I've received is that these things sometimes need a gentle nudge. In my case, the real mystery has been over who needs the nudging, since they're having trouble tracking down who my assigned adjudicator is. My calls have prompted a few emails, which I imagine to be equivalent to blowing the car horn a little, and, as everyone who has ever lived in Cairo knows: constant honking is an elegant and efficient solution to intractable traffic issues.

*This is literally true in the case of Ms. Chadha. I have never seen a more conscientious driver in my life. You could set your watch by the position of her hands on the steering wheel, provided that the time was always exactly 10 :10.