The Invisible Armada

2025/08/20

連續三天的奔波，從平靜的台灣島嶼，到葉門那受創的心臟。這趟旅程不僅僅是地理上的移動，而是一場精神與身體的雙重經驗——它深深刻進記憶，並逼問關於人性、權力、疏離，以及通行尊嚴的問題。

旅程從台北機場開始。這裡評斷一個人，不是基於最基本的人性或公平，而是基於護照。葉門護照不是單純的身份證件，而是一種束縛——它限制選擇，製造簽證門檻，讓原本輕鬆穿梭的機場，成為一道道政治圍牆。甚至連「過境」香港都需要簽證。穿越不再是自由的行為，而是一種政治特權。

台灣、曼谷、馬斯喀特 (Muscat)、再到塞拉萊 (Salalah)。每一站都帶著不同的意義，每一章都昭示著一個現代世界：權利不是基於尊嚴，而是基於文件。如果不是薩那 (Sanaa) 機場被炸毀、關閉，若不是通往首都的通道被變成地緣政治的障礙，這段旅程本可以更短。

在曼谷機場，當我遞出登機證時，航空公司人員示意我靠邊，指著登機口旁的一張椅子，等待確認我是否持有經由陸路進入阿曼的電子簽證。我陷入焦躁的等待。

分秒過去，乘客們開始登機，懷疑開始啃咬我的心。眼看著他們一一平靜地走向登機口，有人路過時甚至好奇地看我一眼，而我卻被懸置於一種尷尬的不確定裡。若簽證不及時批准，我該怎麼辦？買新票？還是回台灣，從頭再來？

這種張力並不只是旅行的瑣碎，而是更深的東西。對某些人，機場只是中轉點；但對另一些人，它卻成了等待、懷疑與沉默不安的場所。

在馬斯喀特機場過夜時，我看到一場無聲的社會切割劇。豪華貴賓室裡的人，安然、平靜，啜著咖啡、滑著手機、讀著報紙。而角落裡，移工們躺在地板上，身上是洗得發白的傳統衣裳，緊抱著破舊的行李袋，眼神只在尋找睡眠或靜默。

他們「在場」，卻不屬於此地。他們的每個細節都說明他們是不速之客。他們不是「訪客」，而是「經濟必需品」，被刻意安置在邊角，不該被看見。

我與一名孟加拉清潔工坐在一起。他友善，渴望交談。一聽我來自葉門，他立刻問：「你要回葉門嗎？」顯然，他已遇過不少經陸路過境的葉門人。我們談到他的辛苦與孤獨，談到他村裡的家人。

他沒說自己「驕傲」。這個字眼從未出口。但當他談到自己如何養家，如何讓家人生活改善、能夠有飯吃、有屋住、有教育、有希望時，他的聲音開始有力，眼神筆直，手勢清晰有力。甚至笑容都變得堅定。他不再是「工人」對我說話，而是以一個帶來改變者的姿態陳述。我忽然覺得，尊嚴就住在他的一舉一動裡，不需要許可證，只要被看見、被感受。那是一場無聲卻深刻的小小勝利，不以金額衡量，而以影響生命的力量來見證。

機場有大有小，有奢華有簡陋，有香水味也有吵雜聲；但不變的，是一種重複上演的感覺：一進入此地，你就是嫌疑人。安檢不是例行，而是再一次的「懷疑儀式」。

鞋子脫下，皮帶解開，口袋清空，雙臂展開。沒有人大聲喝令，但每一雙眼睛都在傳遞訊息：你必須合作，必須顯得合作，甚至還要感激。感激他們「保護」你的安全，感激他們允許你通過。

安檢是一種教條，不需解釋，不容質疑。每個人都冷靜而精準地演好自己的角色。沒有人問為什麼。可我卻想：那些摧毀國家、驅逐人民的人，他們也被檢查嗎？他們的行李也要經過輸送帶嗎？那持外交護照的腐敗官員，會被問及去向嗎？抑或他們總是微笑著、順利通行、轉身遺忘？

在這場戲碼裡，我不再像旅人，而更像一名暫時的嫌犯，等待在沉默屈辱裡被准予通行。

清晨，我抵達塞拉萊的飯店。疲憊不堪，然而入住時間是下午兩點。我完成手續後，請櫃檯幫我保管行李。對方看了我一眼，淡淡一句：「房間空著，你現在就進去吧。」他微笑著把鑰匙交給我。

這個瞬間，讓我想起台灣的某間飯店。我提早不到一小時到達，前台也完成了手續，但要求我必須等到兩點。這不是針對我，而是「系統」——兩點就是兩點，提早一刻鐘都要算一晚的費用。

差異不僅是「靈活」與否，而是體制邏輯的差別。一個是精準的資本主義時鐘，把時間切成商品出售；另一個則是一個普通員工的善意決定，把舒適暫時放在金錢之前。

這並非「違反制度」，而是跳出了市場邏輯。這樣的小小人情，給了我一種短暫的歸屬感，一種因禮貌與樸實而加溫的親切。

從塞拉萊搭巴士到塞雲 (Seiyun)，再轉車前往薩那，橫跨一千七百多公里斷裂的道路。我坐在前排，後方是一位婦人與成年兒子，另一位帶著兩個孩子。我們得決定：走官方道路，滿是檢查哨與勒索，還是冒險穿越沙漠？

我們選了沙漠。沒有檢查哨，沒有刁難，只有沙。但這沙不是沉靜的。幾公里一段，就會看到燒毀的車殼、駱駝屍體，或是地雷警告牌。即便如此，那片天空、沙丘的曲線、地平線上的落日，又帶來奇異的美。

最終，我們回到官方道路。無數檢查哨。一點賄賂，一次扣留，通行仰賴「正確」的證件，還要配合官員喜歡的語氣。

歷經二十多個小時，我終於抵達薩那。身心俱疲，其他人亦然。我看著司機打電話：「我兩天後還有新行程。」那一刻我才驚覺，我眼裡的煉獄，不過是他日常的一環。

這趟旅程帶給我的，不只是疲憊的身體，而是一種更沉重的東西——一種清晰感，不是理論上的理解，而是從親身穿越、觸摸現實地形後才有的體悟。

這不是從島嶼到沙漠的單純遷移，而是一場在階級與權力縫隙間的穿梭：法律被設計來排斥而非便民；護照能替某些人開門，卻為另一些人上鎖；經濟體系把舒適變成有條件的商品，而陌生人與移工得付出雙倍代價，卻無聲、無訴。

在路途中的每一個機場，每一道邊境，「家鄉」都不是目的地，而是一個被反覆質疑、檢驗的概念。難以抵達，不是因為距離，而是因為政治築下的牆，與戰爭留下的傷痕。

（英譯中：陳韋勳）

Original version ----------------------------------------------------

Three days of continuous travel, from the calm island of Taiwan to the wounded heart of Yemen. The journey was not merely a geographic passage between stations, but a spiritual and physical experience one that carved into memory, raising questions about humanity, authority, alienation, and the dignity of passage.

The journey began at Taipei Airport, where one is not judged by basic human qualities or fairness, but by their passport. A Yemeni passport is not merely a document of identity ; it is a constraint that narrows your options and imposes visa requirements to pass through airports that others breeze through like clouds. Even a "transit" in Hong Kong technically not an entry required a visa. Crossing becomes a privilege, and travel itself a political luxury.

From Taiwan to Bangkok, Muscat, and then to Salalah, each stop carried a distinct meaning, each a chapter in the modern world, where rights are granted not on the basis of human dignity, but of documentation. The journey might have been shorter, had Sana’a Airport not been bombed and closed turning access to the capital into a geopolitical obstacle.

At Bangkok Airport, when I handed my boarding pass to the airline staff, they asked me to step aside and pointed to a chair near the boarding gate, while they awaited confirmation of my electronic visa to transit through Oman by land. I found myself in a state of anxious waiting.

As the minutes passed and passengers began boarding the plane, doubt crept in. I watched others walk calmly toward the gate, some glancing at me as they passed. I sat there, suspended caught between scrutiny and uncertainty. What if the approval didn’t come in time ? Should I buy a new ticket to Oman ? Or return to Taiwan and start all over again ?

This tension wasn’t just about travel logistics it ran deeper. For some, an airport is simply a point of transit. But for others, it became a place of waiting, questioning, and silent unease.

During the night I spent in Muscat Airport, I found myself observing a silent visual play of a divided society. In the luxurious lounges sat those who could afford it calm, composed, sipping coffee, reading, or talking on smartphones. In the dim corners, migrant workers lay on the ground, dressed in worn traditional clothes, clinging to tattered bags, with eyes that searched only for sleep or silence.

They were there, in the same place, but they did not belong. Strangers in every detail. Even the architecture of the space seemed designed to keep them at the margins not as visitors, but as an "economic necessity" that must not be seen.
I sat with a Bangladeshi cleaner. He was friendly and ready to talk. When he learned I was from Yemen, he immediately asked, "Are you on your way to Yemen ?" He had certainly met many Yemenis crossing overland. We talked about his hard work and difficult conditions, about his long alienation, and about his family in his village.

He didn’t say he was proud ; he didn’t utter the word. But when he started telling me how he was able to support them, how their situation had changed thanks to the money he sent, and how his family was now able to provide food, shelter, education, and hope for a better future, his voice grew stronger. His gaze straightened. His hands, which had been moving hesitantly, now painted clear pictures in the air. Even his smile became more stable. He wasn’t talking to me as a strange worker but as a man who made a difference. I felt as if dignity resided in every detail of his movements, not needing a permit, but simply seen and felt. That moment was a silent declaration of a small but profound victory, not measured by money, but by its impact on the lives of those he loved.

Airports may differ in size, luxury, or simplicity, in quietness or noise, in the scent of perfumes or in their lounges that expand and shrink depending on their location in the world. But what never changes is this recurring feeling that you are a person under suspicion from the moment you enter, and that security procedures are a stage where this suspicion is re-enacted.

In the airport of all airports, the same rituals were repeated : take off your shoes, remove your belt, empty your pockets, extend your arms. No voice is raised, but everyone around you conveys the message : you must be cooperative, appear cooperative, and even grateful. Grateful that they are looking out for your safety, as well as allowing you to pass.

Security there was like a doctrine, with no need for explanation or questioning. Everyone played their part with cold precision ; no one asked, no one objected. But I asked myself : did those who destroyed countries and displaced their people undergo the same rituals ? Did one of their bags stand on the conveyor belt to be inspected ? Was a corrupt official, carrying a diplomatic passport, asked about their destination ? Or do privileges go uninspected, passing by, smiling, and forgetting ?

In this scene, I no longer felt like a traveler, but a temporary suspect awaiting permission for a passage conditioned on silent humiliation.

I arrived at the hotel in Salalah in the early morning. I was completely exhausted, while the clock hands indicated that room check-in wouldn’t be until 2:00 PM. I completed the procedures calmly and asked the receptionist to keep my bags until the time came.

He looked at me and then said simply, "The room is empty... why don’t you go in now ?"

He handed me the key with a smile.

At that moment, another scene came back to my mind, from a hotel in Taiwan. I had arrived less than an hour before the official time. I finished the procedures, and the employee asked me to wait. It wasn’t anything personal, just a system that didn’t allow deviation. 2:00 PM is 2:00 PM. Everything before it is calculated as a full night that must be paid for.

Here, the difference seemed more than just personal flexibility. It’s a reflection of a precise capitalist mechanism that knows how to calculate time and cut it into salable units. Not because the room isn’t ready, but because the delay means more payment.

The Salalah hotel employee’s action wasn’t "outside the system," but outside the logic of the market. His simple, humane decision broke an unwritten rule : in the world of hotels, comfort isn’t the priority... pricing is the principle.

And so, between Taiwan and Salalah, the difference wasn’t in time or structure... but in the logic of profit—and in a small space of empathy that gave me a temporary feeling of belonging, made warmer by the politeness and simplicity of the people of Salalah.

From Salalah by bus, I set off for Seiyun, then to Sanaa by car, across more than 1,700 kilometers of cut-off roads. In the car, I was in the front seat, and behind me were two women one with her adult son and the other with two children. We had to decide : should we take the official road full of security checkpoints, or take the desert ?

We chose the desert. There were no checkpoints or extortion, just sand. But it wasn’t still sand. Every few kilometers, there was a burnt-out vehicle, a camel carcass, or a sign warning of landmines. And yet, there was a certain beauty in this situation : the wide sky, the curves of the dunes, and the sun touching the horizon.

Then we returned to the official roads. Countless checkpoints. A bribe here, a detention there, passage conditional on carrying the "right" ID and on a tone of conversation that pleases the one in charge.

I arrived in Sanaa after a journey that lasted more than twenty hours. I was exhausted, and others were like me. I saw the driver talking on his phone : "I have a new trip in two days." Only then did I realize that what I saw as hell was his routine.

I didn’t return from my journey with just an exhausted body, but with something heavier, a clarity that isn’t like theoretical understanding, but one that is acquired from passing through, from directly touching the world’s terrain as it is, without beautification or simplification.

The journey wasn’t a transition from an island to a desert, but a subtle passage through class and authority, from laws designed to exclude rather than facilitate, to passports that open doors for some and close them for others, to an economy that offers comfort as a conditional commodity, while the stranger and the migrant pay a double price, without a voice or objection.

At every airport, at every border crossing, the homeland appeared as an idea being tested, not as a destination. A homeland that is difficult to reach, not because of the distance, but because of the barriers imposed by politics and the scars left by war.