Passage 3
My heart sank when the man at the immigration counter gestured to the back room. I'm an American born and raised, and this was Miami, where I live, but they weren't quite ready to let me in yet.
“Please wait in here, Ms.Abujaber,” the immigration officer said. My husband, with his very American last name, accompanied me. He was getting used to this. The same thing had happened recently in Canada when I'd flown to Montreal to speak at a book event. That time they held me for 45 minutes. Today we were returning from a literary festival in Jamaica, and I was startled that I was being sent “in back” once again.
The officer behind the counter called me up and said, “Miss, your name looks like the name of someone who's on our wanted list. We're going to have to check you out with Washington.”
“How long will it take?”
“Hard to say ... a few minutes,” he said. “We'll call you when we're ready for you.” After an hour, Washington still hadn't decided anything about me. “Isn't this computerized?”
I asked at the counter. “Can't you just look me up?”
Just a few more minutes, they assured me.
After an hour and a half, I pulled my cell phone out to call the friends I was supposed to meet that evening. An officer rushed over. “No phones!” he said. “For all we know you could be calling a terrorist cell and giving them information.”
“I'm just a university professor,” I said. My voice came out in a squeak.
“Of course you are. And we take people like you out of here in leg irons every day.”
I put my phone away.
My husband and 1 were getting hungry and tired. Whole families had been brought into the waiting room, and the place was packed with excitable children, exhausted parents, even a flight attendant.
I wanted to scream, to jump on a chair and shout: “I'm an American citizen; a novelist; 1 probably teach English literature to your children.” Or would that all be counted against me?
After two hours in detention, I was approached by one of the officers. “You're free to go,” he said. No explanation or apologies. For a moment, neither of us moved, we were still in shock.
Then we leaped to our feet.
“Oh, one more thing.” He handed me a tattered photocopy with an address on it. “If you weren't happy with your treatment, you can write to this agency.”
“Will they respond?” I asked.
“I don't know—I don't know of anyone who's ever written to them before.” Then he added, “By the way, this will probably keep happening each time you travel internationally.”
“What can I do to keep it from happening again?”
He smiled the empty smile we'd seen all day. “Absolutely nothing.”
After telling several friends about our ordeal, probably the most frequent advice I've heard in response is to change my name. Twenty years ago, my own graduate school writing professor advised me to write under a pen name so that publishers wouldn't stick me in what he called “the ethnic ghetto”—a separate, secondary shelf in the bookstore. But a name is an integral part of anyone's personal and professional identity -just like the town you're born in and the place where you're raised.
Like my father, I'll keep the name, but my airport experience has given me a whole new perspective on what diversity and tolerance are supposed to mean. I had no idea that being an American would ever be this hard.
The author was held at the airport because ________.
细节题。根据文章第三段第一句后半句“Miss, your name looks like the name of someone who's on our wanted list.”可知作者被滞留在机场因为她的名字和恐怖主义者相似，故B项为正确答案。
She was not allowed to call her friends because ________.
细节题。根据文章第八段最后一句“For all we know you could be calling a terrorist cell and giving them information.”可知作者不被允许打电话给朋友，因为她的身份还没有证实，故A项为正确答案。
We learn from the passage that the author would ________ to prevent similar experience from happening again.
细节题。根据文章倒数第二段第一句“After telling several friends about our ordeal, probably the most frequent advice I've heard in response is to change my name.”可知作者可能会换名字，以防类似的事情再发 生，故D项为正确答案。
Her experiences indicate that there still exists ________ in the US.
推理题。根据文章倒数第二段第二句“Twenty years ago, my own graduate school writing professor advised me to write under a pen name so that publishers wouldn't stick me in what he called ‘the ethnic ghetto’”可 以推断出在美国存在歧视，故B项为正确答案。
The author sounds ________ in the last paragraph.
推理题。ironic具有讽刺意味的。impatient没有耐心的。bitter痛苦的。worried担忧的。根据文章最后 一段最后一句“I had no idea that being an American would ever be this hard.”可知作者有讽刺的口气，故D项为 正确答案。