The call from the Marine on duty in the U.S. consulate in this Middle Eastern country came late in the evening. I was the American consular officer, responsible for, among other things, being available for American citizens with problems.
“There’s an American lady here who says she wants help. She’s had some kind of fight with her husband, and she left him,” the Marine said. “ Her baby is with her.”
I hurriedly dressed and made my way from my house to the Marine’s post. The young American woman waited with her months old baby. I took her into the consular section where she could nurse her baby and we could talk.
She was one of many American citizens who show up, sometimes literally, on the doorstep of an American embassy or consulate asking for help. Working as a Foreign Service consular officer for the U.S. State Department, I was privileged to know some of them.
Writes one Foreign Service officer: “The most urgent calls rarely came during embassy business hours — the wee hours of the morning were much more common, no matter the country. ‘We found the body of a young American male at the airport hotel. It appears to be suicide,’ one caller reported. ‘I’m 14 years old,’ pleaded another. ‘My parents brought me here on vacation to visit family. But it turns out they want to marry me off to a 50-year-old man I don’t even know. Please help!’”
—Matthew Keene, “For Americans in Trouble Abroad, a Consular Officer May Be the Only Hope,” Washington International Diplomatic Academy,” March 21, 2021
Some of my own experiences as a consular officer included the following: An American killed by an apparent terrorist. Americans arrested for making booze in a country where any alcohol consumption was forbidden. An apparently mentally ill American showing up at the consulate needing money.
Oh, yes, we used to say. Consular officers have the best war stories, better by far than our colleagues working at more rarified heights. They visit the jails. They make welfare checks on American children of divorced parents when the child lives with the foreign parent. They check the bodies of dead Americans at the morgue before calling a relative in the States with the sad news of the death.
Working for our country is a noble occupation: A soldier serving in a foreign land or one setting up hospitals for victims of Covid-19 in the U.S. A diplomat working out an agreement for free trade or one visiting an American in a foreign jail. A U.S. Supreme Court justice deciding between differing views on the Constitution or a judge seeking the best outcome for a juvenile offender caught shoplifting.
Easy work? Often not, but justifying the honorable title of “public servant.”
The young woman with the baby I mentioned earlier? Her husband, a young man who seemed to deeply love his wife and child, came to the consulate later in the evening, and the two made up. Sometimes we witness happy endings, too.