'The city where they give you a garden when you ask for a...

I am not only an accidental Houstonian. I may also be a freak accident of Houston.

On the last day of December, around fifteen years ago, I went to visit the U.S. embassy in Venezuela. A few days before, I'd been asked to come discuss my "unusual situation" with the Consul.

I wanted a visa to visit the United States. I was an editor for a financial daily in Caracas, but I was co-producing a series of video documentaries that were to be shown at the Rice Media Center. It was part of a program called Artists in a Trance, organized by Rice University's anthropology department and the Transart Foundation of Houston.

At the embassy, the consul said, basically, "You are a Cuban, and we can't give visitors' visas from other countries to Cubans." I wondered why he'd even made me come to the appointment. The answer was NO, and he could have told me that earlier without protocol! Denied!

The consul opened my passport and studied it while making conversation about my career as journalist in Venezuela.

More Information Olivia P. Tallet is a reporter for La Voz, the Chronicle's Spanish-language publication. On Thursdays, "Accidental Houstonian" tells coming-to-Houston stories. To share yours, email st.john.smith@chron.com.

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"You know, if you go to the United States, you can stay there legally?" he said in Spanish.

He seemed to think that everyone and their mothers were trying to find one way or another to immigrate to the U.S. Why would I want to stay there? I was doing well. I had a good job. I loved Venezuela!

"I didn't know that, Señor Consul," I said. "I think a lot of people do it illegally."

"We have a law that allows you to do it because you are Cuban," he said. "Look, I'm going to make an exception so you don't have to go all the way to Cuba. Here is your visa."

Later that day, I was on a plane to the country I'd been raised to believe was the epitome of worldwide imperialism. Of Texas, I knew only, "Houston, we have a problem." And I was heading straight for that problem.

I had lived in a capitalist Venezuela for six years. But still, the U.S. was the epitome of capitalism. And the sound of America reverberated in my mind, echoing with all ads and propaganda that I'd ever heard: individualism, power, ethnocentrism, consumerism, the evils, the big blondies with pistol-packing mentalities, the bullies. I was sure everyone had that mean Dirty Harry face. (Oh, but wasn't he handsome, that Clint Eastwood!)

The friend who picked us up at the Houston's airport tried to spark our interest in the Philip Johnsons, Albert Finns and downtown's other beautiful skyscrapers. But I was an earthscraper, staring straight out the window at the streets, trying to figure out where all the people were. The night had only just begun to hug the city in its darkness. In my world, the Latin American and Caribbean world, the night was the cream of the day, the time of social happenings and cultural indulgences. In Houston, it was empty.

I was used to Latin America, a world of human baroque. Cuba was still present in my mind; there, even speaking we sound like tambourines and drums -- rhythmic, with a beat. The silence of Houston seemed like an encounter with nothingness.

But as I got to know the city, I began to see the lights of Houstonian faces.

"Hey," a stranger said. Another person gave me a gesture of recognition -- not because he recognized me, but almost in recognition of the fact that he didn't know me. It took me a while to understand that these gestures and "heys" were directed to me.

I also didn't understand when, at four-way stop signs, drivers would politely motion for me to go first. Driving in Venezuela is what Americans call "dog eat dog." There, driving had seemed like the introduction of an Indiana Jones movie, with hostile forces preventing me from reaching a hard-to-find destination on some ancient map. No one ever stopped or waved you on.

The light of Houstonian faces. Like the man that I met in the supermarket the first time I went grocery shopping, when my English vocabulary wasn't enough to ask where the eggs were. I started making hand motions and gestures, along with noises for an egg on a frying pan. Instead of making fun of me, he gave me that big Houston smile and showed me the way.

After three months, it was time for me to return to Venezuela, and I did. But only to pick up a couple of bags -- just the few things that I really needed to restart my life in Houston. I didn't want to come with any baggage, including the preconceived stereotypes about the U.S. that I'd had until Houston shattered them. In the city where they give you a garden when you ask for a salad, who wants baggage?

Since then, I've left Houston for years at a time. I worked as a stringer for the Spanish news agency EFE. For four years, I was a foreign correspondent in Azerbaijan, Singapore and Indonesia, and learned about many other countries.

I could have settled somewhere else. My mother kept reminding me that Cuba is always there. But I kept returning to Houston. No matter how many times I came back, thinking that it was temporary, I ended up finding that Houston is my home. I'd made a life not only in America, but in my America, in Houston. Where Houstonians always make me feel like a Houstonian.

I love the light in their faces. The light in their eyes.

When I ask myself what it means to be a Houstonian, I think it is about understanding what it means to come from somewhere else. After all, aren't we all just here by accident?