Dubai: Rainbow Dash, a one-year-old stuffed pony toy, recently exited and entered the country with a stamp from UAE immigration officers on her handmade ‘passport’.
Carried by Nuha Khan, aged six, who ensured her soft toy had a passport just like her in order to be able to travel, Rainbow Dash was treated like any other traveller at Dubai International Airport.
The grade one student at a Dubai school had created a dummy passport for her precious soft toy, out of the understanding that every traveller would need a passport, her mother said.
When it was time to go to her home country on vacation, immigration officers at the airport were gracious enough to stamp it as confirmation.
“Every time we travel, Nuha asks me about the need to carry a passport and I have to explain it to her. When it was time for us to go to India for Eid, she began wondering how her toy would travel without any documents,” Nuha’s mother, Uzma Fatima, said.
Not wanting to leave her toy behind, little Nuha made her own dummy passport for the toy, out of a denim tag and inserted papers with all the toy’s details, including her photo and nationality, but her parents never thought it would catch the immigration officers’ attention.
“When we reached the immigration counter, my daughter requested the immigration officer for a stamp on her Rainbow Dash toy’s passport. The officer was very friendly and he immediately took approval from his team leader and stamped the dummy passport, just to make my daughter happy,” she said.
On Wednesday, when the family returned back to Dubai, Nuha again requested for an entry stamp. To their surprise, the officer laughed and stamped her toy’s dummy passport once again.
“We were so impressed by how respectful, attentive, supportive and authentically caring and friendly the immigration officers were to us,” said Fatima. “They made us all really happy. I am sure Nuha will keep the stamped passport forever.”
