Waterloo, Canada
Agenda
Go Home
This story begins on Saturday, two days
ago, or something like that. Crossing time zones confounds the
telling of this story as days compress and expand with each leg of
the journey until you can barely tell where you are, or how long
you've been there. All is well as long as you have your passport, a
boarding pass, and a President's Choice granola bar in your pocket,
right? Does two out of three count?
Let's start on Saturday morning. We had
finished touring the day before, so for the first time in two weeks,
there was no early morning wake-up call. Instead, I could lie in and
enjoy the luxury of the the Old Winter Palace Hotel. In theory. But
two weeks of early mornings can be habit forming, and I woke up at
5:30 am anyway, just as the sky was brightening from black to deep
blue, and then through all the dusty shades of red and orange as the
sun broke free of the horizon, and the day began in earnest.
I spent a lot of time on Saturday
writing. Or trying to write, because I don't have anything to show
for it. After two weeks of touring, I wanted to give these notes a
proper ending, a big production number where everyone is dancing in
formal evening attire. The boy gets the girl, the music swells, the
chorus sings us out, and the final credits roll.
But no such luck. I was tired and just
wanted to go home. So let me tell you about that – the going home
part, and we'll have to make do with whatever show biz drama we can
wring out of it.
Gayle, Lloyd, Tove, Bill and Margaret,
Ahmed, and I left the Old Winter Palace at 8:30 pm. Outside, a
minivan was waiting, and as our luggage was loaded, Gayle and I
noticed that some speech was being played at top volume on a nearby
radio. The speaker was delivering it in Arabic, but it had the same
cadence and feel as one of Adolph Hitler's harangues from Nuremberg.
Odd. But there was no time to ponder these things as it was Time To
Go. Ali Blue-Eyes, the taxi driver and felucca captain appeared at
the last moment to bid us farewell, giving a happy wave though the
van window. There were smiles all around as we pulled away, bound for
the airport.
Airports are curious places. They are a
place you go to in order to go somewhere else. They have no other
intrinsic reason for being; no one builds an airport as a local
attraction, or as part of a new condo development.
A good airport is a predictable
airport. A certain amount of blandishment is acceptable, but its
basic operation must be comprehensible to travelers of all nations
and cultures. You show your papers, you check your baggage, go
through security, then stroll through an ersatz mall for hours on end
until you come round to the idea that you really do need a new $2000
watch, or a magnum of perfume, or a 5 kg box of chocolates.
Eventually, your flight is called, and you leave with a herd of other
happy travelers.
That's how it's supposed to go.
When we arrived at the airport, we
threw our bags onto an x-ray belt, and passed through the first metal
detector of the night. As we waited for the machines to do their
work, we noticed the same radio broadcast was playing here too, a
full twenty minutes after we had heard it outside the hotel. “It's
the President,” said Ahmed, “talking about the 6th of
October.”
Of course. We were flying on October 6,
the day Egypt started the war to take back the Sinai. Armed Forces
day. No wonder it sounded like a Nazi rally, but the similarity
between the two dismayed me.
But never mind all that. Here's the
plan: Gayle, Lloyd, Tove, and I are flying together, first to Cairo
at 10:30 pm, then to Frankfurt at 4:00 am, then to Toronto at 2:50
pm, arriving at 4:50 pm local time, the following day, refreshed and
relaxed. We check our bags all the way to Toronto, and pick up the
three boarding passes we need for the journey home. Except for Tove.
For her, they will only send her as far as Cairo, where they insist
she must pick up her bags and check in again for the remaining
flights because “they are on a separate ticket”.
Really? It looks like the same ticket
to our eyes. And even if it isn't, why should that matter? A
protracted discussion ensues between the ticket agent (whose English
is fair at best), and Ahmed (whose English is excellent) and us (who
are strangers to these kinds of nuances). Minutes pass, and when it
becomes clear that there will be no enlightenment on our part this
evening, we shrug and just accept it, even though it sounds like a
pointless exercise. You have to pick your battles, and we did not
have the home team advantage.
The flight to Cairo went off without
incident. Arriving at the terminal, we said goodbye to Ahmed who was
returning to his home in the city, but only “au revoir” to Tove
whom we expected to see again once she had collected her luggage and
had checked in again. Gayle, Lloyd, and I lit off to the gate for
our next flight, and hunkered down in an empty airport to kill four
hours before we left for Frankfurt.
They say that life is short, but it
seldom seems that way when you have time on your hands. Lloyd and I
discussed the nature of consciousness, while Gayle wisely cat napped
on the terminal floor. Some time later, when the conversation had
turned to favourite Star Trek episodes (original series), Gayle asked
the obvious question: Where is
everyone? Looking around, we were the only people in that part of the
airport. Shouldn't there be more people here? And where's Tove?
We
checked the gate number on our boarding passes. We were at the right
gate. Absolutely. And yet the complete lack of other passengers made
it feel like the wrong gate. A vague unease began to stir inside us.
I
looked over at the boarding pass in Lloyd's hands. “How come we're
not sitting together?” I asked. Now that was
odd because we had prebooked our seats weeks ago. (If you're going
to have to step over someone in order to get to an airplane bathroom,
I think it's best if they are already dear friends.) Maybe there's a
Lufthansa agent nearby who can fix this, we thought, and started
looking for one. In the Cairo airport, in the middle of the night,
in a deserted terminal. This took a while, but you probably already
guessed that.
*
* *
“There
you are!” We looked up and saw Tove striding towards us. “They
wouldn't let me in without a boarding pass, so I had to leave them my
passport,” she said. It took a few moments for her meaning to
become clear. The flight had been delayed, she said, and they
wouldn't give her a boarding pass for it, but she had been allowed
into the terminal to find us.
Delayed.
The word send my mind racing – For how long? Why? And what about
our connecting flight to Toronto? How would we change that flight?...
Racing, as I say, but then fatigue steps on the clutch and puts the
brain in a neutral, and you spend a long moment looking into
someone's face, thinking … nothing. “Oh,” I said.
Eventually,
we connected with a Lufthansa agent in a back office in the airport,
not usually accessible to customers. He looked up from our boarding
passes, and cheerfully announced that our flight had been delayed.
Well, canceled, actually. It would fly again at noon the next day.
“It was the towers in Frankfurt,” he said cryptically. “They
closed at 11:00.” We took this to mean that our airplane had not
left Frankfurt the night before because the aircraft control tower
had shut down for some reason, so there was no plane here in Cairo
for us to board. “Is there anything you can do to help us get to
Toronto?” we asked. He was all smiles. “I will need your
boarding passes, and your luggage tags, and your passports. It will
take 15, maybe 20 minutes.” He looked around, then pointed to a
wall of padded benches in the main ticketing hall. “Why don't you
wait there, and I will be back in about 20 minutes.” And then he
was gone.
This
was fine. Our group was together, and we were being looked after, in
the Cairo airport, in the middle of the night. “I really have to
lie down now,” Lloyd said, and he stretched out on a couch and shut
his eyes.
I was
feeling it too. Staying up late always makes my stomach feel
stretched, but we had to stay awake in case the agent returned with
out Golden Tickets home. Standing helps. It's harder to slide into
sleep if you're standing. And singing can raise your spirits, so
that's what we did. The assorted works of Cole Porter and Monty
Python. It would have helped to have a firmer grip on the lyrics, but
at 3:00 in the morning, much can be forgiven.
Thirty
minutes had passed since we had seen the Lufthansa agent. I checked
my watch again. Yup – thirty minutes. And then he appeared, still
chipper, saying “You're the four going to Toronto? Don't worry.
We're looking after your passports, and we're still working on it.”
And then his disappeared again.
Don't
worry? Why would I worry that we seemed stuck an empty airport, and
had given our passports to a fellow whose name we hadn't noted, and
who comes and goes like Jesus? Why would that worry me?
It was
about that time that the airport staff started to clean the ticketing
hall we were in. A small team drove riding tile washers – wheezing
one-man Zambonies that shot water on the floor, then vacuumed it up
with sickle-shaped squeegees. Back and forth, back and forth, right
where we were waiting. They cleaned around Lloyd, who continued to
sleep on his couch.
Three
o'clock passed into memory, as did four o'clock. And despite the
agent's best and sound advice, I did begin to wonder about our
passports. What if this fellow's shift ended before we saw him
again? How long could we sit in the airport without being asked to
leave? Could we stay here indefinitely, like Tom Hanks does in “The
Terminal”? I put the question to the group. “Who was the woman
in that?” someone asked. “Stanley Tucci was the best part of that
movie,” I answered. This sort of broken repartee is typical of
early morning conversations where more is thought than actually said.
“Catherine Zeta Jones,” someone says, and we all nod sagely and
lapse into amicable silence.
It
wasn't until around 5:00 o'clock that I saw Gayle madly waving at me
from across the ticketing hall. Our agent had reappeared with
boarding passes in hand. We were booked onto an Egypt Air flight at
9:30 am to Heathrow, and then at 3:00 pm, an Air Canada flight to
Toronto. He returned out passports, gave us our baggage claim tags,
and vouchers for breakfast in the terminal food court. Never have you
seen a group of people express their gratitude so completely and
sincerely. He walked us past security, pointed out our gate, wished
us a good journey, and was off.
From
anxiety to exultation in minutes! And we had breakfast vouchers! Wow.
All transgressions are forgiven with a free meal. Now all we had to
do was wait for the restaurant to open, and we were in business. It's
surprising how a plate of broiled tomato, cold fried egg, and tepid
eggplant can bring you right back to life, just in time to enjoy the
next curve ball that life is about to throw you.
*
* *
I
adore Egypt Air. It's logo is the falcon head of the Ancient
Egyptian god Horus, but if that doesn't impress you, the fact that
all the seats are well-spaced, even in steerage, should. And on this
flight, we were flying in a brand-new Boeing 777 – designed by
computers, specially optimized to use less fuel, and to be quieter
than the previous generation of wide-body aircraft. The long-legged
nerd in me is delighted beyond words. I can't wait to get aboard.
But we have to wait, because there are 300 other passengers going
with us, and everyone's carry-ons have to be x-rayed (again), and
their passports checked (twice) and their boarding passes inspected
(twice). We leave Cairo 45 minutes late, but once the wheels left
the tarmac, you could practically hear a choir of angels singing us
up into the clouds. Egypt was finally done with us.
But
Heathrow wasn't. We landed late, which meant that we had only 60
minutes to get out of the plane, clear security, find the gate, and
get on the next jet. All this, while mildly dazed from having stayed
up the night before. It felt a bit like this:
Walking. Walking. Connecting
flights. Walking. Walking.
Security. Why has the line stopped?
Losing time. Too much time. Remove major electronics from your bag.
X-ray. Body scan. Where's Lloyd's bags? What do you mean they didn't
get through the machine? Put them through now for God's sake! Where's
Tove? Don't lose anyone.
Gate? Got it. Which way? There's a
sign. Follow it. Time... time.
Wait – wrong sign. That way!
Where is everyone? Point the way, keep moving. Go, go, go.
At the gate. They know we're coming.
How many more? Here they come now. Scan the boarding pass. Our row
is boarding. Onto the plane. Stow my stuff. Butt in the seat. Buckle
up. Throttle up.
And into the sky we go.
Lloyd
is sitting to my left. We are both exhausted, greasy, and frazzled. I
turn to him and say, “Hello.” It is the most normal thing I can
think to say.
*
* *
The
rest of our Flight From Egypt passes with relative calm. There are
airplane meals, and films in the seat backs, and customs to go
through in Toronto, and luggage to collect, and then... and then...
And
then you are home. In your bed. Or rather, I'm home,
in my bed, looking up at the bedroom ceiling, thinking “I'm home,”
as much to convince myself as anything. For the last few days, a room
in the Old Winter Palace had become my home, and this place I was in
now had started to become abstract – more like the idea
of home, rather than home itself. And now that I was here, looking
around at all the familiar things about my house, I felt a faint pang
of unease. Is this really my home? Or just another hotel that I am
passing through, a way-station? Take a long enough view, and that's
all anything can ever be. A long view is a lifetime, or maybe more –
a yawning history stretching for centuries, or millennia, as far away
in time as the pharaohs and the pyramids...
And
then I slept.
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