LAST CALL FOR PASSENGERS TRAVELLING TO CAIRO

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LAST CALL FOR PAASSENGERS TRAVELLING TO CAIRO

I’m back at Heathrow. I’ve just finished a bottle of water. The container is thin and blue and empty. It feels odd, like holding a bird or a cloud. Or maybe it just feels frustratingly pointless because it’s empty and I’m so tired, tired from flying overnight, landing in London at midnight, taking the Underground into central London at two o’clock in the morning, walking through Hyde Park at 3 AM, up Piccadilly and down Bond Street and past De Beers at 4 AM, past Nelson’s Column at 4:30 AM and into Ames Park to fall down on the dew wet grass at 5AM and sleep among the geese. I move into the sun when it is high enough. It warms my back, and my head rests on my laptop. I wake hours later to find someone has set out hundreds of deck chairs all around me, green striped canvas slung on sturdy wooden frames. They are all empty and faced into the sun. I wipe the drool and walk across a little bridge. I look left and see the giant Ferris wheel at Waterloo Millennium Park, and to the right I see Buckingham Palace and the gold leaf above Queen Victoria drenched in sunlight. There are thousands of people of all stripes and colors walking and lounging. Ducks honk. One pelican walks along on the tarred path, his feet flopping, the size of Frisbees.

But now, back in Terminal 4, I’m terribly bothered as I hold the plastic bottle, because there is no place to toss it, no barrel or bin into which I can arc it and hear the plasticdumprecyclerattle. As I get more agitated I realize, “Of course there are no rubbish bins. That’s so no one can plant a bomb. So no one can toss in an innocent looking water bottle filled with plastic explosives. So I place the featherweight container down on a table, trying to look as casual as possible.

As I do this, a Muslim family rumbles past me. Mother is head-scarfed and wheeling a loaded luggage cart. Trailing behind her is a gaggle of six dark children, the little girls all wearing black hijabs. We are in a little corridor with five boxy arcade machines. The first one has a turret-mounted black machine gun atop it. The oldest girl, maybe she’s 12, jumps up on the platform and lines up the sights. I immediately see the photograph and I’m sure it’s a Pulitzer Prize winner. A little girl, with that head covering that’s come to symbolize so much, hunkered down behind a machine gun in a crowded airport. Then her mother turns and sees what I am seeing. She yells and the girl jumps down, and then her brother jumps up and grabs the gun. Mom yells again.

What is Mom thinking as her eyes shoot from her daughter to my eyes and back to her son? I know what I am thinking. I am thinking that an innocent action, one that any kid would take while being dragged through an airport, is transformed these days into something that looks to me to be so charged. And I am wondering, “Does this mother feel a moment of panic when she sees what I see, when she sees me looking at what she sees. Or am I reading too much into this, and she is simply another bedraggled mother trying to herd her flock of five through an international airport?”

I suspect the former.

“Last call for passengers traveling to Cairo,” the voice filters down amidst the bustle.

Then they all disappear around a corner and I am following slowly, wide eyed and exhausted.

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Photos

Ferris Wheel
The giant Ferris wheel at Millenium Park

Elephant
A glimpse of things to come

Buckingham
The Queen is at home but refuses to see me

Comments

[Rhonda]

Great to see you arrived halfway. Wonderful visual of London in the wee hours and the fatigue at the airport.