A sign with “Turkish Airlines” written in felt-tip pen had suddenly appeared over a desk in the departures hall. A corpulent woman with a headscarf presided over it, broadly gesticulating to the passengers to put their luggage on the ancient scales.
There weren’t many of us traveling to Istanbul, just a scant group of tired-looking Turkish men in tattered clothes with dusty hair. I figured they must be construction workers who had come to Afghanistan to make some money building roads, dams, who knows what, for a big reconstruction project.
Imo’s fellow passengers had definitely been more cosmopolitan: an assortment of do-gooders and consultants with whom she was bound to be arguing about international strategies, exchanging cards and finding mutual acquaintances. My travel companions, on the other hand, didn’t speak English, had calloused hands, cheap quilted jackets, plastic shoes ill-suited to the snow. They looked weary and exhaled the acrid smell of cheap cigarettes. Once my luggage was on the scale, the woman with the headscarf at the counter gave me a handwritten card that I presumed was my boarding pass. Someone pushed me towards the long line for passport control. I was the only woman on this flight. Apart from the workers with that forlorn look of returning emigrants, there was no other Westerner as such and not a single Afghan.
Once we were through security and passport control, we were herded by soldiers up some steep, narrow steps that looked more like the stairs of an apartment building, but in fact they led to the departure lounge. There were no signs anywhere in the airport, or indications of any kind; I felt I was being constantly prodded, directed, driven on by orders, gun barrels suddenly pointed, showing the way.
When we got to the gate—a large room, empty except for two rows of plastic chairs and a window where a man was selling biscuits and tea in plastic cups—I slipped into that reassuring limbo that awaits every traveler after he’s been checked, stamped and scanned. We had finally entered the space that was no longer the country we were coming from, or the one we were on our way to, but the gap in between, the non-place of supreme suspension that would lead straight to the desired direction like a needle pointing steadfastly north on a compass.
The minute I had entered the gate I had felt a completely new state of mind envelop me. It was the smug gratification of the traveler who has finished making allowances, participating, who no longer needs to understand or share. Here I was at last, the passenger who thinks only of what awaits ahead: my first real espresso, my own bed with crisp, clean sheets.
I had at least an hour before they’d start boarding. I could close my eyes and take a nap at last.
I awoke with a jolt.
The alarm set in my subconscious had gone off, alerting me I had been asleep on my plastic chair way too long; by now we should have already boarded the flight.
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a crowd gathering at the back of the room. But something wasn’t quite right: instead of going through the last check and boarding the plane, my fellow passengers were heading in the opposite direction, the one we had come in from. And, although they had their backs to me, I sensed that their posture bore nothing of the usual excitement that people about to board a plane show. There was no buoyancy in that crowd. Something was off, I could smell it.
At the back of the room I saw—another worrying signal—a soldier waving the barrel of his gun, funneling the passengers into an orderly line.
“I don’t believe this,” I groaned to myself.
They were turning back.
Yes, they were leaving the departure lounge and were being herded by the guard towards the same narrow stairway we had trudged up in single file earlier on.
“What’s going on here? Why is everybody leaving?” I started asking haphazardly of no one in particular. I felt a terrible sense of foreboding.
“Where are you going?” I almost yelled to one of the Turkish workers, who shrugged and flung his hands heavenward.
“No English. No English.”
But his companion, a man with a gray moustache who looked like a mangy old wolf, waved his hand with the typical gesture that erased everything and banished all hope.
“Flight cancel, flight cancel.”
“What do you mean,
canceled
? Why?”
Now the soldier was signaling directly at me, indicating that I too was supposed to follow the others. By now the entire lounge had emptied out. The only ones left were me and the cleaning woman with a blue headscarf, trailing a bucket and an old broom behind her. I looked at the spectral deserted space, the empty black plastic chairs, the crumpled chips packets on the floor, the ashtrays brimming with butts.
“Flight cancel,” the soldier repeated. “No fly today.” And he signaled to me that I had to leave too.
Outside, the snow had picked up more heavily than before.
“Why have they canceled the flight?” I asked the soldier. “Is it because of the snow?”
He just made an imperious gesture with the muzzle of his machine gun, indicating that I was to move on, period. The cleaning woman had started to mop a rag over the floor of the empty room.
Down in departures, it was chaos. The passengers were swarming around the desk where only a couple of hours earlier we’d been issued our handwritten boarding passes by the heavy woman with the headscarf. Now the same woman was screeching in Dari, and she held a wad of boarding passes in her hand. This time, though, she wasn’t handing them out but taking them back. I watched the passengers return the strip of paper that had conferred upon us the status of almost-in-flight, of no-longer-subject-to-the-laws-of-this-country. I leaned across the counter close to her.
“When is the next flight? I absolutely have to leave today!” I said haughtily, as if I were the only one among the crowd who had this pressing need.
But the woman didn’t bother to give me any kind of indication.
“No flight, go home,” she repeated, reaching for my boarding pass. I readily withdrew it, as if this piece of paper with the Turkish Airlines logo on it were the last hope I had of ever getting on a plane. I knew that handing it in would amount to losing my citizenship as an almost-in-flight, and I would have to go back to being just another still-grounded.
The woman pointed to a pile of suitcases stacked near the conveyor belt. They too had been spat out from the belly of the plane and had now snuck back to us. I watched the Turkish workers as they retrieved their luggage from the mound. None of them had the desperate look that I had. This seemed to be merely the umpteenth hindrance, yet another of the many setbacks they must be used to enduring. None of them wasted time arguing, trying to get their point across, none of them demanded to speak to the airport manager. They all submitted and headed outside again, disgruntled, lugging their baggage. They knew perfectly well that there was no one in charge, no supervisor, no airport manager; that, in short, there was no hope.
The room had rapidly emptied. There were only two bags left. Mine.
The woman had managed to snatch the boarding pass from my hand at last. A man in overalls was tapping on my metal case. He gestured for me to take it.
“When is the next flight out? What am I supposed to do?”
They both shook their heads, “No flight, no flight, cancel.”
“Yes, all right, but when? WHEN?”
They shrugged and started locking up. The woman detached the handwritten sign with our flight number and reached for a fake-leather purse with a zipper from underneath the counter. She grabbed her coat. It was time to go home. Both she and the man in the overalls began to walk away.
By now it had become clear to me that this was not an airport like any other, where stranded passengers could sleep on the floor while waiting for the next flight. This was more like a military zone where civilians had to obey orders and shut up.
I quickly took stock of the situation: all I had was a fifty-euro note and some change in local currency. Imo was going to be in the air for the next fourteen hours. I tried Pierre’s cell and it was off. It was Friday night, and I knew he went to the country for the weekend; I also remembered him saying proudly that he always turned his mobile off on weekends, to de-stress. I didn’t have Hanif’s number either: Imo had always been the one in charge and I’d never thought I would need to have it. I didn’t even remember the address of Babur’s Lodge. I knew that as soon as I found myself out in the parking lot with my suitcases, I’d be lost.
Suddenly I saw him from behind. He was still wearing his
pakol,
his green cargo pants, a heavy sweater. A tuft of blond hair stuck out from under his cap. He carried only a canvas bag flung over his shoulder, as if he were going away for the weekend. I saw him head for the exit too, but more slowly than the others because he was engrossed in the display of his cell, either checking or sending a text.
“Hey! Hey, wait!”
I leapt at him.
“What happened? Why did they cancel the flight? Did they tell you when the next plane is?”
The Blond slowly lifted his eyes from the display. He didn’t seem surprised to see me, maybe he pretended not to recognize me, or maybe he really didn’t have a clue who I was because he’d never bothered to look me in the face before.
“I don’t know,” he said listlessly. “Could be the weather. Or maybe a bomb.”
“A bomb? Where?”
“I don’t know, I heard something.”
The Blond shrugged and kept walking toward the exit. I followed him, struggling with my two suitcases. He didn’t offer to help me.
Outside, the parking lot was nearly empty. The Turkish workers had almost all dispersed. There were only a few parked cars left.
“But what happens now? When’s the next flight? Were you going to Istanbul too?” I babbled in a torrent, tailing him. The Blond was my last hope. If I let him go, I knew I’d be left in the snow together with a handful of soldiers with moustaches and machine guns.
“Nobody knows. They cancel flights every second day here. You have to keep going back to the airport every day until you manage to get on a plane.”
He was heading for his car. I was right behind him. I realized I was in such a panic I might just burst into tears in front of him.
“No, listen, hey, excuse me…wait.” I made a gesture of trying to stop him as he turned his back on me. He was already fiddling with the car keys, considering our exchange over and that I’d be off about my business.
“Listen, can you just wait a minute? I…I can’t stay here, I don’t even know where to go…I haven’t…”
The Blond looked at me, not exactly alarmed, but he was beginning to realize that getting rid of me was going to be more complicated than he had bargained for. I moved closer and put my hand on the car door that he had just opened.
“…I don’t know where my driver is, the journalist I was with has left, I have no money for a taxi…I…” As I listed all the certainties that I had lost, I actually did start to cry.
A few seconds went by. In the meantime, the Blond was staring over the roof of the car, his gaze unfocused, like someone trying to look away from an embarrassing scene. He patted his pocket, searching for a packet of cigarettes. He pulled one out with his teeth.
“Don’t you remember me? My colleague and I were staying at Babur’s Lodge too last week. I was in the room opposite…”
But the Blond jerked his chin, a sort of assent that, however, also seemed to mean “Move it, get in and shut up.” Which I instantly did.
The Blond’s car reeked of dirty socks and cigarettes. It was full of stuff—boxes, muddy boots, electrical gear, a car battery, pages ripped from old magazines thrown on the floor. I spotted an ad for a hunting rifle on one of them. I wiped my nose on my coat sleeve. The Blond put the car into first gear and drove through the checkpoint, with a quick salute to the guard as if they were old acquaintances. He kept his gaze straight ahead; he wasn’t thrilled to have me on board.
The traffic was infernal. It was a different frenzy from the usual one, as if the level of tension had risen exponentially. American soldiers were flailing their arms with frantic, hysterical gestures in front of the many roadblocks we encountered. Sirens wailed in the distance. The Blond braked and got out of the car. I watched him cross the road, stop in front of the soldiers and show them something, some sort of ID, I supposed. He showed it with the same rapid gesture that plainclothes cops use in movies when they pull out their badge to get into an off-limits area. They talked for a bit. The soldiers gesticulated, pointing in a certain direction. The Blond scratched his chin and then shambled, slow and gangly, back to the car. I didn’t expect any explanation, but I gave it a moment. Then, after he reversed, once we were back on the road, I cleared my throat.
“What did they say? Is there a problem?”
“A bomb. They blew up sixteen people.”
“Where?”
“On the way to the Canadian base, by the Darulaman Palace.”
“The one with all those holes, on the hill?”
The Blond nodded, slowly lowering his eyelids.
“Oh, my God. We were right in front of it just a few days ago. The journalist and I with our fixer,” I said, as if the fact that I had narrowly avoided that explosion could shake him, rouse in him the desire to look me in the face—this person restored to life, escaped from death—and perhaps be a little nicer to me. But instead, the Blond kept his eyes on the road and scowled.
“They plant them on purpose, the bastards, where everybody goes past.”
The Blond pulled up at the sentry box outside Babur’s Lodge. He waved at the armed guard, the other responded and opened the gate.
“There,” he said.
“You’re not getting out?”
“No, I’m not staying here anymore.”
“Ah,” I said, not even bothering to conceal my disappointment.
At this point even the Blond had turned into a familiar figure, one whom I didn’t want to leave.
“All right, then. Well, thanks for the ride, it was very kind of you.”
He didn’t reply. He waited for the guard to take my suitcases out and screeched away in reverse as if the bomb about to explode was me.