During these mornings waking to this biting dawn air, when doing the usual ritual of putting on my socks and jeans in a trance, zipping my thick down jacket and fumbling for a roll of toilet paper before traipsing down the dusty stairs in semi-desperation and up another to the bathroom, I’ve been having a repeated, honest thought. The cycle has come full round.
Everyone knows that at several points in life, one longs for the unfamiliar, to be taken out of the mundane routine of daily living and go for the jugular by traveling abroad. But humans carry their origins in their bones, and the memories of the familiar will start calling out at you like a Siren in the fog. (The familiar being red licorice, fifteen-minute showers, the ability to get several errands done in a single afternoon, and the beep of the microwave). There’s no avoiding it, no amount of thinking or strategic over-thinking that can chip away at the heart’s desire to be home, even if home is the gray suburban tanks of the OC. I know it’s a joke to want to return to a place that was the basis for a sitcom with blond people who have affairs and do mall shopping, versus living in shadow of a centuries-old palace and Himalayan mountains and the rays of a closer sun. But lately I’ve been having completely random, heavy thoughts like,”The Roman soldier spent an average of two years being away conquering foreign lands. How the heck did those guys manage?”
Time to go home Lian. Have a warm bath, sushi, a washing machine that can do your laundry in an hour, and catch up on the 1,472 messages in your Inbox. So now, Aamir and I are home for Christmas. Snuggled in the four square walls of a room with a white down blanket, I am typing out the rest of the chapters of my adventures that I didn’t publish since my computer died its sudden electric death in the mountains. We booked a ticket on Emirates. From Delhi, it was nice to see our flight connection to Dubai would take less than four hours: 3 hours and 45 minutes to be exact. From Dubai to LAX: 16 hours.
Emirates Airlines was a luxury. It was checking-in that was the worst experience in my life, because I got the one female employee with a sodden vendetta tucked in the folds of her neat red and beige suit. A woman airlines employee who is incompetent is worse than dealing with a female Asian driver. Far worse. Because she has the power to make every step of the 47 steps you need to take from the check-in desk to home soil a living hell.
First off, Abbass couldn’t help me carry our bags and Aamir into the airport. (Delhi international airport policy dictates if you don’t have a boarding pass, you can’t enter). We had two heavy luggage pieces loaded on a trolley and Aamir sleeping with his head lolling down in a stroller. It was a logistically impossibility, unless I was Popeye, to roll in both at the same time. Abbass watched over Aamir in the foggy morning air outside the airport door as I wheeled in the bags and check-in inside.
At the check-in desk, the Emirates lady asks, ”M’aam. Where is your son?” I tell her he’s outside being held by his father.
“You need your son here to check-in,” she tells me.
“That’s fine, I’ll get him now, but I need to leave my bags here for a moment because I can’t carry him in and roll the bags.”
“I’m sorry, you have to take the bags,” she says.
“I can’t take the trolley. You see, I can’t roll the bags and carry my son at the same time. He’s asleep in his stroller, so I’ll be right back with him. He’s with his dad outside.”
“You can’t do that m’aam. Take your bags now.”
I pause, and feel that space between my eyebrows cinch. It’s 2:30am and I lose it. If anyone knows me, I hardly get mad in public. Maybe it’s an Asian woman thing not to really get mad, just act cute. But now I’m mad. Enraged, actually. I start waving my hands in the air and spitting my words out. At the same time, my second self hovering above me says,” Congratulations. You have now become your dad. Remember how your dad lost it with the postal employees, Office Depot workers and grocery store baggers? Missy, you’ve manifested your genetic destiny.”
“DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THAT I CANNOT PHYSICALLY ROLL THE BAGS IN BECAUSE THEY ARE TOO HEAVY AND CARRY MY SON AT THE SAME TIME SO I HAVE TO LEAVE THE BAGS TO GET HIM? I AM TRAVELING ALONE WITH HIM.”
She rolls her eyes away from me for a moment. “Ok, go then, but we are not responsible if your bags are lost or stolen,” she mutters.
“FINE.” Let people steal a bag filled with teeny clothing, Hot Wheels bandaids, an ear thermometer and overnight diapers. I’m sure a thief will need those on his next run to create an airline bomb. I huff off and my eyes start tearing. I leave my bags and whiz past an old British man next in line who says “How are we going to load our bags if yours are in the way?” Bug off you British tart. I’m a mother traveling alone and don’t mess with me. I pad out to the door to retrieve Aamir in his stroller from Entrance Door 3.
The heavy luggage is loaded up and weighed.
“M’aam,” she looks at me again. “You’re bags at 13 K-G overweight. Unpack the excess weight now.”
“What?” I say. “They are overweight? How can I unpack the excess weight? Where am I going to PUT the excess weight?”
“Unpack the excess weight now,” she repeats like a dense automaton. She flits her pointing middle and forefinger to the luggage like she is directing traffic. She would do lovely in an airline emergency, I think, with the engine exploding and fire roaring out of windows. I’m sure she would stand there like a porcelain mannequin directing the panicking crowds to the door ten minutes too late.
I repeat my question. “Unpack the excess weight where? I can’t leave stuff here. What do you mean? Can’t I pay an excess weight luggage fee?”
“OK. But you have to pay US 50 dollars.”
My jaw tightens. I wait as she tip-taps the keyboard. She hands me a form of some sort and says to pay the fee at the excess baggage weight counter. I ask if I can pay by credit card, since I have no rupees, only a couple dollars, left in my wallet. She says yes. I ask where the counter is since there are about 20 counters in the island.
“It’s over there to the left,” as she waves her hand vaguely to the left. “It’s clearly labeled.”
O..kaaay. I swivel the stroller and walk around the crowds until I come to the end of the island. I haven’t spotted any clearly labelled “excess baggage fine pay here” sign, so I finally ask another employee.
“It’s over there, six counters down, where that man is standing in the black vest,” she says. My jaw tightens again. She’s pointing to a counter that is two counters away from my original point. I swivel back, duck under a divider with the stroller and carry-on bags hanging off both my shoulders, and get in line. There is no sign in existence. From here, I receive another receipt for payment. I hand over my credit card.
“M’aam, you have to pay in rupees.”
Dammit, but no point in drawing out this argument. I am directed to an ATM. When I get there, I realize I have left my ATM card with Abbass. I pad across the airport again, retrieve it, and as it turns out, the ATM machine can’t access my account. I slide back up to the counter, calves and cheeks burning, having thoroughly polished the walkway between Island J and Entrance Door 3, with printed ATM receipts crushed in my fingers written with “account not accessible at this time”.
So she does things the 80s way. She swipes the card to get the numbers off the carbon copy and hands me it to sign. I am directed back to the mental Emirates lady. She hands me my boarding passes. I look around for a nameplate so I can get her fired, but there is none. Wheeling across the polished airport floor one more time to Abbass, we embrace each other and he gives a loving kiss on Aamir’s cheek.
At the emigration gate, I am asked, after standing in line for several minutes, where my emigration forms are. I was never given them. Out the door I go, and retrieve it from the Emirates desk. Damn her again. Thank God Aamir is sedated with sleep.
At the security gate, I am asked where my luggage tags are so I can get the security stamp for my carry-ons. I was never given them. At this point, my brain is running at a high-pitch. I now have a silent karmic cloud storming over my head whose frothy furls are being directed at the Emirates lady. May she never get good marriage prospects in India, I curse. The security guy hands me two generic tags that are bright yellow and marked bolded with big black “X”s, which obviously stand for “loser who forgot to get luggage tags at check-in”.
At the security X-ray check, I am asked by a woman to fold up the stroller with Aamir sleeping in it. Gently, I tug at his shoulders and lift him onto my shoulder. “Can I get some assistance please?” I ask. She stares blankly and does nothing before another man standing in line folds my stroller and pushes it onto the metal rollers. Stepping through the gate, the security men are laughing and chit chatting amid their boredom. The bags are sitting there. Just sitting there. No one is pushing them through. Then one guy has the insight to shove them along so we can all get this journey started. I’m trying to retrieve my bags and stroller while carrying a sleeping child, which are out of reach. “Excuse me, can you hand me my bags?” I ask. A man tosses them over, and goes back to chatting. These people hate their jobs, I tell myself. And we board the plane for the first leg of our journey.
For the brief moment we were in that glittering city called Dubai, I already sensed what the fame was all about. The airport gleaned in the named of commerce and consumerism, with wide, polished walkways and byways, shining silver columns, and the alternating opaque and clear green expanses of curved glass surrounding every port. Outbound flights to all the major cities in the world were leaving every ten minutes: London, San Francisco, Capetown, Amsterdam, Beijing…the list was enormous. But I knew traditionalism underlined the glitterati when I passed by an ad for a healthcare company that showed a family. The man was dressed with a traditional sheik head covering and his wife, donning Gucci glasses and red lipstick, had her head and neck completely covered in a black scarf. The husband was tossing their pride and joy firstborn son in the air. Aha.
While in transit through this glittering castle, I realize with horror while looking at our second set of boarding passes that the mental Emirates lady in Delhi has assigned seats to Aamir and me in separate rows, smack in the middle of the plane without access to aisle nor window. I gasp. This was a war I already lost the first moment I got in line. That Delhi lady actually had it out for me. She had a black vendetta after I lay my first harsh words into her. Or…maybe she’s so clueless that she’s just stupidly incompetent. She probably just broke up with her fifth boyfriend in a row. Her green eyeshadow was pasted on…
“Lian Jue?”
I’m handed our passports and called into the plane. If anyone has had a chance to fly Emirates, I hope you will agree with me on this: Recall that period in history where the white European was flopping around on his farm with a couple of serfs and barely making it to age 30 in the midst of the Dark Ages, with all previous knowledge, libraries and awareness of the arts destroyed by the “barbarians” of the east? Meanwhile, during this same time period, the Arab Muslims were kicking Europe to the B-side by figuring out eye surgery, inventing algebra and navigational instruments for the seas, and creating stunning homages to Allah within the walls and delicate tiles of the most beautiful mosques in existence. That, my friends, is how it feels to ride Emirates. Because American and United Airlines can weep in their sad era of the Middle Ages as Emirates excels. The last time I rode on an American-brand plane, the seats wafted of old synthetic cloth gone bad and metallic coating, which was like a being surrounded by a cage. I don’t think they had cleaned their headrests for around 15 years.
Emirates’ video monitors had around 500 movies, television shows and updated news feeds. You can use your mobile phone while flying. The stewardesses are such a pretty lot, although they greet you with these odd hats that have a curtain on one side, which logistically, I’m still trying to figure out how that works and for what purpose. They give you fresh lime water and warm steaming towels. Aamir’s snack box consisted of baked ring chips, fresh apple slices, dried fruit, a chocolate cupcake, small colored Mentos candy, and a fun-colored toothbrush, accompanied by a thick activity book and colored pencils. His meal was chicken nuggets in the shape of stars, corn and peas with mash potatoes, and marshmallows in red, sparkling jello for dessert, all with big kids utensils in purple, green and yellow. He slept most of the way and played with the stewards in the back of the plane while shuffling on the floor in his “tiger” persona. Eventually I ignored him, especially in the last five hours, and kicked back watching interrupted episodes of Inception (excellent), Splice (kind of bad) and Eat Pray Love (boring) as Aamir spilled his toy cars across the seats.
I think we were over the northern regions of Canada making our way down the Americas at one point when I actually looked out. The small window cut in the plane door showed a brilliant red sun that developed into a piercing heavenly light cutting over a plain of clouds and uncharted mountainous terrain covered with sand and encrusted with cold. It was a naked unveiling of the land, completely pristine and barren, the first morning in the world, and the light even more beautiful and pure than most mornings I had encountered in the Himalaya. We were high above the earth in the furthest reaches of the atmosphere, and the shades of light emitted colors that blended together without interruption: light blue into orchid pink into gold into white. My mind went blank and became flooded with happiness.
When we landed, the Los Angeles rain swept through the concrete corridors outside the airport. The nice thing about travel these days is people don’t realize you can go to any place on earth in under 24-hours. It takes twenty hours or less to go from the capital of India where I was feasting on ladoo and relaxing on the steps of the Old Red Mosque to the suburbs of Orange County where I’m doing laundry in an eco-friendly washer. Less than one day. I’m also having the creeping feeling that, maybe its India that is actually the base and the US that is the place for the visit, that my heart is slowly turning its original orientation inside-out. There comes a point in your life where American money can only take you so far before the real reason for living takes over. Shopping, world news, the informational “how-to’s” that penetrated every minute of my American life from seven months ago are all faded. It feels good to be unhinged, at least for the moment.
Happy Holidays everyone.
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