Waiting

We are stuck in the airport waiting. Stormy West Texas weather has us festooned in Washington D.C.  In the last few weeks we have spent an entire day waiting in airports.  We have created airport games.  We have had long discussions about airport fashion and set up camp with blankets, airline pillows and portable movies.  Mostly, we have waited.

The airport in D.C is sterile and gray.  The floors are cold granite speckled with bits of embedded shiny rocks.  Passengers walk slowly to their gates anticipating a delay or race wildly across the hallway hoping to catch a flight, trailed by out of control rolling luggage.  Each seem inherently annoyed with the other.  In D.C we eat.  We eat pretzels soaked in butter, and covered with sugar.  We eat platter sized cheeseburgers and frenchfries so greezy that they discolor the paper bag with glossy oil marks.  Finally, we walk.  We walk up and down the airport corridors shopping for things we don't need.

The Doha airport is dirty but not overtly.  Secret bits of dirt hide in un-dusted corners and wedge between the gaps of off white tile.  Passengers arrive from all over the world.  Arab women seem like moving shadows.  The are covered head to toe in black, and move noiselessly past.  Only their eyes speak through the a rectangular window cut in the dark cloth.  A family or tired women disembark in brightly covered saris and reapply makeup in the airport restroom.  We drink coffee and then purchase more coffee.  We take turns chasing our son around the play place and we groan when they announce yet another flight delay.

Pigeons are roosting in the Kathmandu airport.  They are occupying a space purposed for humans and raising their young in the rafters.  We are herded into narrow rooms with shabby plastic chairs and fight for a space together to wait.  I roll my pants legs up before I go to the toilets.  The floors are perpetually wet and I squat awkwardly over a pit toilet.  There are no delay announcements but the time for our flight has long since passed.  We trade bits of information with the other passengers - some of it fact and other bits of fiction.  When the gates opens we rush the doors and I hold tightly to my son's hand.  We elbow our way up a movable staircase and onto the plane.  We join the other passengers in ignoring the flight attendant led safety briefing and wait to depart.