passenger in transit

I really didn’t want to write about this; it feels like using an incident that shouldn’t be used, but it’s already being used by many people. Even so, at the same time is sort of absurd not to do it, as, by the willing of my exclusive and always ironic Mr Destiny, I had to fly to London right on July 7th, 2005. Terrible coincidence. In a 3 weeks trip, where I had to go to 5 countries in 3 different continents, I had to pick July 7th to be the day to stop over at London. Not before, not after.
So, that precise day, at 10:30am, I was seating at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, waiting to take the plane to London, filing my nails (literally), drinking club soda with lemon and thinking about pregnant little birds and the immortality of the crab and then I heard about what was going on… It took me quite a while to assimilate it. Getting the idea that another terrorist attack had happened was difficult. Terrorism is something I deeply dislike; is something I hate, as I hate any other act of violence, from whomever to whomever. A terrorist act in London bothered me specially as I like the city and have quite a few very good friends that live there. But, that in top of everything it was happening the same day I was flying, leaving me with only two hours to understand and decide what I had to do… that was something beyond what I could handle rationally, at least for the first 10 minutes.
As incredible as it sounds, I kept filing my nails like a robot, while my head was spinning at 1000 rpm, although I was really not thinking what to do yet, I didn’t even know what to think about. To add to the weirdness of the scene, at the airport things were absolutely ‘normal’. They were not saying anything, the monitors where sometimes they show the news, were just concentrated on the Tour de France. Next to me there was a couple reading the newspaper, over there some business men were working on their computers. I went to the counter to ask what have they heard about my flight, about the news, about anything. The girl told me the flight was on time and we were going to board at gate F46. But, do you know what’s going on? I asked, and the answer I received was ‘Yes, and the flight will be on time and you’ll board at gate F46’. That was a clear message.
At the same time, I kept getting news about what was going on in London (thanks John, XXo) which made me felt like I was in a parallel universe. Completely paralyzed. The news were more worrying each time so I went back to the counter to see if I could change my flight for a later flight, for a next day flight, cancel my flight to London and stay in Paris, anything. But no, the flight was going to be on time and we were going to board through Gate F46 and, as my ticket had multiple stops and airlines, only my travel agency could change it. The agency wouldn’t open until 8am US time, that meant 2pm Paris time. By that time I should have been at London already, theoretically.
As the spoiled little girl I am, my next reaction was to call my mom, she would have a solution. And that made me react again… mom! My options were either to call her right then, wake her up at 5am (Venezuelan time) and tell her that there has been some terrorist attacks in London, that I was still flying there because I couldn’t change my ticket, but… not to worry? Or wait until my arrival to London and call her from there, knowing that she was going to wake up before that, she was going to listen to the news and realized her little daughter was flying right into the middle of the ‘chaos’. I thought the last option was the least cruel, it meant the least amount of ‘suffering time’, so I didn’t call. Nevertheless, every 10 min I was thinking about how much worried she was going to be and it made me feel bad every time.

Some friends that live in Europe, and knew my itinerary, started to call to my cell phone. Great friends, offering advice, places to stay and the wonderful feeling of being able to vent and talk with somebody that knew what was going on, as in Paris the people, the monitors, the announcements of the flights that were leaving, everything continued like nothing was happening at London. The conversations with my friends followed the same disorder I had in my head. We were talking about what should we do and at the next second we were talking about the horrible situation, the number of bombs, of victims, about the incident at Madrid last year. We would go back to the reality of our situation, that I should change my hotel and stay closer to the airport, that I could take a taxi to Egham and stay with one of them and then, in a split second, we were trying again to understand what was going on, what do things like this happen? Why that hate, why making innocent people pay for the guilts of the world?
The time to board the plane finally arrived and the flight left on time and we board by gate F46. Even so, as there was another plane on the runway, we didn’t take off on time. I think I was waiting for the flight to be canceled, I thought they would made us go back to the airport. But that didn’t happen. We took off just with a 20 min delay and, for the first time in my life, I was scared on a plane.
The flight was unreal, absolutely unreal. I was seating on the plane, with the safety belt securely fastened, the carry on luggage below the seat in front of us or in the upper head compartments, but we were going to a city that just had a terrorist attack and my mom was probably listening about it at that precise moment, while I was flying. And I was scared and angry and I wanted to cry, for the people in London, for the people that have those extremist ideas in their heads, for the people that were flying with me, for my mom that was going to be worried until I could call her, for this world that seems to be more complicated each day that passes by. So many things I didn’t know where to start or if I should get sad or angry. I felt absolutely worthless, a leaf in the storm, a character from a Pearl Buck novel and at the same time I felt absolutely selfish… of all possible evils on the situation I was getting a little one and I was making a huge tragedy about it.
And sitting there, with my safety belt securely fastened, I cried silently out of fear, anger, worthlessness, but most of all of disbelief, of not knowing what to do. The plane landed in London and, of course, my mom had heard the news already and was about to have a heart attack. I pretended I was calm when I talked to her, I pretended I was calm when I got on the cab and when I checked in at the hotel. The same way we all now pretend we are calm while life goes on.