Chapter One, maybe...

Chapter One: Paris 2003

Airports, by the very nature of their existence, are not places we want to be. Or so she thought. This was dead time. A transition from A to B which could only be waited out, be endured. A milling swarm, an ant nest without the purpose or direction. That was her first impression. Observing now, she could make out patterns in their movements, sense, almost, in their randomness. There was a steady stream to the bank of video screens announcing departures. There was a rapid discussion, sometimes heated, often confused, as voyagers disputed the meaning of the information thus presented. Typically someone, and usually a man, she noted somewhat glumly, would cut short such discussions and lead his tribe off in one direction with impressive confidence. Surveying the scene, she was playfully satisfied to note that it was more than once that such a group returned only to set of in a new direction, their guide reduced to trailing the rear, protesting the logic of his error. She considered the airport as an analogy of her own life: on hold, between destinations, waiting, in fact, to live. One stage finished, another to begin. And now, until something happened, something as yet unknown and buried beyond herself, she was in limbo. She liked the image, content to be blown as an autumnal leaf. Then she saw that it wasn’t such an apt image after all. She wasn’t allowing life to direct her arbitrarily; she was taking charge, choosing her destination, setting the ground rules. It was more a leap of faith, stepping out over the water, and trusting to luck, love and life to break her fall, envelop her and lead her home.

She amused herself with trying to recognize different nationalities as they passed, differing in their roaming, traipsing and prowling according to a benign melding of social programming and DNA. The Japanese were easy, preceded by their ubiquitous shutter-click stereotype. A stereotype, after all, she mused, has its foundations somewhere in reality. She recalled with a wry smile her arrival in London, and her new found friends’ jibes about onion sellers and stripy T-shirts. She had been at a loss to understand their references, far less their hysterical teenage guffaws. In turn she had been mildly disenchanted by her failure to find a plethora of pin-striped, pasty-faced bowler-hatted gents a la Magritte. But these Japanese were indeed photographing each other at customs, in the arrivals hall, saying their goodbyes, even buying their coffee and croissants. The Dutch were too easy, head and shoulders above the crowd. She was cheating now, she admitted to herself, slyly casting glances at the flights around which people were gathering. Near the departure point for a flight to Athens, a small group of Mediterraneans was arguing heatedly with a tired looking BA official, who was attempting to enforce the airports No Smoking policy. Their flight was two hours overdue, she saw. She recognized the mannerisms and general belligerence from her two weeks last summer on Kefalonia. She had been enamoured of what she saw of Greece, but to a similar degree, less than persuaded by what she had encountered in the Greek male.

It was this train of thought from which she was aroused by a persistent tug at her sleeve. Looking down, her eyes were met by others, older then her own, rheumy and kind. In contrast to the calm and compassionate face before her, she was then attacked by a barrage of sounds in a high pitched shriek. Already her past was catching up with her. ‘Xin loi,’ she managed to recall, and then dried up, embarrassed, adding unnecessarily, ‘I don’t speak Vietnamese.’

‘Ah, bon. Vous etes Viet-kieu hein?’ Vous. Always the politeness of form from elderly Vietnamese. Ridiculous considering that this grandmother must be three times her own age. Adopted already, she made her way to the check-in counter, pulling the suitcase of Ba Huong, as she had introduced herself, an early and unwelcome coincidence to tease at her mind.