Why Airports, Schedules and G.I. Joe Totally Suck
Until yesterday, airports, despite their stress, had always given me a rush. I’ve always loved walking confidently through any terminal with some trendy new handbag across my chest. O’Hare with its Accenture ads, neon-mod walkway, Mrs. Fields cookies and convenient gates. DIA with its Native American art, view of the plains, ridiculous tram and turquoise for sale. JFK with its dodgy Union Station bar, sunglassed heads and no-nonsense staff. Paris with its silly airbus system, original metrosexuals and hottie flight attendants. For years, airports were the beginning of something good. Sure, they were also fraught with stress and schedules, but I kinda live for that shit. And running through an airport makes for a very good story.
I swallowed my first spoonful of reverse culture shock yesterday at Queen Alia Airport in Amman. Our destination: Erbil, Iraq or Kurdistan. This had been a big decision for us—we’d labored over it for weeks. But not because it was Iraq. We’d researched Erbil extensively, found a couchsurfer, received two friend-of-a-friend testimonials and read blogs and even tourism articles. We knew we wanted to go. We knew it was safe to go. The problem was the money. This one transaction would be more than we’d spent in our first six weeks of traveling. But with complicated visa issues coming in and out of Syria and the PKK at the Turkish border, this was the only way.
We were going.
Wearing our most presentable attire and switching my backpack to rolling mode, we arrived precisely at 10:00 for our noon flight. With little signage, all we could do was follow the crowd and look for our airline’s logo. At some unidentified time, some unidentified person gave an unidentified signal, which prompted the waiting area of Arab businessmen and Muslim vacationers headed for Dubai to jam their way toward a small security passageway. This happened just as Michael returned with a sandwich and a latte.
Note: typical airport stress.
But because we’d been taking cheap buses and trains for the past three months, because we’d rarely maintained a schedule that wasn’t 100% flexible and because we’d learned that hurrying takes all the fun out of traveling, we weren’t used to fighting for a place in line.
The difference today was four-figure prices. Suddenly, a schedule mishap was NOT an option.
Note: switch to present tense to increase panic level.
Michael expertly slides the sandwich plate into the top of his backpack and hands me the coffee while putting everything on his back. We attack the line from both sides in pitiful coordination and end up together just in time. After a quick passport inspection, a man who would within minutes make everything more complicated than it needs to be because he was in search of a tip, grabs my bag and leads me toward a conveyer belt, nodding and yelling CHECK! just a little too loudly again and again.
Suddenly unable to think for ourselves, we think: check? But no! We don’t want to check our carryon bags. He motions me one way and Michael another. But no! We’re together! But then we realize that DUH we are not checking our luggage yet. And that DUH, we are in the Middle East and there are gender-separated lines. Though I’ve blogged about it before, I am struck once again at how being treated like a child turns you INTO a child. This time the result being a man in a blue suit who now wants a tip.
Then there is that horrible confusion about which one of us has the tickets and which one of us has the passports and I am left wondering how I have been reduced to someone who MUST have her coffee and therefore carries it through airport security.
But then I am pushed toward the “Ladies Inspection Area” and there is no line and the buzzer keeps sounding and the woman behind the curtain keeps saying BACK! BACK! but never indicates when to come forward and I finally get there and I think she’s trying to tell me to take the lid off my coffee but I’m not really sure I don’t want to because OBVIOUSLY that’s where my bomb is hidden but when start to she indicates for me to put the COFFEE through the conveyor belt and I’m like: WHAT? But that’s what I do. And then I cut back in line, playing hardball with the rest of them and I am finally frisked by this same women who gets ruder by the second and I come out to find my purse and a man yells “Who is this coffee?” And I’m all defensive and say: “But she told me to put it there!” pointing in no uncertain terms at the women hiding in her curtained box and then some man hands it to me across the machine and I look over and watch Michael being interrogated by a man at a small brown desk with not enough to do, who I will soon find out is confiscating his rechargeable camera batteries because basically, he has to confiscate SOMETHING.
So, for the record, I am now incredibly annoyed with three people who are all basically just doing their job the best they can. I can feel the tightening of my skin as entitlement (I paid big money for this flight! Don’t treat me like shit!) and arrogance (Can you BELIEVE how disorganized this country is? And why can’t they speak a LITTLE more English?) pop my skin into the loofah-crying scales of a reptilian monster.
From here, things only get worse. We are due to depart in 40 minutes. Another wait, an immigration window, and another round of frisking later, we are somehow in the holding area for a flight to Milan. Which does explain the barrage of middle-aged German women with big pocketbooks and Frommer’s Guides, but does not help our current cause. It turns out our flight is not boarding yet. What can we do but believe someone and have a seat? I dive into Sudoku, Michael goes into his meditation mode and we attempt to change our energy before the next panic attack hits roughly twenty minutes later.
Note: Back to past tense.
In the end, we departed two hours late because of a delay in Baghdad. The flight was uneventful and I even got a shot of Michael in front of the Iraqi Airways-plastered plane before the flight attendant told me to “kindly put away my camera.”
But we felt we’d been slapped in the face by familiar patterns of the past. What hassle! What stress! If only we could have taken a bus!
Was money behind this negative energy? Could it be that lavish expenditures turn me into an instant asshole? It made some sense. The original paradigm is about possessions. When you have an expensive camera, you have to worry about losing that expensive camera, about someone stealing that expensive camera, about damaging that expensive camera. And it’s worth asking: Is the expensive camera’s benefits worth the stressful experience of keeping track of it? About the witch I become while I worry?
Our airline tickets represented the same quandary. Had they been worth it?
Yes. While jewelry, excessive gadgetry or $100 sunglasses are not, the flight was. The trick is to simply internalize frustration and panic, maintaining pleasant expressions, measured movements and soft-spoken, head-tilting reactions while the world goes to pieces in front of you.
Yes. Well. Of course. Next time I’ll know. But damn that G.I. Joe. It sure doesn’t feel like half the battle.
