Into the Void

Clouds, grays and muted colors. Those are the most striking things he remembered about the trip.

It started out as a typical Texas summer morning, but clouds started appearing on his way to the airport. He enjoyed a nice morning with her, she cooked something special for him to carry, but before he knew it, it was time to head to the airport. She dropped him off in front of the international terminal. He watched her driving off into the light airport traffic with a heavy heart, and everything started to become a collection of blurry images. Checking in was a breeze, there weren’t too many people flying off that Monday afternoon.

Waiting for the flight, clouds became thicker and flashes of lightning were visible in the distance. Then it was time to embark into one metal tube into another, from a rectangular tube to a circular one. By this time rain already fell on the airport. The interior of the plane was of muted grey and muted blue seats. Even the stewards and stewardesses wore muted blue uniforms. Unable to get much sleep, he watched a few movies, one of them was the latest Star Trek, where with the star-trek-ian sense of logic (beware, spoiler alert!) it made sense that someone who entered a black hole can be face to face with the same person from the past (or, was it from the future????)

Arriving in Paris, he was in almost a blank state, and during the long taxi from the runway to the terminal, he had to force himself to observe the view of Charles de Gaulle airport. He saw the Singapore Airlines A380 for the first time outside of photos and tv footages. Then there was the air france concorde that became a landmark of the airport, the new livery on Vietnam Airlines plane, an Air France airbus with the classic 50-s livery, and .. of course, .. the clouds. Gray clouds heavy with raindrops seem to hang over the airport and the countryside surrounding it. On the distance he could see something that looked like the Eiffel tower, but he was not sure if that was really Eiffel tower.

Fortunately he didn’t have too long to wait, but so did the rain. It came in droves while he sat inside the gate. The flight was another hazy event, the rain not of much help to his heavy heart. Approaching Nigeria, he remembered the massive turbulence between Port Harcourt and Lagos on his previous flight, but fortunately nothing happened this time, except .. the clouds.

He could see dark clouds outside the plane upon final approach. It was another gray and cloudy day, rain just stopped and there was only a little drizzle during the walk from the plane into the immigration area. He went through the motions of passing immigration, with a slight and futile hope that immigration would find a reason to have him sent back outside the country. No such luck for him and he found himself collecting his luggage and walking towards customs.

As expected, the customs people asked for money, but he already prepared Hershey bars that he gave to them as they kept asking for money or other ‘goodies’. They grudgingly took the Hershey bars and spotting the people awaiting to take him to the camp, he walked out into the cool afternoon air of Port Harcourt, and into the void.