End of Manners

by Francesca Marciano

  “Have they found out what exactly is wrong with her? She’s been in the hospital for three days now, hasn’t she?”

  “They took some new tests. The doctors are very good,” he said.

  “Oh, okay. Well, then I’m sure she’ll be all right,” I said, hoping this comment might suffice to appease him. I caught Imo’s expression out of the corner of my eye. She looked at me—impatiently—as if I had said precisely the wrong thing.

  “Hanif, you know the German hospital?” she said. “You should take her there. Really. I’d do that if I were you.”

  Hanif nodded. I wondered how much they would charge him at the German hospital. His cell beeped twice, announcing a text. He scanned the display, then put the phone back in his pocket.

  “I wouldn’t wait another day. It sounds like they have no clue what’s wrong with her, wherever she is now,” Imo added with a touch of gloom.

  Hanif nodded again uneasily, as if he wished Imo would stop telling him what to do. Not to mention the fact that we had been in Kabul only a few days and here we were, already lecturing him on which hospital would take better care of his wife.

  We’d been in the airport restaurant for an hour, with the electric heater under the table warming our feet, when the other passengers—the ones who had been left outside to brave the elements—had finally been granted permission to enter the building and prepare for check-in.

  Some of them came up to the restaurant to warm themselves with a cup of tea and looked at our table with overt antipathy. They were almost all Westerners: aid workers, soldiers, UN personnel. There was a lot of pulling out cell phones, lighting cigarettes, screeching of chairs being moved across the cement floor.

  There were a few young women—NGO workers most probably—wearing shalwar kameezes under their coats. Most of them had their heads covered.

  Imo was in the midst of settling up accounts with Hanif. He had signed a receipt and was flipping through a wad of dollars with the nimble thumb of a bank teller. Imo pointed out a couple of veiled German women addressing the waiter in Dari.

  “Ha, ha. The Saint Teresas of Kabul are here.”

  She grinned at me and Hanif. The way she had a clever nickname for everything was beginning to feel a bit stale by now.

  “How much longer before your flight leaves?” she asked me.

  “An hour and a half.”

  “Good, then you don’t have to wait too long.”

  She rubbed her freezing hands, blowing on them.

  “I’m dreaming already of the bottle of red and the filet mignon au poivre vert I’ll be having tonight.”

  I realized the moment had come.

  Hanif, the village women, Malik and I were already fading in Imo’s memory; we were about to turn into nothing more than mere extras in another one of her many adventures. She had just given away her clothes to the Tajik cleaning woman and she was ready to put on new ones and go for another spin.

  From her cell phone conversations, I’d gathered that she and Demian—the young, very handsome and very spoiled man, I had assumed—were going to meet in London in less than fourteen hours, at the end of the Kabul–Dubai, Dubai–London flight. He would be waiting at Heathrow and they would go to dinner at some tiny, dimly lit French restaurant. She was about to move on to the next exhilarating banquet where she would pluck and sample new interesting morsels of delicious food. It was pathetic, but I couldn’t help feeling a pang of jealousy.

  I thought of how, back at the gorge, our relationship had dramatically shifted. Ironically, the first time I had been able to react and shut her up had also been the first time I managed to feel something akin to true affection for her. When Imo had come undone I had finally caught a glimmer of who she really was. I had seen Lupita Jaramillo surface beneath the tears, the frightened child whose chromosomes Imo still carried within her.

  But now, as we were about to part, she had swiftly put her mask back on and reactivated her former self. I was disappointed that it was this version of Imo—her glamorous persona rather than little Lupita—that I had to say good-bye to. Yet part of me felt grateful: down at the gorge Imo had bestowed something upon me without her being aware of it.

  I had found her gift hidden in the folds of my own fear, while we were under the muzzle of the gun, smelling metal mixed with the man’s sweat. It was there and then I had realized I’d be able to face my deepest fear, that I would not have to succumb to it.

  I peered out through the dusty salmon drapes of the Kabul airport restaurant, looking down at the final passengers dragging their luggage over the tarmac under the thickening snow.

  Suddenly a prolonged screech issued from the loudspeakers, followed by more crackling sounds, then by a voice that first spoke in Dari and then in equally unfathomable English.

  “That’s the last call for my flight,” said Imo, smiling and checking the time on the display of the minuscule cell she had been holding for hours like the hand of a child.

  “Good, it looks like it’s actually on time. Amazing, isn’t it?”

  Almost all the passengers crowding the tables in the restaurant got up simultaneously. The urge, the anxiety, was tangible: there was a rush, a general eagerness to accelerate, like a flock pushed towards the gate. Everyone rushed except for Imo. She picked up her hand luggage, wrapped herself in her shawl, left a more than generous tip on the table and hugged me. I took in her musky exhalation, the smell of her hair.

  “Maria, promise you’ll call me as soon you land in Milan.”

  She kissed me, cupping the back of my head with her hand.

  “Oh, this is so sad,” I managed to say. “I can’t bear to see you go.”

  It was true and I wanted to let her know I felt that way.

  Imo looked at me, blinked. I think she was surprised. She stroked my hair.

  “Maria, carina mia. Isn’t this terrible? Didn’t we have just the best time together?”

  “Yes, we did.” I wanted to say more, but I didn’t know how to phrase it in a way that wouldn’t sound clichéd, and besides I could tell she was gone already, her energy focused elsewhere, her body still here, her mind at her destination.

  “You must come to London. Soon, promise. There’s so much more we need to do together!” she said. Then she turned to Hanif, who had sprung to his feet, bringing his hand to his breast.

  “Hanif, you have been simply the greatest,” she said, although with just a touch of formality. “I beg you, please, if there’s anything I can do at my end. You know, about your wife. You let me know if you need any help for the German hospital. You have my e-mail and my phone number. Anything I can do, really.”

  Imo took hold of Hanif’s hand and gave it a squeeze for her final supplication.

  “Will you do me a favor and stay here with Maria until they call her flight? Here, have something to eat, tea, coffee, cake, whatever you want.”

  She left more notes on the table and gave me a look, to check out how I was faring. She knew I’d be nervous to be left alone without her.

  “Shall I leave you some more money, Maria? I’ve still got some dollars, if you like.”

  “No, what for? I don’t need anything.”

  “Are you sure? Then I’ll leave you in Hanif’s capable hands. He’ll see to it you get checked in okay, and then in an hour you’ll be on the plane. Everything cool?”

  “Sure, don’t worry, I’ll be fine.” I smiled at her.

  “Good. Call me tonight or tomorrow,” she said. “Actually tomorrow would be better.”

  She winked at me, alluding, perhaps, to her evening ahead.

  “Ciao, bellissima,” she said. “I’ll miss you.”

  So she left, waving her hand until the last moment, until she disappeared behind the salmon drapes. She exited the stage just like that, letting the fabric fall back behind her like the drop of a curtain.

  Hanif and I sat down again in the lounge that was empty once more. He was furtively checking his watch. He had just pocketed his fee in cash a
nd was probably itching to get away from me and rush to his wife. I doubted he was going to miss either one of us; this had just been a hundred-and-eighty-dollara-day gig for him. His obligation was going to end in less than an hour, as soon as they called the Kabul–Istanbul–Milan flight, the one I was going to take. Once on the other side of the gate, I wouldn’t be Hanif’s responsibility any longer. At the passport control we would say good-bye, exchange business cards and the usual promises of keeping in touch. Then, with a sigh of relief, he would bolt to his car with the sole thought of getting to the hospital as fast as he could, and Imo and Maria would disappear from his mind as if we’d never existed.

  We didn’t say anything to each other for a few minutes. I realized that Imo’s absence had redesigned the way we related to one another; we were unsure whether we were supposed to feel more intimate or more estranged now that she was gone. Of the three of us, he and I had been the shy ones. Without Imo’s constant chatter, we no longer knew how to interact.

  I drummed my fingers on the tabletop and sighed. He and I were the only two left in the room, the waiter was wiping the tables down with a rag, the early-afternoon light waned on the snow-whitened tarmac. I asked Hanif if he’d like some tea, a plate of rice, a drink. He shook his head at each offer and closed his eyes, pressing his hand on his tie. Now that only a handful of minutes still tied him to me, he had withdrawn into himself even more. His English had deteriorated; he didn’t seem to speak it anymore. It was as if his clockwork mechanism had wound down and these were his final movements, increasingly inexpressive and insincere.

  “Hanif, go. There’s no need for you to stay.”

  “No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head, solicitous and diligent. “No problem.”

  “No,” I cut him off, raising my voice slightly. “Go. You go and check on your wife, please. I’ll be absolutely fine on my own.”

  He looked at me questioningly. He couldn’t suppress his hopefulness.

  I nodded emphatically. After all, I only had to wait for them to call my flight, go downstairs and check in.

  Enough already with the babysitter, I told myself. Show some dignity.

  “Go, Hanif. I mean it.”

  A sign with “Turkish Airlines” written in felt-tip pen had suddenly appeared over a desk in the departures hall. A corpulent woman with a headscarf presided over it, broadly gesticulating to the passengers to put their luggage on the ancient scales.

  There weren’t many of us traveling to Istanbul, just a scant group of tired-looking Turkish men in tattered clothes with dusty hair. I figured they must be construction workers who had come to Afghanistan to make some money building roads, dams, who knows what, for a big reconstruction project.

  Imo’s fellow passengers had definitely been more cosmopolitan: an assortment of do-gooders and consultants with whom she was bound to be arguing about international strategies, exchanging cards and finding mutual acquaintances. My travel companions, on the other hand, didn’t speak English, had calloused hands, cheap quilted jackets, plastic shoes ill-suited to the snow. They looked weary and exhaled the acrid smell of cheap cigarettes. Once my luggage was on the scale, the woman with the headscarf at the counter gave me a handwritten card that I presumed was my boarding pass. Someone pushed me towards the long line for passport control. I was the only woman on this flight. Apart from the workers with that forlorn look of returning emigrants, there was no other Westerner as such and not a single Afghan.

  Once we were through security and passport control, we were herded by soldiers up some steep, narrow steps that looked more like the stairs of an apartment building, but in fact they led to the departure lounge. There were no signs anywhere in the airport, or indications of any kind; I felt I was being constantly prodded, directed, driven on by orders, gun barrels suddenly pointed, showing the way.

  When we got to the gate—a large room, empty except for two rows of plastic chairs and a window where a man was selling biscuits and tea in plastic cups—I slipped into that reassuring limbo that awaits every traveler after he’s been checked, stamped and scanned. We had finally entered the space that was no longer the country we were coming from, or the one we were on our way to, but the gap in between, the non-place of supreme suspension that would lead straight to the desired direction like a needle pointing steadfastly north on a compass.

  The minute I had entered the gate I had felt a completely new state of mind envelop me. It was the smug gratification of the traveler who has finished making allowances, participating, who no longer needs to understand or share. Here I was at last, the passenger who thinks only of what awaits ahead: my first real espresso, my own bed with crisp, clean sheets.

  I had at least an hour before they’d start boarding. I could close my eyes and take a nap at last.

  I awoke with a jolt.

  The alarm set in my subconscious had gone off, alerting me I had been asleep on my plastic chair way too long; by now we should have already boarded the flight.

  Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a crowd gathering at the back of the room. But something wasn’t quite right: instead of going through the last check and boarding the plane, my fellow passengers were heading in the opposite direction, the one we had come in from. And, although they had their backs to me, I sensed that their posture bore nothing of the usual excitement that people about to board a plane show. There was no buoyancy in that crowd. Something was off, I could smell it.

  At the back of the room I saw—another worrying signal—a soldier waving the barrel of his gun, funneling the passengers into an orderly line.

  “I don’t believe this,” I groaned to myself.

  They were turning back.

  Yes, they were leaving the departure lounge and were being herded by the guard towards the same narrow stairway we had trudged up in single file earlier on.

  “What’s going on here? Why is everybody leaving?” I started asking haphazardly of no one in particular. I felt a terrible sense of foreboding.

  “Where are you going?” I almost yelled to one of the Turkish workers, who shrugged and flung his hands heavenward.

  “No English. No English.”

  But his companion, a man with a gray moustache who looked like a mangy old wolf, waved his hand with the typical gesture that erased everything and banished all hope.

  “Flight cancel, flight cancel.”

  “What do you mean, canceled? Why?”

  Now the soldier was signaling directly at me, indicating that I too was supposed to follow the others. By now the entire lounge had emptied out. The only ones left were me and the cleaning woman with a blue headscarf, trailing a bucket and an old broom behind her. I looked at the spectral deserted space, the empty black plastic chairs, the crumpled chips packets on the floor, the ashtrays brimming with butts.

  “Flight cancel,” the soldier repeated. “No fly today.” And he signaled to me that I had to leave too.

  Outside, the snow had picked up more heavily than before.

  “Why have they canceled the flight?” I asked the soldier. “Is it because of the snow?”

  He just made an imperious gesture with the muzzle of his machine gun, indicating that I was to move on, period. The cleaning woman had started to mop a rag over the floor of the empty room.

  Down in departures, it was chaos. The passengers were swarming around the desk where only a couple of hours earlier we’d been issued our handwritten boarding passes by the heavy woman with the headscarf. Now the same woman was screeching in Dari, and she held a wad of boarding passes in her hand. This time, though, she wasn’t handing them out but taking them back. I watched the passengers return the strip of paper that had conferred upon us the status of almost-in-flight, of no-longer-subject-to-the-laws-of-this-country. I leaned across the counter close to her.

  “When is the next flight? I absolutely have to leave today!” I said haughtily, as if I were the only one among the crowd who had this pressing need.

  But the woman didn’t bother t
o give me any kind of indication.

  “No flight, go home,” she repeated, reaching for my boarding pass. I readily withdrew it, as if this piece of paper with the Turkish Airlines logo on it were the last hope I had of ever getting on a plane. I knew that handing it in would amount to losing my citizenship as an almost-in-flight, and I would have to go back to being just another still-grounded.

  The woman pointed to a pile of suitcases stacked near the conveyor belt. They too had been spat out from the belly of the plane and had now snuck back to us. I watched the Turkish workers as they retrieved their luggage from the mound. None of them had the desperate look that I had. This seemed to be merely the umpteenth hindrance, yet another of the many setbacks they must be used to enduring. None of them wasted time arguing, trying to get their point across, none of them demanded to speak to the airport manager. They all submitted and headed outside again, disgruntled, lugging their baggage. They knew perfectly well that there was no one in charge, no supervisor, no airport manager; that, in short, there was no hope.

  The room had rapidly emptied. There were only two bags left. Mine.

  The woman had managed to snatch the boarding pass from my hand at last. A man in overalls was tapping on my metal case. He gestured for me to take it.

  “When is the next flight out? What am I supposed to do?”

  They both shook their heads, “No flight, no flight, cancel.”

  “Yes, all right, but when? WHEN?”

  They shrugged and started locking up. The woman detached the handwritten sign with our flight number and reached for a fake-leather purse with a zipper from underneath the counter. She grabbed her coat. It was time to go home. Both she and the man in the overalls began to walk away.

  By now it had become clear to me that this was not an airport like any other, where stranded passengers could sleep on the floor while waiting for the next flight. This was more like a military zone where civilians had to obey orders and shut up.