Nothing happens, though, and depression spreads again. Even so, we stay alert, all five senses electric, so that if something changes, we don’t miss out because we were too slow. Deep down, I know at this point that nothing will come. I’ll just remain here, sitting on the hard floor, who knows for how long. With air traffic halted and streets and highways blocked by the army—or perhaps by the rebels, who knows—Sanaa has become completely isolated, and I, completely isolated in the middle of Sanaa. An island within an island, a double shipwreck survivor, a lonely dog, knowing no one, not speaking the language. I’m no longer me; I’m barely my own shadow. The war reaches my ears, a constant, neutral clatter. Heat suffocates me. I close my eyes to avoid seeing the crushing strain on the humanity pressed around me.
Nearby, a small child cries very softly. His mother, a young woman with an uncovered face, tries to calm him with her last piece of bread; the few cafés in the airport have run out of supplies, and, now that I think about it, I haven’t eaten anything either since... I recall a sandwich I’ve been carrying in my backpack since the lastlayover, but at this point it must be stale, and anyway, who would dare eat in front of a hungry child?
I approach the mother and offer it to her.
“Here. For your son,” I say in English, and she takes it.
Though we don’t understand each other, we manage to communicate. Her expression is serene and friendly. I smile at her and she smiles back, and the sight of a feminine smile in the midst of so many veiled faces is like a window opening in a shut house.
“Bos Mutas.” I tell her my name.
“Bosa Mute,” she tries to repeat.
“Bos Mutas,” I correct her.
“Bos Mutas.” She tries again, correctly this time, and with such sweetness that for the first time in my life, I feel that I have a fantastic name.
I try to explain that it’s a cheese sandwich, and she gives it to her son in small pieces. Later, a man appears who must be her husband, or brother, and from her sudden nervousness I understand it would be best for me to back off and leave the conversation there. “Goodbye and good luck,” I tell her, and she responds with the same words in a barely audible voice.
I return to my corner, detach from everything, ignore the clocks. I think: What if eternity isn’t a time that lasts forever, but simply a moment without time? An ecstatic moment, like this one. I let the hours pass, carried by my thoughts: longings, old guilt, memories. I’m so tired and lost in my daydreams that I don’t realize the temperature has dropped until my bones feel like ice. The airport, so stifling by day, has become a freezer by night. The war no longer makes noise; perhaps it’s gone to sleep, or else gone cold like us. I imitate the others, taking clothes from my backpack and draping them over me in layers, like artichoke leaves.
All of a sudden the silence breaks: steps, commotion, voices, orders. People wake, move. The authorities have finally opened the doors, and the crowd that’s been held inside for hours finally rushes out.At last, my time has arrived. You’ve endured it all like a champ, I tell myself, congratulatory and a little afraid, I’ll admit, of what awaits me outside. I run with the others toward the exit, only to be disappointed again when the uniformed guards there stop me and warn that only those born in Yemen or Somalia can pass.
Those of us who aren’t Yemeni or Somali will have to wait for new orders. Not very encouraging. From what I’ve seen so far, waiting for new orders in this place doesn’t bring great results. I manage to see the mother of the hungry boy who’d accepted my cheese sandwich making her way out. In a last gasp of hope, I take out pen and paper from my pocket.
She is almost at the door with her son in her arms, about to cross the threshold, soon to reach the other side, she’ll be leaving the airport for the city, and I, meanwhile, jostled by the avalanche, can only jot down the little I know about my only possible contact in Sanaa. I write:Doctor Zahra Bayda, Doctors Without Borders.
That’s all. No time to write anymore. I push through the crowd as if swimming against the current, reach out to the woman, scrap of paper in hand, and I give her an imploring look, as if to say, Take it, I’m begging you, at least receive this note I’ve written, even if there’s nothing you can do with it.
A little piece of paper with two illegible, scrawled lines: an invisible plea, already doomed. An improbable act of faith, a mere SOS in a bottle thrown to sea.
I’m on the verge of collapsing in the thick of this airport, yet my mind starts to clear. Is this what people mean by hitting rock bottom? Maybe. There’s no room for arrogance, all sureness is gone. I don’t control my destiny, I can’t find my place, my documents are worthless, my name means nothing. I let myself be lulled, find rhythm in the nonsense. I wonder whether I’ve become part of the anonymous, undocumented, nomadic tribe.
After the evacuation of Somali and Yemeni people, the Sanaa airport looks like a battlefield, littered with plastic and trash andabandoned shoes—flip-flops without their mate, moccasins, baby booties—in keeping with that way shoes have of getting left behind during human stampedes. At least now I can find a seat somewhere inside; many are empty now. I grab my backpack, which had been on the ground, and rearrange its contents with the unrushed focus of someone who’s got nowhere to go. I assume that, from this moment on, my only home is my own mind. I take refuge in it, entertaining myself with my own thoughts.
“Mr. Bos Mutas. Mr. Bos Mutas, please report to the police office, on the second floor.”
They’re calling me? Could it be me they’re calling? I finally wake up, with no idea of how many times my name has sounded over the loudspeaker. Yes, it’s me they’re calling. Is this good or bad news? Can’t be worse than where I am now. Any change would be welcome, so I run up to the second floor, heart pounding.
“Are you Bos Mutas? I’m Zahra Bayda, of Doctors Without Borders.”
It’s Zahra Bayda! “I’m Zahra Bayda” is what this woman says as she meets me at the police office door, but I’m too stunned and dazed to react. She seems like more of a gale than a woman. She’s very tall, she wears a multicolored tunic and a kind of magician’s turban, and she moves with a sergeant’s vigor as she gives orders left and right, seeming ready to demolish any obstacles in her path.
“Hey, you, friend, I’m Zahra Bayda, from Doctors Without Borders,” she repeats. “Come on, I’m here to get you, let’s go.”
It’s Zahra Bayda and she’s here to rescue me! Should I pinch myself, to make sure this is real? I rub my eyes, like cartoon monkeys surprised by what they see.
Zahra Bayda has the precise, resolved movements of people of action. She takes my passport without any further ado and gestures for me to wait while she settles my case with the customs agents.
I float, as if in the limbo of revelation. Images flash and pour through my mind as I start to take stock. It’s a miracle. Zahra Bayda is here because the woman with the hungry child managed to give her the note I sent with her. But how did Zahra Bayda figure out it was me, when I didn’t even write my name down? She must have connected the dots, or else who knows, and in the end who cares, the amazing thing is that the woman with the child found a way to reward my small gesture of the sandwich with another gesture, a huge one, unimaginable. Maybe she had to get away from her husband or brother to do it, an even more generous act. Yes. Now I know I really have landed in a warm, magical country where the most surprising things can happen. What I wouldn’t give to see that young mother again, to run into her somewhere, thank her for her help with all my heart, assure her that I won’t forget her smile...
“I got your email months ago, telling me you’d arrive on this day. I put the date in my calendar. Then I heard about the chaos at the airport so I came for you,” Zahra Bayda tells me when she returns with my passport, now stamped with the authorization to leave.
“The woman from the airport told you?” I ask, still slow to understand. “You received the note I sent you a few hours ago? From a woman with a child in her arms?”
“What note, what child, what woman?”
“I don’t know her name, I gave her a note for you and asked her to...”
