what to do · My Home Is the Road

What to do... damn... Go to Istanbul? Or where? The free hour of Wi-Fi ran out – this ain't Mexico or Russia, this is Istanbul, baby... And I can't pay for a new one without cards. Buy a SIM card for 50 bucks? I could, sure... I need internet... To check options, where to fly next, flights, and just... options, a map, hotels just in case.

Remembered! I've got my Russian passport. Let me check... (..goes to check..) Bingo! It worked! (..enters password with passport number..) It's not working. What the hell? Why won't it work? I'm entering everything right...

I've lost count of the points of despair... There've been too many of them lately... these constant dead ends with a taste of hopelessness... But I always manage to come up with something clever, and my noggin always cooks something up. If it weren't for it...

What if... I enter the passport number differently? So... I need to see where the system pulled the foreign passport number from, then I can figure out this machine's logic. (..looks..) Aha! The system takes the numbers from the lower left corner. What do I have in my Russian passport? (..looks..) Now I get it! It's not 0511, but 051 and then the passport number. I shouldn't have entered the one. Let's check... And bingo again! I've got internet!

More chaos – how to look at tickets. Running back and forth through an airport the size of a city with two backpacks just to find out or ask something – I don't think anyone's interested in that, though the chaos there is no less.

So, I've got an hour to figure something out. I looked at it every which way, searched for solutions, different airports, routes, cities and... Looks like I found a solution. And not for some time in the future, but for today! Literally in three hours the flight leaves. Damn... more rushing... Well, let's go...

Where the hell is that counter called IrAero? It's nowhere... I ran up and down, back and forth, asked at the Information desk on both the 1st and 2nd floors. They explained, but I didn't really get it... I thought it was like with Turkish Airlines – there should be a counter right under their name, same with other companies... But no – it's nowhere, you buy the ticket through a middleman...

I walk up to a counter, ask – is there a ticket to Moscow? He says – yeah, 400 dollars. Hmm... I saw a different price online – a hundred bucks less. But whatever. I'm not staying in Istanbul, I've had enough... By any means, get home... to hell with it all... I buy it... The staff, by the way, speak Russian, there's even a sign saying "we speak Russian."

I go to the check-in counter, wait. Strange, check-in's been open for a while, but no one's there... where's the staff? Why is the entrance closed? Five minutes pass... ten minutes... This is all suspicious... I asked some African-American guy – "where you flying to?" He's going to Germany. Maybe I'm doing something wrong? Probably... Went back to where I bought the ticket, turns out I was in the wrong row. Of course... not row K, I needed to go to row N... I would've just waited there, never asked that guy. And I would've missed the flight. I was already cutting it close – bought the ticket right at the last minute. My head's stopped working, my batteries are dying... Or already dead. Shutting down.

One hour left... I'm sitting here writing this very post. And then this woman needs me to save her. )) And so the post doubled in length... She's Russian, doesn't know English at all, she didn't check her suitcase at the counter because she didn't know, plus she's bringing a cat with her. How did they even let her through? Magic... She doesn't even understand how she ended up here. Well, it happens, the first time I didn't immediately get how everything works inside this monster called the Airport...

I stepped in as a translator. They charged her an extra 112 dollars. 57 for the cat and 55 for the luggage. She could pay on the spot. She had euros... Had to exchange them... Where? A Turkish employee helped, looks Russian, but he's Turkish. He came with me. We looked for a place to exchange money. Didn't find one. I said I'd run the other way and look, and he went back to his post.

I run... first exchange booth is closed, second, third. I was about to give up. But no – the fourth one is open, almost right at the start. Ran for about 10 minutes. And the same back. In the end, I exchanged 150 euros for 103 dollars. A brutal commission...

Eight dollars short. What to do? I can chip in from my own, if it comes to that, I've got dollars on me. I run up, tell them... There was a girl standing nearby – she offered to pay for the woman with the cat. I didn't stop her. In the end, everything got sorted. Amazing – to be honest, I thought they'd turn her away and not even talk to her. But no – everything was solvable. So don't be scared if you suddenly forget to go through check-in.

One big, elderly guy scolded this sweet woman, saying tsk-tsk-tsk, it's not good to bring a cat on the plane, his wife has allergies (which is actually true). I said: "Come on, we'll swap seats if it comes to that." The girl added: "I'll take the cat with me if anything's wrong." In short, we smoothed it all out. Helped the woman carry her luggage and we all flew off together. By the way, she and I are sitting next to each other. Both in the first row by the aisle. Funny coincidence...

After all that, I even felt lighter. It's always nice to help someone, especially right after the world's run you over with a steamroller yet again. This woman is old enough to be my mother. She even reminds me of her a bit – a "dandelion of God" type woman, soft, naive, simple-hearted, kind. Very good. The kind you just want to protect when they're in danger. I imagined – what would happen if my own mom ended up in that situation, also with a cat? Would someone help her? They probably would.

We're flying... Where are you, dear Russia? (..looks out the window..) I went through hell to hold you again... And what do I need a world where there's too little of you?

Arthur O'Harra.

05.16.2022