The Long Way Home Amidst a Global Pandemic
It is Friday the 13th. 13th of March 2020. I open my school mailbox and see a long email from the university president full of words like “virus”, “pandemic”, “student safety”, “online classes”, “leave the campus by day X”. Goodbye, the rest of my college senior year. Goodbye, graduation ceremony. And goodbye, Bulgaria.
Half a week later, I have packed four years of my life into two big suitcases, and a university minivan is taking me and Dasha, my college friend, to Sofia airport. We will be traveling to Moscow together. From there, we will part ways, and she will fly to Arkhangelsk, and me to my home city — Yekaterinburg. As soon as we see airplanes in the sky from the minivan window, Dasha and I exchange glances. It is time. Before the van stops at the airport entrance, we put on our medical masks and rubber gloves. They are already waiting for us — big guys at the airport entrance with contactless thermometers pointed at our foreheads. 36.6 C. We are in.
At the luggage desk, the guy prints my boarding pass and hands it to me:
“You will have to pick up your luggage in Moscow.”
“But why can’t you send it directly to Yekaterinburg? It has always been the case when I traveled before. I only have one and a half hours in Moscow.”
“I’m sorry, this time your first flight, although sold by Aeroflot, is operated by Bulgaria Air. That’s the agreement they have with Aeroflot.”
Some five hours later, as I am landing in Moscow, I already expect to miss my next flight. This is impossible to go through passport control, pick up my luggage, bring it from terminal F to terminal B, check it in again, and go through security check in time for my next flight. But this is alright, I think to myself. I will explain the situation at the Aeroflot desk, and they will put me on the next flight. What I do not expect is a wild jungle right after the passport control. The border officer hands my passport back to me, and I dive into a hustling crowd of people who arrived all from different places. No one understands what is happening farther at the front. Turns out, they brought all the international flights into one terminal, and medical workers are distributing paper forms to get our personal information and track us for the fourteen days of mandatory quarantine.
I tell Dasha to follow me closely and start pushing through to get the forms. Dasha is anxious. I keep repeating to her and to myself: “It’s gonna be alright. This is Russia, what did you expect. “Perfect” social distancing. We will get the forms and get through.” As soon as I manage to grab two forms, I pull Dasha away from the crowd to the side. No one around has a pen. Thank God, I always carry one. Minutes later, we hold our filled-in forms up in the air and start pushing again through the confused crowd in which everyone is looking either for the answers to what is going on or for the pens. At the exit from the terminal, there is a maze line. People in white protective costumes, masks and respirators form a dense wall to not let more than one person pass at a time. A woman from the line yells at one of them: “It takes nothing to get corona here!”. A woman in white gives her a cold look: “What can we do? We also work here day and night. Say thanks to Putin.” I hand our forms to a medical man next to her, and we pass through.
What can we do? We also work here day and night. Say thanks to Putin.
We drag our four huge suitcases through the terminal. I spot an Aeroflot desk. I ask Dasha to wait aside with the luggage and stand in line. There are only about four people in front of me. It should not take long. An uneasy girl in her late teens is walking back and forth next to the line. Suddenly, she jumps into the line right in front of a stout lady in her fifties. The whole line resents, and the lady especially: “Hey! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?! Everyone’s waiting.” The girl frantically explains something to the desk worker, while the lady shares her outrage and everything that she thinks about the girl with everyone else in line. The girl tries to pay for a ticket with her card, but the operation is declined. She leaves the desk, with a phone pressed to her ear, almost crying. The lady yells to her back: “And she didn’t even say thank you!”
Dasha approaches me with the suitcases as it is time for her to take her flight home. She leaves mine with me, and we say goodbye as hectically, as everything else that day. As the lady’s request is being processed at the desk, the girl returns. She is crying and tries to push past the lady to the desk. The lady pushes back. Wild jungle, again. Seeing the girl’s cry get hysterical, the lady finally asks what her problem is. Turns out, her card is not working although she has the money, and she is just trying to pay for her flight home. The lady pays with her own card and gets an online transaction from the girl, pats the girl on her shoulder, and the world balances out again. Although it makes me think why people lack empathy and emotional intelligence, especially in the times of a global pandemic, and why they have to try using animal rules before anything else.
It is finally my turn at the desk. After over an hour of waiting in line, I get sent to another desk in the terminal of my scheduled departure. I drag my two suitcases. Now alone. The mask makes it hard to breathe, my body is sore, my stomach growls from hunger. Twenty minutes later, another clerk at another desk sends me to the cashier. They cannot do anything. I have to buy a new ticket. At this point, I do not care anymore.
I approach the cashier and ask a small old lady with a small fluffy dog in yet another line in front of me if I am at the right place. She says yes and asks me what I need. I briefly tell my story. She flings up her hands:
“Same, same here, my dear! I am flying from London, and they did not put me on my first flight because of an additional medical check they suddenly decided to make for the dog. So, we are late. And we are also flying to Yekaterinburg. They also broke Charlie’s carrier. And Charlie, my poor Charlie, he hasn’t eaten the whole day. Dogs can’t eat when flying. And he is so stressed. And now I don’t even know, they also lost my luggage, I don’t know where it is, I might be late for the next flight as well. Will you look for my luggage with me? I don’t even know where to look for it. What’s your name?”
I tell her we will get through this. She asks me to make a call to her son from my mobile. We are now a team. As we reach the cashier, they say that both of us have a flexible fare and we pay only nine euros of a service tax each for the new tickets. Why could not they tell me the same thing at the two previous desks? Whatever. The lady is insisting to pay my fee. I refuse, yet she pays. I do not have the time to persuade her. I simply thank her, wish her luck with finding the luggage and run to the luggage desk with my own. I stumble over people’s feet with my two huge suitcases. I have less than forty minutes till this next flight. I cry for help. I beg them to let me through the line. I remember the crying girl who pushed against the stout lady. Thank God, they let me. And so they do at the security check. Kindness exists, even if people are rolling their eyes.
I am at the gate ten minutes before boarding. I sweat, shake, and breathe heavily. The dog lady is nowhere to be seen. I feel slightly guilty for not staying behind to search for her luggage, but I hope I helped her enough already. I silently wish her the best and board the plane.
Two hours later I am finally in Yekaterinburg. Early in the morning instead of late at night. Even my luggage has arrived. I exit the arrivals zone. My parents are late as usual. I wait close to the airport entrance and there I see her. With a trolley piled with four huge suitcases, holding a large bouquet of flowers, and fluffy Charlie happily running after her, the old lady follows a tall young man, probably her son, to the airport exit. I smile. She made it home amidst the global pandemic. I hope the crying girl also did. I hope the stout lady did. I hope all the people who were on their long way home that day and every day of this pandemic treated each other with kindness and helped each other out. I hope they chose cooperation over opposition. Because if they did not in the airport lines, we have a problem. If they did not, I doubt they will at the battlefield against COVID-19. I hope they made it home. So did I.
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Polina Isakova is a fourth year journalism student at the American University in Bulgaria. Having personal narrative as her favorite writing genre, she enjoys sharing her experiences of traveling, meeting people, and observing life.
