D?j? vu in Dublin
It was deja vu at Heathrow last Sunday. I was standing in a massive queue waiting to be x-rayed and surveilled for terrorism and transfer and suddenly a thought in my mind didn’t want to go away.
“They are going to lose your suitcase again,” my brain kept telling me. “They are going to lose it and there is nothing you can do about it. You idiot, you should never have been going through Heathrow again. Don’t you ever learn? Why do you have such a short memory?”
Then there was more deja vu at the passport check just before getting onto the plane to Dublin. When they saw my passport they asked me whether I had tried to stick it together myself or had outside help. And then yet another when I finally reached the plane and was told we would not be leaving for an hour or two due to some other anti-terrorism action that would involve keeping us in the aircraft, tied into our seats without any food and water.
Then I was finally there, in Dublin, with some other five hundred people, looking for suitcases that had not arrived from London. The woman at the lost luggage counter informed me cheerfully that it was my fault since I didn’t give them enough time to get it out of one plane and put it onto another.
“How many hours did you give us in London?” she asked and when I admitted that it was only two, she wagged her finger at me. “You see,” she said triumphantly. “It should have been at least three or four. Two is not enough. We just cannot transfer your luggage if we have only two hours. Besides, why didn’t you prepare yourself? You should have put all the things that you know you will need immediately into your hand luggage.”
I remembered the sign on the wall next to the people checking us in at Heathrow that said they were there just to do their job and would not accept any verbal or physical abuse from passengers. I tried not to be nasty to the woman when telling her that this time I couldn’t wait for my luggage for three days, in fact I couldn’t wait at all, in fact I needed it straight away, otherwise I would have some form of an air rage and it could be dangerous. The tactic worked, she located my suitcase somewhere in virtual space flying between Dublin and Madagascar, typed in some magic words and ordered it to come back to me in the next few hours.
Still luggageless, I went to the house of my friends in north Dublin. They were getting ready to go to the beach.
“It’s so warm,” they said. “Let’s do the ‘carpe diem thing’. You see, the weather in Dublin right now is as good as it will get. It won’t be any warmer.”
They put their swimming costumes on and looked at me sitting at the table motionlessly.
“I think I will stay at home,” I said. “It is very cold. It is winter. It is only 20C. It is about half of what we have back in Cyprus. And I need to wait for my suitcase.”
I called the lost luggage department four times that evening. I lied to them about having the most important business meeting of my entire life the next morning. I threatened them with a lawsuit. A man on the other end of the phone said something about the airport closing down for the night. I cried. He softened. He promised to do something about it.
My friends came back from the beach with their noses full of sand and saying it was very windy. We sat at the table. Their two small daughters started dancing around us in the colourful belly dancer outfits I had brought them from Cyprus on a previous visit. We read in The Independent about a “polyamourous” couple with an open marriage, who are bisexual, have many lovers and are generally very, very happy.
My friend, a young successful academic, shook her head. “They say they have four children,” she said. “These kids must still be very small, so how on earth are they doing it? I have only two and no energy. How can these people have time for ten lovers? Can please somebody tell me?”
We looked at her in silence, chewing over what she had just said. “Well,” I said finally. “I don’t have four kids but I don’t think I would have time or energy for ten lovers either.”
Her husband remained silent. The bell rang. They brought in my suitcase.
