Her connecting flight to London was after six hours. Sia was sitting in Doha airport lounge, lazily watching the hustle-bustle of passengers. She loved to watch the teeming humanity. People read books or magazines while traveling (That was before smartphones!), but she would rather watch the co-passengers and imagine their relationships, habits, family backgrounds almost like a profiler. Nowadays some interesting career choices were available! It must be fun to get training to become a profiler. In her days only teacher/doctor/ nurse were the choices for women.
For the last fifteen minutes, a voice had been impinging on her awareness. The raised female voice was agitated, querulous, complaining, worried. She turned her head to spot the speaker, who she found was a seventyish, short thin, frail old woman. Let’s call her Badi Be. She was speaking in Urdu and people around her were not paying any attention to her perhaps because they could not understand her language.
Sia started listening to Badi Be and understood that some airport porter had cheated her off her mobile phone. Sia got up, crossed the two intervening rows and reached her. She sat next to her and started asking questions as to what exactly had happened. Instead of telling Sia about the incident she started telling her about her sons and grandsons. “One grandson of mine is in Canada and the other two are in Australia. My youngest son is a doctor in Dubai.”
Her hands were trembling as she pointed to the red velvet draw-string pouch which she was carrying, “He said ‘Amma, you need xerox copies of your papers. Let me take them, I will get them xeroxed and get back to you.’ He opened my pouch to look for the papers and went away. I have been waiting here for two hours. After some time, I thought I should check the mooa (damn) mobile. I couldn’t find it. Then I realized that that young man has taken away my phoon (phone).” She paused to take a breath. There were tears in her voice of anger, disbelief, and puzzlement. “Imaan kharab hogaya hai aazkal. Mera Kuch Nahi Liya, Allah dekhega.” She was still unable to believe that another human being can act so deceitfully. It was clear she was worried about what the members of her family would think about her for being conned so easily and, therefore, she kept on reassuring herself, “Mera Kuch Nahi Liya , Allah dekhega.”
Gradually Sia gathered that Badi Be was from Karachi and her nephew Ali, who was coming from Dakkan Hyderabad, was going to meet her in the airport. They lived near a hotel and some more details about their ancestral properties came forward in her ramblings. The central idea was that the nephew had told her to stay in the airport and not to go out. She kept on giving Sia her family history, medical history. All the time Sia was nodding out of helplessness born out of politeness instilled in her.
Sia called the airport attendants. They turned out to be from Ceylon and had a working knowledge of Hindi. Together they prompted Badi Be to tell her destination.
“Umrika (America) jaa rahi hoon,” and she proudly told them that she had brought her double passports also, as asked by her son. Her elder son lived there. The attendant wanted her to go with him to make a formal complaint, but she was not ready to buzz from her seat. Her nephew had asked her to stay in the airport, so she was not going to move. Sia tried to explain that the airport was very big, and it would be impossible for her nephew to locate her.
“No, no. He had told me; he would find me.”
“But then he was counting on your mobile, now you have lost it.”
“Ai behen (sister),” she addressed Sia, “you check my pouch once again. Please search it carefully.” She handed her pouch to Sia. “Maybe I haven’t checked it thoroughly. The phone is inside it only.” Her voice was hopeful. The vain part in Sia’s personality silently protested the address ‘behin’, since she was decades younger than Badi Be, but with a hidden smile silently cheering the sisterhood, she took the pouch and searched through it again. Of course, the phone was not there. She tried to reason with her, “Your nephew must have thought that he would give you a call, ask you where you are sitting and then come to meet you. Now you don’t have your phone, how will he contact you?” But this explanation fell on deaf ears, perhaps Be was exhausted by the turn of events. The two airport assistants kept on talking to each other. Then one of them came to Sia and said, “Madam, what is her nephew’s name?”
“Ali.”
“Okay, now we will do something.” They became busy on their phones. Sia wondered if on such a huge airport announcement on loudspeakers could be made like she had seen made in fares. And she was in for a surprise because after five minutes another assistant came in a golf cart and told Be, “Ali says you come to the gate for the flight to America. Ali has sent me.” The old woman got up with alacrity, blessing him and sat in the cart mumbling to herself complaining to God for putting her through such an ordeal. She even forgot to say goodbye to Sia.
After Be departed, Sia asked the assistants, “How did you find Ali so quickly?”
“We did not. At least this way she will be on the gate of her flight to America. It is common sense that Ali will come to board the plane to that gate. Now whether she boards the plane or not she will be there when the last call is made.” They exchanged smiles, “We just called a mate of ours to come and pretend that Ali had sent him. If she had stayed here in the lounge while the flight left, we the staff would have been in problem. We will notify the office about the theft, but we doubt her mobile will be found in time.” Their handling of the problem was appreciable.
Sia proceeded to her gate but kept on wondering about what finally happened to her ‘behin’ from Karachi, hoping that greed on the part of that young porter would not have led to any tragedy.
Read more Short Stories by our contributors here.
Image credit: “Empty chairs”by yanec is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0
