"yes, i have come. i have had a safe journey, although my fears had
mounted against me. there were many mountains of my own making and
valleys of days without vision." -Saul Williams, "She".
Good
morning! It’s 8:30 a.m. here in Belfast, and about 3:30 a.m. back home in
Michigan. I’m in my room waiting for Hannah to officially come and wake me up,
and then we’ve got a busy day ahead of us.
Yesterday
afternoon, I got an e-mail from United Airlines, informing me that our flight
to Newark had been delayed by two hours. This was not good, because it arrived
at the same time our second flight to Belfast was supposed to be leaving. I
called the airport, and a half hour later, my family was driving to the
airport.
We
did get to the Detroit Metro in good time, but I did not get a good amount of
time to say good-bye (which is probably a good thing, because it means mom
didn’t cry.) From Detroit Hannah and I flew to Chicago, where we waited for our
next flight for a few hours, and then we flew an overnight to London Heathrow. I
slept fairly well, although my ears popped, no matter how much gum I chewed,
and the landing made me want to cry. Eight hours in a plane sandwiched between
two people is not good on your ears, and being subjected to sea-level pressure
again made me feel as if fire ants had invaded my skull and made my brain their
new home. However, multiple supplications to God and a lot of steady breathing,
and we landed intact in London Heathrow.
I
will admit that, upon arriving at Heathrow, all I could think about was
Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, the two stars of my favorite BBC
series, “Sherlock”. However, I soon noticed that an airport supposed to be
full, busy, and huge, was strangely…ghostly…empty.
It
was about eight in the morning in London time, and four in the morning in
Michigan, but I knew this couldn’t be right. I looked around tentatively,
wondering if we were still in that little tunnel leading from the plane to the
airport, but we had definitely in the airport—the glass doors, toilets, and
Olympics promotions proved that. I gripped my suitcase, bumping up against the
back of my leg, even tighter, and adjusted my backpack, which was digging
heavily into my shoulder.
“Shouldn’t
there be…people?” I asked Hannah tentatively.
“I
like it quiet,” she said, nervously, as if my words would suddenly summon
hordes of people with incomprehensible accents.
We
turned a corner, and there was a queue.
The
British are, it appears, singularly good at queuing (all other attempts
beforehand had resulted in a mad dash of Americans running to the plane and,
after we landed, from it, while Hannah and I sat patiently in our seats) and
fairly efficient. We got to the front of the line in no time—but there we were
forced to separate.
I
went to a man at table 22, reminded again of the irony of going to my good
luck/bad luck number. Would I have good luck? Or bad luck?
He
was a short, balding old man, and tired as I was, with my ears still sore, I
found it hard to understand him. But at last he stamped my passport and let me
through, and I hurried to the spot Hannah and I had chosen as our meeting
place. No one was there. This worried me, and I scoured the crowd for Hannah.
Had she gone ahead? Had she been pulled aside?
As
I stood there nervously, a woman in a blue work uniform appeared, her blonde
ponytail swinging behind her. “Are you the friend?” she asked (ah yu thuh freend?) and I blinked at
her, in relief.
“Yes,”
I gasped, “I’m the friend,” and she proceeded to tell me that we had to go to
Departures, and that to get there I had to go down one flight of stairs, across
a gate, and up another flight of stairs. Then, she said something I didn’t
catch, and when I blinked, she mimed pulling on a pair of shoes and said, “Boot.”
But
I had one word, Departures, that I could repeat until I got blue in the face,
if necessary, and so I nodded comprehension, thanked her, and headed off. I
took the escalator, juggling my coats, messenger bag, and suitcase, and managed
to get down the escalator without falling off (or watching my suitcase tumble
down, which might have been worse). There I found myself confronted by a bunch
of business men in suits, holding up signs that I didn’t bother to read. “Departures?”
I asked a pair of women in uniform, with name tags, and they blinked at me and
pointed at what looked like a maze at the other end of the large room. I set
off, navigated the maze, and soon found the other escalator. Some tricky maneouvering
later, I found myself in an even larger room, this was excessively crowded, and
no sign of Hannah.
I
had to ask three people for help, but I finally talked to a man who gave me a
new ticket (for reasons I did not, and never will, understand) and sent me
through security again. I could understand him perfectly, and underneath my
worry, I felt smug: Mom was wrong. The accents would be nothing, once I wasn’t
so tired, and my ears didn’t ache. I headed off towards security again, bumbled
around a bit (angering other, more experienced travelers) and then found myself
in front of a security guard. He was also older, and therefore, more difficult
to understand; but he had a nice smile, and he soon communicated to me that he
wanted me to stand on the yellow footprints on the ground, with my suitcase and
back to the side, and look at a thin black spike, which was gleaming with red
and green lights.
I
had no idea what it was, except something that might be found in a James Bond
film for reading eyeballs, but I looked determinedly at it, intent upon passing
this next test. He must have found my expression funny, because he said, “We’re
going to hypnotize you, love,” and I must have pretended to laugh. My heart
certainly melted a bit under the fear. Where was Hannah? She had never flown
before. Was she scared? So long as she was all right.
Had
she passed this way?
“May
I ask you a question?” I asked the man, once he had told me I was good, and he
nodded. “Have you seen a girl in a blue checkered shirt, with curly brown hair?”
“No,
sorry, but she’ll pass this way sooner or later; and you’ll meet at your gate.
All right?”
There
was wisdom in this, but wisdom a tired, lost American worried about her friend could
only just grasp. I thanked him, and went on through a white hallway, and then I
found myself in a mall.
There
was a group of green chairs directly in front of me, and behind them rows of
fancy shops, full of clothes, phones, electronics, books, mementos; on the
walls to either side of me were more shops, with chocolates inside. My eyes
skated over the seats, but I saw no one. I sat, reminding myself that Hannah
and I would soon find each other; but I couldn’t rest. I got up, and saw a
restaurant called Boots.
Boots. Duh. She
wasn’t just a crazy British lady obsessed with footwear. She was telling me where to meet Hannah. I had come the right way,
after all!
Only…there
was no Hannah sitting in Boots. Maybe I was the crazy one. Maybe all Brits had
a thing for boots, and she had been telling me to go buy some before I was left
out of the trend. Obviously, my brand-new white sneakers were winning no awards
in the fashion department.
My
feet hurt, too, now that I thought about it. I sat down and pulled out a book
and willed my heart rate to slow down before it gave me high blood pressure, or
something equally disastrous. Like a heart attack. The book couldn’t keep my attention. My eyes
kept skittering off the page, eyeing all of the people in wheelchairs (when was
the paraolympics, again?) the man with two prosthetic, hooked legs, the veiled
women, the white men who at first I thought might be English but spoke, only to
reveal that they were not.
And
then, there, was Hannah.
“Hannah!”
I cried, and she looked around, startled (who’s
calling my name, no one knows me here) and then she saw me. My heart rate
when back to normal.
And
we discovered that we were ravenously hungry--or, at least, that we should be.
Our stomachs had been left back in Michigan. We had not eaten since five o’clock
the night before, lots of hours had passed, and all I had had to eat was a
glass of orange juice and lots and lots of watermelon gum. We found a nice
place called the Giraffe, and I spent what was my most peaceful moment in all
of two days there, eating eggs, toast, and uncooked salmon, and drinking tea.
Then
we waited.
Our
flight left at 3:15. Between the twenty-four hour time and the fact that our
gate number was not disclosed until ten minutes before boarding, I almost had
another heart attack trying to find it, but we did. My ears were starting to
ache again—not from pressure, but from switching so abruptly from American
accents, to British ones, to the Irish one.
Another
flight. Another painful experience to my ears, now firmly upset with me. And
then, at long last, the plane landed. It was raining outside, and cold, at 12
degrees Celsius.
I
had finally landed in Belfast.
Queen’s
University Belfast met us outside of the luggage carousel, along with other
students flying with us: Mehgan, Tanje, Rob. They led us out to a bus, dashing
in the rain (does no one get used to rain?) and we boarded. From the window I
could see a gorgeous mountain, almost a plateau, green with trees and craggy
with bare rock faces. It called, and I turned to Hannah and said, “I’m going to
climb that thing,” and she laughed. I’m not a climber; I have only ever read
books about climbing, about summiting Everest and what sunrises look from on
top of Kilimanjaro.
The
airport was very much out of the way, surrounded by fields and sheep and cows.
In fact, when we were landing, I couldn’t see any of the tarmac; I worried that
we were landing on a poor farmer’s field. Queen’s was, the guides told us,
thirty minutes away; traffic willing. I settled back and listed to Tanje and
Rob speak about skiing. Rob, like us, was American, and sociable; Tanje was
Norwegian, and just as much so.
The
roads in and to Belfast are much different from the U.S. There are no sharp
turns, full stops and then swerving; there are only gentle turns, curving,
swaying quietly, the peel of an apple and the shape of the Earth. Red rocks
gleamed in the street, and there was a half-road to each side, where cars
pulled up to stop and, I suppose, rest awhile.
Then
we were in Belfast.
If
I were to build a city—if I had that kind of knowledge—I would build one just
like Belfast. It is not a city like New York is a city, where people have
choked out and destroyed nature; the world is green and red. New buildings mix
with the old, and from atop some buildings are green statues of men, heroes of
the past; hats in hand, or riding a rearing stallion, swords drawn for battle.
It was a history I knew nothing about, but it sung, and I heard it.
We
arrived at Queen’s, and began the long job of checking-in. I will post pictures
later, but suffice it for now to say that Holly Grove 4 is fairly out of the
way, at the top of a gentle hill. Hannah and I are on the ground floor, but in
different halls. We do share a kitchen, however, and a common room.
My
room is—ugly. After a long day, it was disheartening to return to a place that
is not your home, and may never be; where there is only one toilet that lacks
hand wash and towels to wipe your hands, and that there is only one shower for
eight girls to share. My room had a desk, and a sink, and fuses that burnt out
this morning when I tried to use the blow dryer (as a result, I went all
natural with my hair. I must have looked like an American freakshow). The
bedding I had bought from Queen’s took forever to figure out; Hannah and Tanje
had to help me with it. It is a garish pink stripped mess that barely covers
the bed, and between my cover and my mattress is only one thin white sheet. I
doubt it will survive a month. Worst of all, though, was that I was alone—alone—alone—
I
put what I could of my things away, and tacked up a Madonna poster, the Nyah
cat Brooke gave me, and a favorite poem. I turned on my iPod to lull me to
sleep, listening to Sarah’s Scandal in Belfast soundtrack, and turned off the
lights.
I
had expected to be terrified when the lights when out and I found myself
standing in a strange room, for all of the night terrors and fears that I had
as a child to come back. I half-expected Pharaoh Ramses’ mummy to burst in
through the window, and zombies come from the closet, with the sound of the
Headless Horseman’s horse beating up and down the hallway. But instead, I was met with a surprise—for the
student that had lived in my room before me had left something precious,
something that redeemed everything about the room and Holly Grove and my
situation and my mood.
The
ceiling above my head shone with stars.
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