Dubai International Airport - 2022
“What’s not transformed is transmitted,”
- Paraphrased from a quote by Richard Rohr
“Were you scared, Uhuru?” I said.
“I was surprised that you were missing,” Uhuru said.
I would have cried to pieces that moment if I had the space to do so. There was a connecting flight to catch in an hour or so. So I thanked our good fortune and moved our cabin bags along with the 2-year old and the 6-year old toward the next terminal.
Yet I’m unsure if I thanked the stewardess. I’m unsure if I thanked other passengers. I’m unsure if I thanked Uhuru for taking care of himself. I’m unsure if I thanked Ahana for her quiet attention to my heartbeat. I’m unsure if I thanked the strangers who looked for Uhuru. I’m unsure if I thanked those who waited with hope at the next terminal.
About twenty minutes before that, we had landed in Dubai.
I was traveling from San Francisco to Dubai with our two children by myself. It was an unexpected arrangement that transpired because my partner’s passport delivery was delayed by a visa processing center of another country. I decided to travel with the kids. Their father could follow whenever his documents were back.
I boarded with a basic plan for the 15-hour flight to Dubai. Also, as a principle, I decided to follow anything I asked the children to do. So we watched movies together and when the meal service started, we switched off everything and ate together. Later, when the aircraft lighting was changed to sleep-mode, all of us unplugged. Well, I only got to unplug the headphones. Uhuru crumpled in his own seat and slept off, while Ahana sprawled into two seats, all of hers and half of mine. So, I had little room to even sit, forget sleeping.
For the 15-hour journey, all I got was some quiet and a couple of uncontrollable 5-minute snoozes.
Then the plane landed. Gathering energy, I got Uhuru and Ahana to hold their little backpacks, put on my own, and then pulled out the cabin bag from the overhead bin. Tired as I was, it took me a moment to pull out the bag and set it on the floor — people were lined up behind us on the aisle.
While I struggled to pop out the trolley handle and move, I also shushed Ahana who begged to be picked up.
“Kavi, do you know in Sonic…”
“Uhuru! Turn around and go forward,” I said.
I might have said it louder and sterner than I intended to because I was alarmed by the sound of my own voice. And then I watched Uhuru do as told.
That moment carried the weight of my sleeplessness, physical exhaustion, and sense of failure. Because this is what I saw — Uhuru ran, disappeared, and then, was gone.
Horrified, I picked up Ahana, pulled the trolley, and ran through the aisle. Uhuru was nowhere in my sight as I sprinted through the exit and the ramp to the terminal. I screamed, calling out to Uhuru.
“What happened?”..“What was he wearing?” “How tall is he?” “Does he have a bag?”
I heard people’s voices. Of course, they wanted to help. However, the more questions I heard, the more I believed he was gone.
“Is he wearing a brown shirt?” Someone said.
“Greyish…printed..” I said.
“There’s a boy in the plane,”
The boy in the brown shirt is someone else, I thought. Yet I ran back to the aircraft, with the 2-year old in my arms and the cabin bag. The air hostess, mirroring the look on my face, asked me to calm down. She picked up the phone and relayed the message.
I had no moment to waste. If Uhuru was on the plane, he would have been with the stewardess. So I ran out again, in complete hopelessness and with a sense of absolute doom.
The whole of rest of my life stopped in that moment. I felt Ahana’s hand on my chest. “What happened, Kavi?” “Uhuru..Uhuru is missing, Ahana,” And then I felt her put her head on my shoulder, out of sympathy I think. It was comforting yet devastating at the same time — as if she was with me to walk through the grief.
After that, I must have howled. I could hear my voice calling out Uhuru’s name at the same pitch as before. However, there was the deflection and the whimper now. The cry of disappointment, of a loss that was unclear yet unbearable.
Then I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around — it was the stewardess with a child in her arms.
“Uhuru!” I wept.
“He was in the flight, here,” The stewardess said.
Uhuru looked at me and then, his straight lips curved down to cry. I asked Ahana to stand and took Uhuru from the stewardess.
“Were you scared, Uhuru?” I said.
“I was surprised when I didn’t see you,” Uhuru said. Then I watched him cry, only to realize that he was doing so because of me.
I’m unsure if I hugged the stewardess and I hope I did. I’m unsure if I thanked Uhuru for remembering to do what he had been told, long ago — “If you’re ever unable to find your parents in a busy place, stay wherever you are.”
I’m unsure if it was gratitude or grief.
Because while I found Uhuru that day, who had never, in the true sense, disappeared, I lost the last few ounces of belief in life, love, and self that was leftover from another era.
This trauma, raw and unprocessed, followed me.
As an echo of Richard Rohr’s words quoted above, I rediscovered that impending doom in the amusement rides of Legoland, in my ability to care for my mother and the children, and in my ability to care for myself. Worried about the 2-year old slipping off a mini-roller coaster, the 6-year old toppling over a thrill space ride, and my own mother passing out in the rides she loved — I developed a chest pain. The pain felt like a warning that anything could happen to me too.
These worries were new to my character. I had never experienced them before this way and had never had to process them either. And in the confusion of who I was or what I was going through, I had tried to hold the pain rather than release it, let it go. And that pain had got to my body. This physical expression of that trauma, the chest pain, only subsided when I discussed a care/action plan with my mother, in the event anything happened to me.
I saw the surprise in my mom’s face. It was a sad moment in my life — to believe that I had lost a child, to believe that I had lost every chance in life, to believe that I had lost all that could ever be gained, already.
Now, in slow steps, I’m learning to walk out of that (un)tragedy. And in that hike toward the light, I hope to discover a new perspective on the spiritual tragedy that accompanied Ahana’s birth (yet to write).