Airport Ballet

The first thing I saw when I entered the plane was a mouth smeared with chocolate. Folded into himself, with big tears rolling down his cheeks and over the melting chocolate at the edges of his mouth, a glassy unfocused look in his eyes, he seemed like a sad poppy seed lost inside an airplane seat. A small bright orange plastic bag hanging around his neck with travelling information declared loudly his solitude.





Keeping an eye on him, I placed my bag in the compartment above, and turned to him. "Hey, I'm Tijana," I said and held out my hand. He looked up, twitched one corner of the lip into a half-smile, tears still dripping: "I'm Nikola." He held out his hand, completely covered in chocolate. "Aaaa, maybe the other hand?" I said and we both laughed.



Now that we were friends officially, we started chatting across the empty seat between us. Still sniffling a little, he told me he was eight. This was the second time he was travelling alone; and he was only changing planes in Paris, but he was really going to Montreal, where his mom would wait for him. His dad stayed behind in Belgrade (but they were not divorced, he informed me right away). I told him I was also going to Montreal - his eyes bulged out, and he said excitedly how it was great because we could go together.



At that point a smiling Japanese woman claimed her seat in between us, and so our little team got a third member. Her name was Akiko, and she was going back to Tokyo via Paris after two weeks she had spent with her Serbian friend (who in a few sentences transformed into the boyfriend). It was her first time in the Balkans and she loved it; she worked as a tax investigator for the Japanese government, and had to be back at work the morning after she arrived. In fact, she said laughing, her boss had called her the day before to make sure she was coming back on time.



Just as we were beginning to feel it was natural to be talking and sitting motionless on the hot Belgrade tarmac, the plane suddenly made that first, tentative move, the one that always marks the end of something. We started to roll slowly down the runway, getting into position, in the middle of corn fields. I craned my neck towards the window, trying to look out over Nikola's head. In the blinding noon hour, I squinted, looking for them.



On top of the newly opened Belvédère (Vidikovac) -- a bald, dusty-looking mound of earth from which visitors could watch the planes from close up -- I saw them; the only two figures moving about beneath the merciless August sun. As the plane passed by them on its way to the take-off position, they waved, and jumped, and did a bizarre little ballet, and signalled: at the plane, at me, though they couldn't see me. "Look, everyone," I told my two companions, "those are my dad and my brother over there, saying goodbye." Nikola straightened up immediately and glued his face to the window, "Where??" In the few seconds that we had for this, as if moved instinctively by some mysterious force, all three of us started waving back, Nikola, Akiko, and me. We were waving and waving (although it took only a few seconds), strangely part of this mute communication: the figures outside were waving not seeing us, and we were waving knowing they can't see us.



The plane made the final leap of faith, and left everything on the ground below, sending our centres for coordination into the abyss of unexplored territory. We leaned back in our seats. Nikola got Akiko to show him her weird-looking Japanese cell phone/computer/camera/i-pod while she was tidying up his food tray, and then he embarked on telling me the story of how this one time, he saved all the children from the plane, which was on fire, and he was the one who opened the door and let the children escape (...). Not losing her polite smile even for a second, Akiko pulled a bunch of photos from the bag at her feet and showed me the highlights of her trip.


Another voyage was underway.


And I was leaving again.