It was at a Chicago airport eight or nine years ago that I found my place in America for the first time. It was like walking into a cinema town. The airport was full of men and women wearing red, blue, green, white, and purple. I had never seen so many people of different color in one place. The exhaustion of my long journey combined with the calm tranquility and the pleasant ecstasy of seeing new people like a midday nap after a heavy lunch. It was as if the cast and crew of all the films I had ever seen had come out of the screen and marched in front of my eyes. Everything was dreamy and novel to me. 

Tired and wrecked, with luggage in one hand and passport in the other, I tilted toward the exit door where I recognized a 70-year-old man. He was tidy and hairless in an ironed blue shirt, wearing glasses and carrying a small brown wallet in one hand. My mom’s uncle. We called him "Uncle Samad."

A few days before the flight, we had decided to find each other by the airport exit door. I was supposed to have three to four hours until the next flight to sit and chat; however, I was late. My flight from London had been delayed, and I now had no more than half an hour to see him. Hastily, I had one eye on the screen and the next flight and the other on Uncle Samad. 

He came closer, stopped, and as usual, just as when he was with his wife and children in Iran, gave me a hug in a cold and foreign manner. Then, he looked at me from head to toe and said, "Forty-five years ago when I came to America, I was on my own. No one came to me. I had your age by then."

A bitter laugh rang from his mouth and his lips turned down. 

“Did you wait too long?” I asked. I wanted to change the subject. 

"Yeah." He answered and smiled. There was no compliment. In general, I like and dislike his non-Iranian frankness at the same time. Maybe it depends on the situation. In that situation, his frankness was not so likable to me.

"How was your flight?"

Now it was him who changed the subject. I didn't say anything. He repeated.

"Was your flight okay?"

"Yes. Yes, it was just a long flight. “I had nothing to say. My mind was engaged with where I would be forty-five years later and what I would do then and at what airport I would go to welcome someone. It was as if I was his past and he was my future: two people from completely different times and places who had reached out to each other at one spot on this planet and were walking shoulder to shoulder. I was both scared and assured. My heart was agitated by an inevitable fate or a sense of obligation to turn into the same person who was then moving alongside me, and this strange feeling was mixed with a sense of assurance from a familiar presence.

 "You haven’t missed them, have you?" Uncle Samad asked. He was not a talkative person, after all. He would say a few sentences, pause, and then continue. I didn't listen. I could only hear a few words and I nodded in approval.

"Missed?" I laughed. It was a stupid question and I had no answer. Maybe he only wanted to say something. My next flight was domestic and I had to go to another terminal. 

"I’ll be coming with you," he said.

I was glad. I knew we were going to be apart in less than half an hour, but my heart was still a little agitated. When we arrived at the second terminal we looked at each other. He didn't say goodbye. He didn't say anything at all. He just started searching in the pocket of his pants and then handed me his phone number, which was on a piece of white and neatly folded paper.

"Call me whenever you want."

I already had his number, but I think he had forgotten or maybe he just wanted to emphasize the sense of assurance. A few minutes later I left him and got on the plane. Since that day in the airport, after so many years, hearing his voice on the phone or meeting him in Chicago brings me those same feelings of anxiety and assurance.

spring 2018

This is an excerpt from the book published in Farsi, Tehran, 2018