August in Paris (3 page)

“Think of the long trip home.”

—Elizabeth Bishop,
Questions of Travel

As I get older, I find myself adopting so many of the questionable habits of lost loved ones, from my father's bellowing and name-calling to my grandmother's bottomless dish of Hershey's Kisses to my first husband's weakness for synthetic codeine. Then there's my mother. I have to say, the only pursuit more delightful than recalling one's mother's quirks is re-enacting them.

 For almost all of my 20s and 30s I resided in Austin, Texas. My widowed mother lived 2,000 miles away in our ancestral home outside Asbury Park, New Jersey. Game to the last, she visited often, particularly after her grandsons appeared on the scene, arriving out of the baggage claim with her roller bag and tote, a Carlton 100 clamped between her lips, and after a quick kiss I would inquire, “How was your trip?”

For my mother, the reply to this question was no routine nicety. “Tough,” she might pronounce, sucking on the skinny white cigarette she smoked in the car despite all protests. Then she would dive into an account of her miseries with relish, exuding the triumphant yet embittered air of a field marshal summarizing a battle won after many reversals—the delay in Newark, the gate change at O'Hare.

As her visit proceeded, others would politely pose the same question, and she would tell her tale again and again. Certain words would float toward me over the hum of conversation at a party or bar: runway, turbulence, layover.

Later, when I moved to Pennsylvania, she could get almost as much of a nail-biter out of her three-hour drive on the turnpike, fraught as it was with overturned tractor-trailers, inexplicable jams at Bethlehem or Pottsville, mysterious aberrations in the operation of E-Z Pass tollbooths.

In light of all that, I present this account of a recent trip to Uganda with my mother's namesake, my daughter Jane. We flew there the day after Christmas to visit our friends Jim and Steve, a writer and a medical researcher. Uganda with a 13-year-old is not everyone's idea of a great Christmas trip, but it is just the sort of adventurous, stupid thing I love. People could forward me all the scary news stories they wanted; I felt sure we would have a blast.

Granted, I was a little nervous about our chosen carrier, Ethiopian Airlines. But it turned out it was lovely, and our seatmate on the outgoing trip—a cute, rotund fellow named Tesfaye—made the 12 hours from Dulles to Addis Ababa go by quickly. “Let's focus on what's important, Jennie,” he said, urging Jane to turn from identifying world capitals on the seatback monitor to stopping the stewardess so we could get some wine. He showed us videos of his wife and baby and told us how sad it was that we wouldn't get to spend any time in Addis, apparently the party capital of Africa.

As soon as we bid him adieu, we learned our flight to Entebbe was delayed; our three-hour layover had become eight. The Addis airport offered chaise longues, duty-free shops, and a lady pouring Ethiopian coffee for clients sitting in a circle on low wooden stools. Soon enough, we had exhausted these delights and went to the gate. We sat. We looked around. We were afflicted with stomach gas (actually, this was just me). We met a retired community college dean from California named Connie, whom we ran into again at the New Year's Eve party at our safari lodge.

After a few hours, airline staff herded us to a distant dining room, fed us a complimentary cat-food dinner, then herded us back to board our plane. All in all, we were quite malodorous, worn out, and greasy by the time we arrived in Kampala—but happy to see Jim and Steve and be off on our African adventure, which would include spending New Year's at said safari lodge.

Sadly, this is not an essay about rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses, thick on the ground as they may have been, so fast forward to the return trip, which took an epic 48 hours, topped only by the storied return of my mother and my son Hayes from France in 2005—remember?—a tale of such tension and drama that it was retold at my mother's memorial service.

12:00 noon, January 5:
Embark from lodgings at Mutungo Hill, Uganda

We were traveling home with Jim, who was taking a break from his African year to visit a writers' colony in New Hampshire. Our driver, Godfrey, got us through Kampala traffic and to the Entebbe airport in record time. 

1:15 p.m., January 5:
Entebbe Airport

Arriving four hours before our scheduled flight, we immediately learned that it was delayed until 10:00 p.m., which meant we'd miss our connection in Addis. The agent explained that we'd spend the night and the next day in an airport hotel at the airline's expense—all the cat food you can eat!—and take the Dulles flight the following night. This was bad news for Jim, who would now miss a reading of his play in Baltimore, and no better for Jane, who had had enough of travel complications and was worried about missing any more school; we had already extended the Christmas break by a couple of days.

We tried to settle in at the airport café, but it was very hot and uncomfortable and there was no wireless. All my ailments—stomach, eye, hip, leg—were acting up. Several hours in, I sprang for admission to the Karibuni Club, a special waiting room for rich people and frequent flier, offering AC, upholstered furniture, free drinks, and snacks. Entertainment included both the sunset and nighttime call to prayer, which drew Muslim men of all ages, who suddenly materialized and formed a line as if about to take an exercise class or do a country-western dance.

2:30 a.m., January 6:
Addis Airport

After disembarking, all the people who had missed connections lined up to learn their fate. The ensuing scene was “It's a Small World” run riot: a scrum of saris, djellabas, kaftans, many types of headgear, babies tied to fronts and backs, one man who had fashioned the Ethiopian Airlines blanket into a kind of ceremonial drape, a mélange of international body odors and tongues. We recognized some of our companions from earlier portions of the journey—the long-haired Italian who looked like Yanni, a pair of squat, swarthy brothers, a truly maddened person who elbowed his way through the line screaming, “Do you know how much money I make in Laos?,” after which he proceeded to lay his infant on the ticket counter saying, “Is this her bed?”

As usual, the sufferings of transit along with its leveling powerlessness proved a crucible of character. Everyone who was not losing it shared surreptitious sighs and glances.

Unbelievably and luckily, I had remembered I had a friend in Addis Ababa—Justine, the daughter of my former literary agent, now married to a U.N. diplomat. The clerk pushed an old dial phone through the ticket window, and people watched suspiciously, sure I was getting away with something, as I called her to say we were in town.

The next morning:
Addis Ababa

Justine explained that due to the extreme peculiarities of the Ethiopian calendar, it was Christmas Eve. Seriously. In fact, the actual date in Ethiopia was not January 6 but December 28, Christmas was the 29th, and New Year's had been celebrated back in September. At this point, it all seemed about par for the course.

Justine was less sanguine about the recreational opportunities of Addis than was our old pal Tesfaye, but we spent a fine day in her care. A driver took us around to look at a few hotels and construction sites, then dropped us off at the Greek Club, a VFW sort of place with dark paneling, pictures of Athens, and outdoor tables on a patio overlooking a basketball court. We ordered spanakopita and souvlaki, probably the traditional Ethiopian foods of Christmas.

Justine and her husband were confident that our flight would go off as scheduled, since flights to destinations outside Africa tend to run more reliably, and they were right. A 15-hour trip with a brief layover in Rome returned us to the year 2014 and subzero wind chill at Dulles. Would our luggage be lost? Would our car battery be dead? Would we freeze to death on the terminal sidewalk before the parking lot shuttle ever arrived?

No. My little car was waiting where I had left it, iced over but ready to go, and our native country welcomed us with exquisitely paved roads and surprisingly little traffic.

I wish I could have called my mother to give her the report; I can just imagine her cursing sympathetically between puffs on the other end of the line. How proud she would be of our tenacity and resourcefulness, how she would exclaim over her granddaughter's conduct under duress. Though doubtless she would easily trump our ordeal with details of her delays and missed connections on her way to the smoking section of the afterlife.

Policia Nacional del Peru—Policia de Turismo Cusco

Date:
23 June 2013; hour: 12:10 p.m.

In the city of Cusco in the Office of the Tourist Police, the tourist MARION LISA WINIK (55), a U.S. national, single, a teacher, presented herself without personal documents or papers of transit through the city. The aforementioned tourist had suffered the loss of her brown handbag in a cafeteria…

Mallmanya Inn

Date:
23 June 2013; hour: 6:10 a.m.

In the unheated breakfast room of our hotel, I was writing a journal entry titled “Cranky in Cusco.” Though I'd been having a pretty good time on my educational tour of Peru with 25 seventh graders, their teachers, and some of their parents, Day Six found me in a snit. I'd broken a 55-year ban on organized travel to take this tour with my daughter, Jane, and I'd begun to remember why I might not like such a trip. I also remembered that I was not all that interested in ruins or the brutish ancient civilizations behind them. Machu Picchu, I admitted, was the best of the bunch. If you like mountain scenery. Which I don't. Hoping to get the ill humor out of my system, I wrote at length about the smelly hotel, the boring food, the effects of the endless walking on my arthritic knees.

When Jane came down with a group of six girls for breakfast, I suggested we skip the daily rolls and margarine and try our luck elsewhere. A few blocks away, we came upon a fancy pastry shop where I was only slightly surprised to find almost all the other members of our tour group already dining. Things were looking up, I felt. So much so that I pulled out my journal to note that fact. Cafe Valeriana. Good quiche.

When I put my journal back into my bag, I saw I had a text message from the short-lived boyfriend who had broken up with me on the eve of this journey. I had just begun to reply, stabbing at the touchscreen keyboard, when the waitress brought our bill. I reached down for my purse, which had been wedged between me and the girl beside me on the bench. It wasn't there. It wasn't on the other side of me, or on the floor.

Since none of us had even seen anyone approach the table, this was clearly the work of a magician.

So much for Cranky in Cusco—the journal was now history, along with my money, credit cards, ID, and the novel I was reading. Jane's iPhone was in there, too, but thanks to that texting ex, mine was not. Worst, I had lost my passport. I say “worst” because I had no idea what I was in for.

During the time I was at the police station filing my report, four other robbery victims came in. Officer Juvenal Zerceda Vasquez regretfully explained that this was the weekend of the Festival of the Sun, when professional thieves come to Cusco from all over the country. I pictured a chartered bus,
Oceans 11
on the DVD player, and umbrella drinks.

He proceeded to type up a detailed description of every item in the purse, then printed the report using a dot-matrix printer and a sheet of carbon paper. My wrinkled copy is all that remains of the “estuche multicolor conteniendo lapiceros y maquillaje,” (multicolored pouch containing pens and makeup), the “cuadernillo personal” (personal journal), and the “billetera floreado” (flowered wallet. Actually, it was polka-dot but I couldn't get that across.)

Next, he let me use the phone to call the U.S. Embassy. The woman who answered brusquely informed me that I would need to change my flight to Lima, get passport photos, fill out DS-11 and DS-64 online, and by the way, the Peruvian immigration office closes at noon. Since all this would cost a pretty penny, I should immediately message my contacts in the United States to explain my plight and ask for money. (God, I thought, are some of those e-mails for real?)

“When are you supposed to fly home?” she asked.

“Tuesday evening,” I said. It was Sunday.

“It'll be tight,” she said grimly. “Tomorrow is a national holiday.”

“And there's nothing you can do for me?”

“No,” she said firmly. “Nothing.”

I returned to the hotel in a police cruiser. Too depressed to remain conscious, I fell into a deep sleep of many hours. When I awoke, any complaints I may have had about organized tourism were forgotten, for it had become my fairy godmother.

The director of our tour group had been on the phone to the head office in Boston. They had changed my flight from Cusco to Lima and arranged for a local to meet me at the plane. I was handed a xerox copy of my old passport and an envelope of cash for cabs and fees. In the meantime, I was advised to relax and enjoy the national holiday.

Believe it or not, I did.

My escort, Martin, turned out to be an ex-skateboarder whose band had once played the Warp Tour. With his help, I was able to negotiate taxi fees, maneuver through traffic, fill out forms, get photos, swear I told the truth and nothing but the truth, then race across town with my brand-new passport to the Peruvian Immigration office, which as you know closes at noon, but where the line to find out what line to wait in is a mile long, where armed guards are charged with preventing you from asking questions, where you need two copies and a receipt for your payment from the bank, where at 11:45 a fat man puts everybody's passport in a pile and gets on the phone to order lunch.

Having been in a state of extreme stress for eight hours, I was starting to lose it. I slumped to the floor in exhaustion, wondering vaguely where I would sleep that night, what would happen to Jane when she got home if I was unable to rejoin the group before they left the country.

Martin was a mild sort, but he rose to the occasion. Braving the guard, he stormed the counter and got my passport back. At which point the fat man returned everyone else's passports, too, so that we walked out of there like Olympic heroes.

Then we returned to the airport and met up with my tour group, and we all came home.

There is a reason these things happen to me and not other people, people who lock their doors and use fanny packs when abroad and don't take their passports out of the hotel. My son Vince has kindly called it an “aura of vulnerability.”

May it fail to kill me and continue to provide amusement for us all.