“There were two guys walking behind who looked very much like my cousins from Samara.”
“Cousins… uncles… brothers… are these men related to you in any way or are those so called family designations?”
“Yes… maybe… I don’t know, but I don’t remember Mother spending a lot of time with them.” Anna gestured at the corridor. “There were a lot of Russians walking past. Looked like they were in a hurry; they did not look here.”
I scanned the corridor and its temporary English signs tacked to the plywood barriers. “They’ve gone to get their bags if they went that way.” A large set of one-way doors terminated the corridor under a pictogram of suitcases.
“Yes, that way.”
“Great! they think we’re getting off here, in Istanbul.”
“Are we not?”
“Not if your mother is here.” I crouched again, slapping a fist into my palm. “What is she doing here, anyway?”
Asians flowing past the cordoned off seating area had become a torrent heading for the baggage carousels. I signaled to Anna, and we made a break for it, joining the crowd. I hadn’t seen The Skater or the cousins, and hoped against reason that Anna had hallucinated them. Dead ahead, a passage branched off the main corridor under a CONNECTING PASSENGERS banner. I pulled Anna from the flow of exuberant vacationers heading through the doors to collect their luggage.
“Wait! Our bag!”
“Leave it! Your Mother’s going to be there. That’s the way she went, right?”
Anna nodded.
“She might even have the bag. Especially if you put your name on the tag.”
“Oh no, I did write the name. How stupid of me!”
“Just bloody excellent!” I pushed Anna ahead of me down the connecting-passengers corridor. “We’re getting out of Istanbul.” We navigated by following the crowds until we ended up in a large area with airline counters. The red and white of the Turkish Airlines logo reminded me of good old Air Canada, and I made a beeline for their counter.
“Two tickets on the first flight leaving Istanbul. Please hurry.”
The startled ticket agent typed at her terminal. Other agents glanced over at us. I was starting to sweat in my suede parka.
“Any bags?”
“No, no bags, just carry-on.”
“Maybe they can send the bag after us?” Anna said.
“No, no bag, we’ll call lost baggage and claim it when we get to wherever.” I cut in, trying to prevent Anna announcing to everyone we abandoned a bag in the airport.
The agent continued typing. I nervously scanned a flight information board showing arrivals. Our flight from Odessa showed as having arrived on time. Several flights below that, and just above a flight from Shanghai, a flight from Moscow was listed as having arrived late. I made a mental note of the time it came in. It was a stroke of good luck, had the Moscow flight come in on time, before we did, things would have been different.
“There is a flight to Dalaman if you wish, but we only have room in business class and it’s already boarding.” The agent didn’t bother looking up. She probably wanted us away from her station, pronto.
“Fine, two in business class.” I slapped the plastic on the counter with my passport. Anna started digging for hers. “We’re fast, we won’t hold up the plane.” I grimaced at my choice of words.
Running for it, I heard several “last call” announcements for our flight. My ankle was playing up, but the headache was a far more immediate problem. The boarding agents waved us down the flyway, and we barreled onto a waiting Boeing 737. Business class was empty and I flopped into the first seat I came to. Then, trying to control my heaving stomach, I wondered why they even bothered dividing planes into sections seeing as everyone flew economy. Nothing like inane ponderings to soothe a throbbing brain.
Anna looked past the heavy drapes demarcating business class. She scanned the jam-packed economy section for familiar faces. I hadn’t asked her to, and I didn’t think it was necessary, still, I had tears in my eyes. Maybe it was a reaction to the pain, but knowing Anna was cluing in to how this run for our lives had to work, and knowing I could lean on her, felt overwhelmingly good.
“Okay, it’s clear. Nobody on the plane that I know.” Anna took a seat beside me, placed her hand on mine and asked, “How is your headache?”
I smiled and closed my eyes.
It was dark when we landed in Dalaman. I didn’t know anything about the place, how big it was or even where it was. Someplace in southwestern Turkey, I figured. Did it have a train station, a seaport, hotels? Did anyone speak English? The terminal, like the one in Istanbul, was under some kind of major renovation. It was dark and desolate, with the exception of the red and white Boeing we’d arrived on. The structure itself reminded me of an American car dealership. Flimsy glass curtain-walls were topped by a thin slab roof and everything was open to the night. A gentle breeze smelling of flowers wafted through the place. Other than a couple of baggage handlers in yellow coveralls, our fellow passengers were the only signs of human life.
Some of the passengers gathered around a single baggage carousel. Others, including the pilots and flight attendants, vanished through open wall panels into the warm, black-velvet night. The eerie quiet was unnerving after the chaos and immensity of the Istanbul airport. Sounds were somehow muffled. My head throbbed, dulling my senses, yet I was acutely aware of the complete lack of bombastic Russian expletive filled insults among the background murmur of voices. I enjoyed hearing a language I didn’t understand and wasn’t obliged to eavesdrop on.
The baggage arrived and the passengers left. I’d held back, watching, regrouping, thinking. It looked like we were the only people left in the terminal. Beyond wide-open glass doors was a passenger pickup and drop-off area. It was badly lit and deserted. No shuttle buses, no taxis, no private cars, nobody at all. The few cars scattered throughout the lot looked like they hadn’t moved in years. I wandered back into the terminal. “Hello? Aloha, anybody here?”
I surveyed empty counters. Passing what might have been car rental booths once upon a time, I noticed an old-fashioned yellow phone missing the dial and numbers, the sort of phone you see near supermarket exits back home, labeled, TAXI. The phone I saw wasn’t labeled. It could have been for code-yellow aviation emergencies, for all I knew. I lifted the receiver and waited. Nothing, not even a dial tone. I waited a few more seconds. Then, about to drop the receiver into its chipped chrome cradle, I heard this tiny little voice rasping from the earpiece.
“Hello? English?” I asked.
“Yes please, speak English. You want taxi?”
“Please, and a driver who speaks English.”
A modern van, the color of the phone, but in much better condition, pulled up. A tall, dark older man, whose voice I recognized from the yellow taxi phone, got out and opened the side door for us. The question of “where to?” hadn’t come up until then. Apparently there was no point to staying in Dalaman. According to the cabbie, who had an astonishingly thick black mustache and platinum hair, it was a departure point for the various resort towns nearby. We could find a hotel in Dalaman, but that was about it.
I went over our options with Anna. “We can stay here for a few days, lay low and get some sleep, then go back, connect through Istanbul, maybe on to Cairo… Anywhere out of Turkey, I guess.”
“Nyet, I do not think going to Istanbul is a good idea. Mother is there!” Anna reverted to Russian. Good idea, I thought. Why share our problems with the driver? “My passport soon won’t work, so Cairo is not an option. We are here, we are safe and we should stick to this place. We do not have much choice. I don’t understand how could mother know we were in Istanbul? Do you think Timo could tell her?”