Got super wired by many machine-generated coffees leaving Frankfurt. Worried I’d get waylaid with a delayed flight and have to sit there stewing in my caffeine high. Tipped the Afghan taxi driver lots; his life was hell and I believed it. Could have been a scam but didn’t think so by the way his eyes burned into mine through the rear view mirror. Used some Arabic phrase “God is always watching,” and he would have to wait for the next life. Said something in German I didn’t understand and then used Google voice-assist translate on his phone: patience. Felt that survivor’s guilt thinking about him over my eggs fried in truffle oil. A robot with a genderless voice delivered it to me at an Italian restaurant in the airport. He’d said something about only getting a week off a year. Driving taxi, no life. What he must have thought of me.

Mom was always insisting slow down. When we sat in a restaurant she flapped her arms and hands as if pressing something down. Langsom, langsom: sloow. It was hard with the coffee. I shoveled rolls of meat and cheese in my mouth and rubbed it in the truffle oil. In the morning I had really bad eye bags and my hair was frizzled from the heater but at last I had a warm night in a dark small room at the airport hotel. And studied myself in the mirror thinking how crazy and old I looked.

Getting to border control so early there was no line, just piles of cops and customs people standing around looking alert. I’d really be outnumbered if I was hiding something. The young woman at passport control flicked through the pages in my passport with zero interest and just stamped it without a word. I had a wheel of cheese in my backpack from the Metro outlet, the French version of Costco, planning a tartiflette which was only proper with the Reblochon, long outlawed in the States. Each time I unzipped my backpack the smell came wafting out. I was shaking so badly from the caffeine I could hardly focus my knife. What language they spoke was unclear but it sounded eastern. My heart ached to stay here. But I was needed back home—not just by my family, but my country. I loved America all the more for fear of losing it to the tyrants who were trying to take it for themselves. We are all a part, the Afghan taxi driver said, human. I ate the last of my rolls and paid. 

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, Travelogues

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, journal writing, travel