There can be no worse way to start a news coverage, or any journey. An oversight, a lightweight choice to protect the most essential element and a furtive hand that doesn’t realize the harm it does to leave another without a passport. Or if.
And the world (even the World Cup) suddenly collapses. An earthquake. From the overwhelming illusion of witnessing a new World Cup to the quarrel (with oneself), helplessness, anguish and fear, yes, because being left alone and stranded in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, awakens all kinds of fantasies. Nobody nice. Not as much as Midnight Express, but close. In principle, language does not unite us at all.
I missed my flight to Doha, of course.. Sweating, I searched every corner, even the trash in case someone threw it away; in the pots. Until dawn. I asked everyone who does business and everyone (many) who cleans the airport.
I went up and down from transit to immigration at least ten times, none of them apologized for the hassle of taking off my shoes and belt to scan. By the end, everyone knew me.
I think I pity them.
I was, for almost two days, Tom Hanks in that movie. The first night I slept (?) on a bench among dozens of Arabs.
There is nothing to blame the airportIt even has rooms where Muslims can pray without forgetting the capitalist touches and places that never seem to close.
In the worst of disappointments I thought I would never be able to get out of it. With obsessive paranoia, I checked each of the places set up to recharge cell phones. Mine failed on the first try and an icy cold enveloped me. The one from the newspaper replied. Running out of phone would be the end of it.
How to alert someone to come to the rescue? I came to think I wouldn’t see Argentina’s debut among other disasters.
The next morning there was no miracle. No kind souls had found my passport.
The solution came from legality, in the form of an embassy. An emergency passport thanks to the saving hand of the consul Rodrigo Forcada put an end to so much imaginary apocalypse. A boarding pass for Doha did the rest. And the World Cup hasn’t started yet.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Source: Clarin
