Normally, people look forward to Thursdays. Being the last day of the week in most Muslim-majority countries, it is characterized by the hustle and bustle of busy shopping malls, the chaos in restaurants, and busy parks, as parents take out their children after a long week of work. In the midst of the pandemic, though, malls felt like museums, restaurants felt like catering services, and parks were as empty as the desert. Soon, the Thursday I dreaded had arrived.
As I sat beside my best friend next to the airport counter, trying to hold back tears as warm as the memories of the place I will soon bid adieu, the helplessness settled in. How will I adapt to the awful traffic back home? How will I get used to the bazaars that demand hours of bargaining? How will I make new friends? These were all the questions that barged in whenever my mind was at rest, even if momentarily.
A few minutes later, my father had obtained our baggage claim tags. It was time to say goodbye to my friends, for now. As I was unable to pack a few video game CDs, I handed them to my best friend to keep and, if possible, return them to me when he lands at Dhaka. My younger sister, who was eight at the time, unwilling to leave, wrapped her arms around my friend’s mom. After a few minutes of cradling, my father had to pry her off and pull her past immigration.
Dad tried his best to cheer us up with bars of Toblerone from a nearby Duty-Free shop to no avail. I sat on dusty cardboard boxes with my sister on my lap, as the gloom of the empty airport settled in. What was once an airport enveloped with the fragrance of Dior and the aroma of freshly roasted coffee beans now reeked of rotting produce and dusty gloom.
We were getting on a charter flight; all international flights since March had been suspended. Walking through the boarding bridge was supposed to feel like it had been any other summer, but this time it was different. This time, everyone around us was also gloomy; the festive atmosphere had rotted away in the confines of quarantine. The cabin crew handed out safety instructions as the plane revved its engines. Sometime between me looking out the window and the cabin crew speaking to the passengers, I drifted off to sleep in my puddle of tears.
Suddenly, the movement of the plane shook me awake. I took a look outside the window; the golden Sultan Qaboos Mosque had started shrinking, the golden outline of the Omani coast had become a line on a map, and soon, Oman had become a strange polygon. A home forgone.
