Toledo-Detroit-DC-Chicago-Delhi-Lucknow.
The flight had the silliest cities mentioned as we flew over Michigan, Sleeping Bear Dunes, Sault Sainte Marie, but I guess that's all there is, there. Hours later and a world away it said Kabul, Peshawar, Pindi and then we were there on the dot called Delhi.
Jet setting with time lagging—swelling in the knee caps after a fourteen hour flight. I slept most of the way but now must again, to get on track and get ready for more orienting. This is East of West, older than old, with old ideas muttered into new cell phones as the dust of construction erodes the layered latticework of empires built upon empires.
The mustached man at the customs counter looked at me and said “Beenish, Beenish Fatima, so you are from India, you go to America, you come back to India to learn Urdu, good full circle, na? Welcome back to your home country.” And I kept the lock on any nationalism that might be folded into my suitcase. An Indian airport is no place to lay my claim to Pakistan, especially while I hold firmly to the royal blue and glittering gold of an American passport.
But the smell of diesel exhaust and bougainvillea blooms seems like home enough to me. The way the hot night settles over the skin.
We were brought in a bus to a hotel, served mango lassi some pani puri drink in a glass. Little triangle sandwiches and chum chum mithai. Rooms with balconies, showers, platters of fruit as warm and dusty as the the still air of the sitting room. Taking Tylenol PM to convince the body that it is night, that it must sleep. I must sleep.
