Desert Love

Chapter 4

     I wake up with a start. My head is spinning. We are still in the air, and we are still circling. I must have dozed off. The dream still lingered in my mind. I recall the warm yellow feel of desert sand. Rather than crash. In my dream we were swallowed by the sand as though it were a warm pool of water, catching us like a bed of feathers. I smile. I feel the plane dip its nose down, and we begin our descent.

The engines roar and the plane jumps about, touching down. I look out the window, gripping my seat. My skin puckers as though wishing for warmth of the desert in my dream. I catch a glimpse of the sky outside. It is a dreary gray. I sigh. The weather never looks good when I visit Paris. Must be my rotten luck. We race along the runway as the plane struggles to slow down. It comes to a stop.

We are taxied to our gate and let out into the airport. I go to the luggage terminal, expecting to see my father's face. I make my way to claim my luggage. Still there is no sight of him. I gather my bags and sit down. Where is he? I think to myself. It is unlike my father to be late for picking me up. I watch as other people come and pick up their bags, too. Then I watch them embrace loved ones who were on time to pick them up. I sit waiting for my father. My mind goes back to the dream I had. In the moment, it might have seemed scary. But now that I thought back on it, I wasn't scared at all. It was a kind of certainty that I knew everything was going to turn out ok. That warmth felt great in my memory. I stretched. I wondered if I would ever visit a place like that. I stretched in my seat.

Time passed and my father had still not arrived. I was growing impatient. Each person that came by and left that wasn't my father began to anger me. Was this going to be the first year that I was forgotten? Would I be one of those kids who gets a free night in the airport hotel while they look for my parents? I looked about, and my eyes landed on a big board of flights. I quickly read the names. I began to stare at the names reading them over and over. My mind was working overtime. What was I going to do? I felt compelled have by the dream I had had and half by the fact of being forgotten to find which plane would take me to that magical sand. One of the flights that stood out to me was a flight to Egypt. I knew from my history classes about Cleopatra. The queen of the Nile. How her beauty was able to charm the most powerful of men to doing her bidding. I felt certain it would bring me closer to the warm weather humming in my mind than the dreary weather outside. I decided to wait another ten minutes. It looked like the plane was not leaving for another two or three hours anyway. What would another ten minutes mean? If in ten minutes, my father was still not there I was going to get on that plane to Egypt.