Gate 17

Airports are chaos wrapped in glass and steel, a symphony of hurried footsteps, rolling suitcases, and garbled intercom announcements. For most people, they’re a necessary evil—queues that snake endlessly, overpriced coffee that tastes like regret, and the constant dread of delayed flights. But for me, they’re something else entirely. They’re cathedrals of possibility, humming with the promise of elsewhere. The moment I step into Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport, a weight lifts from my shoulders. My lungs expand, drinking in the electric air. My eyes dart to the departure boards, their glowing letters a mosaic of dreams.

Rome. Nairobi. São Paulo. Seoul.

Each destination is a whisper of a life I could live, a story I could write. It doesn’t even matter that I’m only flying to Cape Town—a short domestic hop, barely enough time to finish a podcast. The air here smells like adventure. Like departures. Like freedom.

I clutch the worn strap of my carry-on, its edges frayed from years of dragging it through terminals just like this one. My earbuds are in, Beyoncé’s voice a velvet pulse in my ears, urging me to move with purpose. I glide toward the security checkpoint, a bounce in my step that I can’t suppress. This trip is my escape, a stolen week away from the chaos of my job at a marketing firm, where deadlines pile up like unwashed dishes. Away from my noisy apartment complex in Sandton, where the neighbor’s dog barks at 3 a.m. and the WhatsApp group chat for the building never sleeps. Away from the endless notifications that ping my phone, each one a tiny demand on my attention. This week is mine, and I’m greedy for it.

The security line is mercifully short. I slip off my sneakers, place my laptop in a gray plastic tray, and smile at the guard who waves me through the scanner. On the other side, I reassemble myself—shoes, bag, dignity—and head to the departure lounge. The space is a microcosm of the world, alive with voices in a dozen languages. A toddler screams near the coffee kiosk, her tiny fists flailing as her mother tries to soothe her with a sippy cup. A businessman in a crisp suit taps furiously at his laptop, his brow furrowed as if the fate of nations rests on his spreadsheet. A group of backpackers sprawls across a row of seats, their laughter loud and unselfconscious, their hiking boots scuffed from adventures I can only imagine.

I weave through the crowd, my eyes scanning for Gate 17. That’s where my flight to Cape Town will board, and I’ve got just enough time to grab a bottle of water and find a seat. As I approach, I notice someone who doesn’t quite fit the scene. Near Gate 17, sprawled across two chairs, is a woman in a faded NASA hoodie, reading a book—upside down. Her socked feet are propped on a battered carry-on bag, and a pen is tucked behind her ear, its cap slightly chewed. She looks like she belongs in a university lab or on a rooftop stargazing, not in the fluorescent chaos of a South African airport.

I pause, my curiosity snagging like a thread on a nail.

It’s not that she’s striking—though she is, in a dishevelled, unassuming way, with warm brown skin and a cascade of braids pulled into a loose bun. It’s that she seems utterly unbothered by the frenzy around her. Her dark eyes are focused on the upside-down pages, and a faint smile tugs at her lips, as if she’s in on a private joke. The book, I notice, is a dog-eared copy of A Brief History of Time. Who reads Stephen Hawking in an airport, and upside down, no less?

As I pass, she looks up, catching my gaze. Her smile widens into a grin, bright and unguarded. “You ever read a book upside down? It’s surprisingly therapeutic.”

I laugh, caught off guard. “Only when I’m bored out of my mind.”

She swings her legs off the chair and stands, offering her hand. “Maya. Destination: Mars. Flight’s a bit delayed, though.”

“Kalenga,” I say, shaking her hand. Her grip is warm, her fingers calloused, like she spends her days tinkering with machines or climbing mountains. “Destination: Cape Town. Less glamorous, but the wine’s better.”

She chuckles, and we fall into conversation as easily as if we’ve known each other for years. Not the shallow small talk of strangers killing time—the real kind, the kind that feels like peeling back layers. We settle into the seats by Gate 17, our bags tucked under our feet, and the world shrinks to the space between us. The toddler’s screams fade. The businessman’s typing becomes a distant rhythm. Even Beyoncé, still humming faintly in my earbuds, takes a backseat.

Maya is a physics student, she tells me, on her way to a conference in Cape Town. She’s presenting a paper on gravitational waves, a topic she tries to explain but quickly abandons when she sees my eyes glaze over. “Basically,” she says, leaning forward, “it’s about ripples in spacetime. Like the universe is a big pond, and we’re all just stones skipping across it.”

I nod, half-understanding, but mostly charmed by her enthusiasm. She admits she hates flying—the cramped seats, the recycled air, the way turbulence makes her stomach lurch. But she loves the moment of takeoff, the exact second the plane’s wheels leave the earth. “It’s like jumping timelines,” she says, her eyes bright. “For that one instant, you’re nowhere. Not here, not there. Just… free.”

I know exactly what she means. I tell her about my travel blog, a passion project I started in university but haven’t updated in months. It’s still out there, floating in the digital ether, a collection of stories about the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met. I tell her about the time I cried on a flight to Zanzibar, not because I was sad but because the clouds outside my window looked like poetry—golden and weightless, sculpted by the setting sun. “I wrote a whole post about it,” I say, laughing at myself. “Probably my most melodramatic one.”

Maya doesn’t laugh. She leans closer, her elbow resting on the armrest between us. “That’s not melodramatic. That’s seeing the world for what it is. Most people miss that.”

We talk about our families—her younger sister who wants to be an astronaut, my older brother who sends me memes at 2 a.m. We talk about the weird comfort of airports, these liminal spaces where time feels suspended, where no one expects anything of you except to wait. Maya calls it “the beauty of the in-between,” and I scribble the phrase in my notebook, already imagining it as the title of a blog post.

“Do you think,” she says after a pause, “that sometimes airports are portals? Like… you step in one version of yourself and step out changed?”

I don’t answer right away. I think about the last time I was here, flying back from Durban after a work conference, exhausted and burned out. I’d sat at a different gate, scrolling through emails, feeling like a cog in a machine. But today, with my carry-on at my feet and Maya’s voice pulling me out of my head, I feel like someone else. Someone lighter. Someone who could write poetry about clouds again.

“I know they are,” I say finally, not smiling—because I mean it.

The intercom crackles, announcing that our flight is boarding. The spell doesn’t break, but it shifts. We gather our bags, joining the queue of passengers shuffling toward the gate. Maya tells me about the conference, how she’s nervous about presenting but excited to meet other physicists. I tell her about my plans in Cape Town—a solo hike up Table Mountain, dinners at hole-in-the-wall restaurants, maybe a visit to a vineyard if I’m feeling fancy. We linger at the edge of the jet bridge, neither of us rushing to board, as if we can stretch this moment like taffy.

On the plane, we don’t sit together. Different rows, different tickets. I’m by the window in row 12, watching the tarmac blur as we taxi. Maya is somewhere behind me, probably reading her book the right way up now. I try to focus on my podcast, but my mind keeps drifting back to Gate 17, to the way her laugh felt like a warm breeze, to the pen behind her ear and the socks on her feet.

When we land in Cape Town, the airport is quieter, the energy softer. I collect my bag from the overhead bin and make my way to baggage claim, half-expecting to lose Maya in the crowd. But there she is, leaning against a pillar, her NASA hoodie unmistakable. She spots me and waves, that same bright grin lighting up her face.

“You know, Cape Town’s a big place,” she says as I approach, her voice teasing but earnest. “But I think I’d regret it if I didn’t ask.”

“Ask what?” I say, raising an eyebrow, though my heart is already racing.

“If I could see you again. Maybe next time not between boarding calls.”

I smile, my chest buzzing louder than the intercom that’s announcing delayed luggage. “Only if it’s somewhere with a runway.”

She laughs, and we exchange numbers, our fingers brushing as she hands me her phone. We part ways outside the terminal, her to a shuttle for her conference hotel, me to a taxi that smells faintly of cigarette smoke. As the car pulls away, I lean my head against the window, watching the city unfold—Table Mountain looming in the distance, the sky a bruised purple.

I don’t know what happens next. Maybe we’ll meet again, maybe we won’t. But as the taxi weaves through Cape Town’s streets, I feel different. Like I stepped through a portal at Gate 17 and came out someone new. Someone who believes in ripples in spacetime, in the beauty of the in-between, in the kind of chance encounters that feel like jumping timelines.

I pull out my notebook and start writing.