Traveling Solo

George sits on the balcony, looking up at the stars. The city feels empty, but it isn’t. It’s part hospital, part morgue. Those who aren’t sick are in private waiting rooms, alone, held hostage by the invisible illness. Stars, streets, windows, walls, balconies, loneliness, solidarity: the thread that connects people in this northern Italian city. The night time ritual has begun. Neighbors go out on to their balconies and hold up their glasses, bottles, coffee cups and cigarettes for a communal brindisi. Silent night. Holy night. George wonders if anyone he knows back home is looking up at the same star spotted indigo sky. 

The walls of his studio apartment are closing in, and he’s running out of options to keep insanity at bay. The ridiculous is always there, haunting him like a long lost twin. He rolls another joint, distributing the last of the weed evenly. He has another stash in the bedroom in case of emergency.

He sits on the balcony scrolling through photos on WhatsApp of his son Elie, four weeks old, plump and perfect, the center of attention. In one, Claire is cradling his tiny body. In another Melanie is smiling at him with a concealed expression of possession and jealousy. His mother, mother-in-law, father-in-law, and all the rest of his family and friends are holding his son. When did he become the elusive father? He’s missed the milestones of Melanie’s formative five years. Fatherhood has been about keeping his job abroad and sending money back home. 

What do you want me to do, he asks the night. The night is expansive and has other matters to contend with. George hears sotto voce conversation from the middle aged couple who live below. He longs for someone. A warm easterly breeze kisses his cheek on this cold northern night, and he takes this as an omen. 

George has bought a ticket from Milan to Istanbul. The Beirut airport is closed. All flights to Athens have been canceled. Turkish airlines is still operating in Italy. He pulls down the stash of euros he’d been saving for Claire. He knows she needs it, especially now with the new baby. His country has been a smoldering dumpster fire for the past six months, an incendiary combination of stagflation and political unrest. The threat of the virus is fanning the flames. 

George knows he’s walking into the fire. From Istanbul he’ll take a bus down the Turkish coast to Antalya, then take a boat to Cyprus, from there he’ll be closer to the shores of Lebanon. Larnica to Beirut is a well traveled route for the Lebanese. 

George wakes up early, shaves, and fills a backpack and gym bag with what he thinks are essential travel items. He shoves a wad of euros into the lining of his hoodie. He takes the emergency bag of weed to Katia, the young woman from Frankfurt, who lives three doors down, with whom he used to visit for small talk, smoking and casual sex. Their relationship had been disrupted before lockdown. Katia got a boyfriend. The boyfriend answers the door, leaning halfway out, wearing a green mask and a white t-shirt exposing his skinny right arm and pointy elbow. “Give this to Katia,” George says to the guy whom he could probably take down in an arm wrestling match, or any test of strength. As George is walking away, Katia peaks her unmasked face out, and says thanks. 

The world outside his apartment building is blanketed in stillness, as if time were still asleep. George looks at his reflection in the shop window. He looks like a mole in dark jeans, with a mask covering his smooth face and a hat over his unruly hair. 

At the station, two carabinieri ask him for his ID and question his motive for evading the lockdown. He tells them he has a family emergency. They seem to buy it, and they let him go. This is easier than I thought, George thinks. The train is nearly empty. There are two university students who sit across from each other, chatting like song birds, an older woman clutching her purse with agitated hands, and a middle aged man dressed in dark blue, the only passenger who seems to be an essential worker. George has bought a ticket on the inter-city train: the slow train, the economical train. He stares out the window at the big wide world passing by in still shots. He’s left his life of containment and abandonment behind. He breathes in deeply; new life recharges him. He breathes out all the staleness of the past two months. Going somewhere has never felt so satisfying. The train lulls him to sleep.

“Wake up!” A masked man is standing over George, shouting at him to get off the train. George covers his face with his arm to fend off the man’s offending halitosis that a mask can’t even contain. 

“Where am I?” George asks. 

“You’re on the inter-city train to Milan, but it’s no longer going to Milan. You’ve got to get off. For a moment I thought you were dead. Are you on drugs or something?” The man speaks with a Southern accent. 

“So you’re far away from home too,” George mumbles. 

“Listen, the connection is leaving in one minute. Get your ass off this train or you’re going to miss it.”

George hears the train hiss, he jolts himself out of his seat, grabs his bags and runs across the platform to catch the slow moving train. I hope he’s right; I sure hope this train is going to Milan. He pats his inside pocket making sure the wad is still there. 

Milan central station is as bare as anywhere. No more than twenty passengers get off and go their separate ways, heads down, as if each one were consumed by their own inner storm. George follows the signs for the airport bound train. A wild creature, someone that resembles Gollum from Lord of the Rings, blocks his way. George can’t get around him. 

“Corona, corona, aiutami Madonna,” sings Gollum. “Please, help me,” he says and holds up his cruddy hand to George’s masked face.

George steps back and pulls out ten euros from his pocket. Gollum looks forlorn. “Only ten?” he says.

George gives him ten more and shoves him aside and picks up the pace. Gollum follows. George swings around and tells the creature that if he doesn’t leave him alone he’ll smash his face in. Gollum walks away, singing his silly song, looking for his next prey.

It’s raining and the sun is coming up when the plane touches down in Istanbul. George is supposed to spend fourteen days in isolation, but there is no official procedure, as far as he can tell, except making a promise to health officials, to whom he pays 150 euros for an invasive examination. George assumes the money was part of a pay off to let him go. They give him a slip a paper, and a list of hotels in the Beyoglu neighborhood. He put the papers in his backpack and intentionally forgets about them. 

Outside the airport a row of taxis sit like a string of yellow beads. Smug faced men with wool hats sit in their cabs, thumbing tesbih, praying for passengers among the few sodden souls that come out of the huge sliding class doors. George takes a taxi to the bus station at the other side of the city. The driver doesn’t speak much, and that’s just as well because George is not in the mood for small talk. The bus ride to Izmir is six and a half hours. George settles into a window seat. The seat beside him remains empty because of social distancing rules.  As the bus leaves the depot he reads a sign: Stay Home - Stay Safe - Save Lives in three languages. Doubt whispers, why are you going through all this trouble to get home, especially at a time like this? I’m going home to my family, he answers with a heavy sigh. George stares out the window at the unfamiliar city, and prepares himself for another long trip. Lockdown and isolation have conditioned patience and endurance. 

It’s still raining when he arrives in Izmir. He finds a decent hotel, near the bus terminal, for the night. In the middle of the night he wakes up to the sound of a woman shrieking. A man roars back with the same vociferous intensity. George pulls the covers over his head. The arguing goes on for a while, then he hears the sound of broken glass, and the hotel becomes quiet. His thoughts kept him awake; doubt nags him until sunrise. 

At the bus terminal, George sits on a wet concrete bench, devouring a simit covered in sesame seeds and sipping a hot cup of tea in a paper cup. He boards a bus to Antalya, another long ride down the Turkish coast. George looks out the window at the expansive sea and is reminded of home. How many Lebanon’s fit in Turkey? He tries to mentally map this equation, but he’s not sure how many kilometers Turkey stretches to the East. A long time ago, before nations were made, the land from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arabian peninsula used to be under the long arm of the Ottoman Empire. Borders were symbolic and porous. They were designated by cultural and religious dominions, and tax collectors. 

The bus has stopped. Two black masked policemen come on board. They are checking IDs. George pulls out his Lebanese passport and hands it to the officer. The officer flips through it and frowns. 

“Where are your papers?” One of them says in heavily accented Arabic.  

“The visa is stamped in there,” George thinks he remembers the customs agent stamping his passport, but at this point, after consecutive nights of getting little sleep, he’s not so sure.

“Not visa, papers. Papers from the doctors. There is virus.” The officer is gruff. It dawns on George what the man is talking about. The bus driver and few passengers on board are staring at him. His stomach suddenly feels empty. He reaches into the backpack beside him and produces the papers. The officers aren’t satisfied. George is pulled out of his seat by both arms. 

George is taken to a small prefabricated room. He is searched by a different police officer. The agent feels the wad of bills in his pocket, but doesn’t say a word. He gives George a look. His phone and molested bags sit on the table in front of him. The agent flips through his passport for twenty minutes, and then leaves the room and takes it with him. 

When he comes back, he is accompanied by a younger agent who brings George a cup of water and offers him a cigarette. George takes both offerings as respite for the trouble he has fallen into. This is a sign that everything will be ok. 

“You are not in quarantine,” the officer says.

“No, but the papers,” George says, as if they contain all the answers, though he didn’t even read them.

“They tell you to go to hotel in Istanbul. You did not. You broke the rule.” Both men are staring at George. 

“I’m in transit. I’m going to Beirut. It’s a family emergency. I’m trying to get to Cyprus.” George’s voice cracks. 

The officers look at each other. The younger one gives the senior officer a sliver of a smile. The Arabic speaking officer opens his passport and reads out his name. “George Anime Khoury. You are Christian. You are 35.” The officer taps his passport. “This is fake. I think you are Syrian. You are refugee, no?”

George feels as if this officer has slapped him in the face. “I’m Lebanese through and through. I grew up in Beirut. I speak four languages. My passport is not fake. Call the Lebanese embassy if you’re not sure.” 

“We take you to Syria if you want.”

George doesn’t want to travel through Syria, not with his Christian name. The Turkish officers know this. Suddenly it dawns on him. The officers are negotiating with him. They know he has money and they are trying to initiate a deal. Opportunists. Scumbags. Maybe they’re not policemen. They’re probably smugglers. George think about this for a few minutes. 

“I need to go to Cyprus. Can you get me on a boat to Cyprus?” George’s palms are sweaty and his right leg is shaking, but he tries to keep his voice calm and firm. 

“It’ll be 800 euros to get to Cyprus. You won’t face any problems with the authorities,” the younger one speaks for the first time. His Arabic is perfect. His accent is Syrian. 

George waits at the ferry terminal in Larnica. He imagines that he can see lights along the Lebanese coast. The night is nebulous and Lebanon is too far away to see anything, except a dark expanse. George feels the cash wad in his pocket. It has dwindled down to a tiny lump. The whisperings of doubt have translated into loud echos of regret. George boards the slow boat to Beirut. 

At the Beirut port he goes through the same medical rigmarole he experienced in Istanbul. Fourteen days of quarantine at home. A taxi takes him to his apartment in Antelias. It’s almost midnight and his mother-in-law answers the door. He expected as much. He knew Claire’s mother would be staying with her for a few weeks after the baby was born. She stared at him; her eyes flashed with fear. He was almost unrecognizable with his shaggy hair, four day stubble and mangy clothes. 

“Hi mom,” Ever since he and Claire got engaged, he called her mom. “It’s me, George. Aren’t you going to let me into my own house?”

George sits on the balcony looking out at the cityscape. A dark slice of the Mediterranean Sea is framed between buildings. Melanie is sitting on the couch watching YouTube. Her favorite doll hangs from her little hand. He feels guilty for not bringing her anything. He feels even guiltier because it didn’t even cross his mind. Elie is asleep in the bedroom. Claire’s comes out onto the balcony with a coffee tray.

“I miss Arabic coffee,” he says, holding as he breathes in the smell of cardamon and coffee. “And I’ve missed you.”

“I took thirty minutes to get Elie down. I hope he stays asleep for a while. I’m exhausted.” She has dark rings around her eyes, and her skin is pale. She is still the most beautiful person George has set eyes on. He told her that over and over again during their honeymoon in Marmaris. “How long are you visiting?”

“I don’t know. I just need to get away for a while,” he says.

“What about work, are they still paying you? The economy is so bad here. So many of our friends are losing their jobs, and there’s an inflation. The situation scares me.”

“Don’t worry about money. That’s my business. I’ll take care of you and the kids no matter what happens.”

“Ok, fine, but what if you have the virus. You just came from Italy; it’s a hot spot.”

“I’m fine. I’ve haven’t got a fever, or a cough. I’m fine,” George raises his voice, and immediately regrets it. “Listen, can’t we just be happy in each other’s company for a while. Let’s celebrate being together.” He squeezes her hand and holds it to his heart. He fishes out a Cedar with his free hand and lights it. He inhales cheap tobacco, listens to the drone of generators, and looks up at the night sky. He wonders what the stars look like tonight from his apartment balcony in northern Italy.