I spent the spring semester of my junior year of college in Prague, Czech Republic and constantly wrote about the experiences I had while I was there. I knew old age and a young memory were unlikely to be best friends, so I tried to capture what I could through my words to savor later on in life. Below is an edited excerpt from my abroad journal detailing my journey to Morocco.
On Thursday, I left my apartment in Prague at 8:15AM to head to the airport for Madrid, Spain. I landed in Spain at 2:00PM and had a 7-hour layover until my flight took off for Marrakech, Morocco. When I arrived in Madrid, I walked the length of the airport to find satisfying food. I settled for an overpriced salad and then went to find my gate.
I could not find my gate for the life of me, so I asked a few security guards where it was located. They looked at me with their eyebrows raised as if I were a total delinquent and pointed me in the direction of the stairs as they laughed. I said “gracias” and walked away. It was a weird, embarrassing moment.
Anyway, I found my gate but quickly realized I had to go through passport control before I could enter. So I waltzed up to the counter, ready to give the woman my passport and boarding pass when I realized... I didn’t have my passport. Sheer panic set in. I looked up at her and said, “I think I dropped my passport.” She looked back at me and with only her eyes said, “tough shit, not my problem,” and shrugged her shoulders for the added effect.
I jumped out of line and retraced my steps a bit, nervous as all hell because I knew damn well there would be no way I was getting into Morocco, or literally anywhere else, without my passport. When you’re abroad, your passport is like your golden ticket. You are to keep it in a save spot and know where it is at all times. I always keep my passport in the same zippered compartment in my backpack, so if it’s not there, it’s likely missing.
Thankfully, after digging through everything I own, I remembered I put it in my jacket pocket when I was exiting the plane. Hallelujah.
Long story short, I got through passport control in one piece (if you count just my body and not my shattered ego).
I sat at a random gate and read Big Magic by myself, and when I say “by myself” I mean there was not a single other person in my wing of the terminal. I was the only one. The quietness was relaxing, but after a few hours alone, I grew bored and decided to find my boarding gate, and more importantly, people.
When I found my gate, I ended up conversing in Spanish with a woman who asked me to watch her belongings while she went to the bathroom. When she got back, I terribly confessed that I only speak a little bit of Spanish, to which she replied, “speak your own language, it’s fine.” She was super friendly and talkative from the beginning.
One thing led to another, and before I knew it, the airport personnel were checking everyone’s boarding pass for a visa stamp. Guess who didn’t get their boarding pass stamped? You guessed it! Me! (In my defense, I had never needed my boarding pass stamped before, so I didn’t know this was an extra step in the boarding process to Morocco.)
The woman checking everyone’s boarding pass told me, “you have to go to passport control to get it checked, but go fast because we’re boarding soon.” My mind immediately switched to panic mode. Am I going to get there in time? What if there’s a line? What will I do if I miss my flight to Morocco?
I swear we meet the right people at the right times, though. Gaby, the woman who initially talked to me in Spanish, told me not to worry and that she’d watch my stuff while I ran there. She said, “don’t freak out. It will be okay.” I often wonder if I wear my nervousness like a black eye.
It turns out, I didn’t have to run there and get it stamped because a few other people also didn’t have their boarding passes stamped. So, if you’re following, by now I got an overpriced salad, a weird look from the security guards, a “threatening” shoulder shrug from the passport woman, and an almost missed flight.
In my world, that’s a terrible, no good, very bad day. In anyone else’s world, that’s called “a day”.
It was Gaby who calmed my nerves and made me believe that the universe still works wonders. She had such a grounding demeanor, and her mere presence was soothing. While we sat there together, she chatted the whole time with me. It was nice to feel like even if I were alone in a foreign country, I was still in company with someone I could connect with.
Gaby gave me an abbreviated version of her life story. She's from Argentina, and 8 pesos in Buenos Aires can get you a bus ride. 26 pesos equals 1€, which means 1€ is expensive in her eyes. She goes, “I’m fucked, really,” talking about how expensive it is in Europe and to travel in general.
She also told me that she and nine other people from around the world had met one time while they were all traveling and instantly became friends. They had kept in touch, visited one another, and made plans to travel to new places together. She was currently traveling with some of them but was taking a quick detour to Morocco. Gaby let me in on a little secret… she had fallen in love with a Moroccan man four years prior and was going back to see him.
She talked about him the way people who are deeply in love talk about their significant other. Gaby showed me a picture of where he lived and even what he looked like. She told me he cares about things that most people don’t. That the way he talked about the stars and the moon was poetic. She also explained how he lived off of the land because that’s all he had, but she loved him despite his lack of riches.
A while back, Gaby was planning on visiting him, but he told her not to come because inevitably she would have to leave him again and break his heart. And you know what she said? She said fine. I won’t come. Because she knew that he didn’t have a passport which meant he couldn’t ever leave Morocco and start a life with her if that’s what they wanted to do. She told me there are two kinds of people in this world— people with passports and people without passports, and he was a person without a passport.
Over time, they rekindled, and now she’s going to see him after four years apart.
Gaby gave me her number and told me to call her if I needed anything or wanted to do something “less touristy” while I was in Marrakech. She gave me tips on how to travel there and what to be cautious of. I truly appreciated her advice.
Gaby was planted in the Madrid airport and on my flight for a reason. I had almost finished reading Big Magic when I met her, and a synopsis of the book follows: “She [the author] asks us to embrace our curiosity and let go of needless suffering. She shows us how to tackle what we most love, and how to face down what we most fear.”
Gaby was doing just that and was teaching me how to do the same.
(Big Magic was written by the same woman who wrote Eat Pray Love, too, something I didn’t know prior to reading it.)
In all seriousness, thank you, Gaby. I know you’re a person with a passport, but maybe lose it. Leave it in the dirt on the side of the road. Forget that 26 pesos doesn’t really get you too far because as far as I know, you’ve gone further than most people ever will. Today, I count my lucky stars for meeting you.
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