Airport dramas
I’ve been fascinated by airports and air-planes ever since I was a boy who tagged along to what was then the Manila International Airport to see off a neighbor who was going to be a nurse in the States. As God was my witness, I swore that, one day, I was going to get on one of those huge silver jets zooming off beyond the horizon to parts unknown.
Half a century and two dozen countries later, and thanks to the writing life, I can say that I’ve been to more places and on more planes than I could have ever imagined, to corners as remote as South Africa and New Zealand. The plane ride itself has become more of a chore than a wonder, and I can’t wait for the plane to land almost as soon as I get on board, maybe because I almost always have to ride like a creaky jackknife in economy.
But I’ve never lost my eagerness to get to another airport and to wander around during stopovers — I’d rather take a flight with lots of them than a straight one, anytime — never mind that many airports today tend to have the same Starbucks, Tie Rack, and Sharper Image shops. It must be the writer in me at work, but there’s always something different about every airport, not just in the goods or amenities they offer, but in the menagerie of people who pass through them and in the implicit drama that every departure and arrival brings with it.
Like emergency wards and police stations, airports tend to collect people from all social classes and backgrounds, often in heightened emotional states conducive to great theater. While on a fellowship in the UK a decade ago, I was mesmerized by one of the earliest reality TV shows, not surprisingly titled Airport, which dealt with the travails of passengers going through customs and immigration at Heathrow, and inevitably with the stories people make up to get their foot and their goods — not always legal ones — in the door.
Indeed I often find myself parked in a corner of the transit lounge, observing my fellow passengers and constructing their fictional histories as a kind of finger exercise. In my creative writing class, I sometimes ask students to write me a goodbye scene at the airport — with the requirement that they will not use the word “goodbye,” to force them to find other verbal and visual ways of expressing the sentiment. (And now and then a real drama takes place: a few months ago, a fellow passenger collapsed and convulsed while waiting for our Cebu Pacific flight to Cebu; he had the uncanny fortune of having former Health Undersecretary Jimmy Galvez Tan on the same flight, and Jimmy led a group of volunteers, including a nurse who had just arrived from Saudi Arabia, in saving him.)
But aside from serving as a set with props, airports today are, of course, also the crowning glories of modern architecture, the showpiece of the host country, of which it just might be the only thing a transit passenger will ever see. Not too long ago, the Brussels-based Skytrax World Airport Awards recognized 10 of the world’s best airports, based on the results of almost 10 million survey forms. In descending order, they were Singapore Changi, Incheon International, Hong Kong International, Munich, Kuala Lumpur, Zurich, Amsterdam Schiphol, Beijing Capital, Auckland, and Bangkok Suvarnabhumi. Much to my surprise, I realized that I’d been to all of them except one — Zurich, to which I hope a kind benefactor will send me one of these days to buy him a box of chocolates. (Of the top 10, I do agree with Changi and HKI as the top two, although I slightly prefer HKI over Changi because of the free WiFi and the great Chinese food choices.)
One of the most inspired airport ideas comes from Schiphol in Amsterdam, which put up something that every airport should have for the thousands of passengers sitting glass-eyed in the departure lounge with hours to kill and maybe no more money to spend: a library. Writes Nicola Clark in the New York Times: “Between Piers E and F and alongside the airport branch of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, the collection is meant to be read on site and left on the shelves for others to browse. The library plans to offer e-books and music by Dutch artists and composers that can be downloaded, free, to a laptop or cell phone. The library also is equipped with nine Apple iPads loaded with multimedia content, including photos and videos, that is likewise devoted to the theme of Dutch culture. A digital guest book invites visitors to jot down their musings or leave messages for wayward companions.” ProBiblio, a library NGO that runs the Schiphol library, has done the same thing in beaches across beaches in Europe and plans to extend the service to train stations. Why not libraries with the best of Philippine fiction and nonfiction at NAIA and Boracay?
Meanwhile, here’s my own take on what happens hundreds of times a day at the NAIA — a poem I wrote 20 years ago for our OFWs, many of whom take the first plane ride of their lives into a void that will engulf them for the next two or three years.
Bound for Saudi
Airports are where
The families of the poor
Reconstitute themselves
Around the loss
—Albeit temporary—
Of one bound for money.
His passport gleams;
Again he checks the spelling
Of his unusual name.
His contract clads
His abdomen in iron;
No one will go unfed.
While businessmen
Rush past him, wifeless and cool,
To Tokyo, Rome, and LAX,
Deserts blanket
His cold brain. He dwells on their
Irrigable vastness.
Cousins bemoan
The porkless tracts of Jeddah.
(Go for the VCR!)
Uncles applaud
His inbred plumber’s genius.
(Tax-free Johnnie Walkers!)
His father counts
The interest to pay on
Their mortgaged happiness.
His mother frames
His swarthy neck with special
Bishop-blessed crucifix.
His bride endures
The taunts, his gritty silence,
Their hard, abraded love.
He wonders if
It will still be morning when
They lick the scraps of his
Pre-departure
Feast, propitiate their saints,
Then bolt the door, and sleep.
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Speaking of poetry, a national conference for poetry in Filipino is going to be held later this week, on Nov. 25 and 26, at the Pulungang Claro M. Recto, Bulwagang Rizal (Faculty Center), University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City, with the theme “Mahalaga Ba ang Tula?” (Does Poetry Matter?)
The plenary speakers are National Artist for Literature Virgilio S. Almario, National Artist for Literature Bienvenido Lumbera, and former Dean of the School of Humanities of the Ateneo de Manila University, Dr. Benilda Santos. Other invited lecturers are notable writers and educators Rebecca Añonuevo, Roberto Añonuevo, Romulo Baquiran Jr., Michael Coroza, Victor Emmanuel Carmelo Nadera Jr., Danilo Francisco M. Reyes, and Edgar C. Samar.
The conference is endorsed by the Department of Education (DA No. 95, s. 2010), Commission on Higher Education, and Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino, and is organized by the Linangan sa Imahen, Retorika, at Anyo (LIRA), the leading group of poets in Filipino founded in 1985 by National Artist Virgilio S. Almario.
For inquiries, contact Eva Cadiz at 981-8500 loc. 2117 (Monday to Friday) and 0927-9245242, or by e-mail at gondour03@gmail.com.
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E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com and visit my blog at www.penmanila.net.
