“We are solly, but your connecting flight to Kathmandu is cancel and you stay in Shanghai until next plane….”
“When will that be?”
“Sir, next Royal Nepal Airways is come next week…..”
I found out later that RNA had missed a lease payment on one of their aircraft, effectively reducing their fleet size by one third. I had just arrived from Kashgar in Xinjiang province, expecting to spend one hour in Shanghai airport, not one week in the city. This was going to decimate my stringent shoestring budget, but I figured even worse would be to augment this unforeseen circumstance with an unflinching attitude. While knowing nothing about Shanghai, I at least had language capability; I hastened to a cheap guest house touted upon me.
Shanghai-ed
Having spent the better part of the last month in Northern Pakistan’s Karakoram range, entering China via the Khunjerab pass – allegedly the highest internationally recognized border crossing in the world at around 14,000 feet – into Xinjiang, a rolling tundra replete with yurts and hot dry deserts, Kashgar was like an urban oasis. And yet, one unlike any I’d ever taken respite in. Populated by minority Uighurs – a vaguely Turkish-like peoples – traditional crafts like blacksmithing are still widely practiced. The weekend market attracts over a hundred thousand villagers from the region engaged in a lively frenzy of gossiping and camel trading.
There were no camels to be seen on the streets of Shanghai. There were however, tourist bookstores; I nipped into one to kill some time. The other thing that Shanghai has that is noticeably absent in Kashgar is eye-catching women. In large part because most women in Muslim Kashgar veil their faces in public; catching their eye is literally impossible. This Shanghai stranding was at least easy on the senses.
I first saw her flipping through an English book and noticed she was of a curious Eurasian mix. I picked out a long sought-after souvenir, a world map in Chinese with China at the center of the 2-D projection. I lined up behind her at the cash register, hoping to take a mental stab at her background from any tell-tale utterances. No such luck. She slipped through her transaction without a peep. About to utter a pathetic ice-breaking line myself, I looked up towards her and saw no one there except the cashier glaring impatiently at me.
Leaving the bookshop defeated, I spied in the distance that icon held in highest disdain by road-weary travelers, so described because of the self-loathing that arises from the sheer joyous desperation that accompanies its sighting after a long withdrawal. I’m speaking of McDonald’s golden arches! Unable to resist the insidious pull, I was soon clutching a tray with my #1 meal looking for a place to sit. And there, alone at a table with a pack of fries was my winsome woman of curious ethnicity.
“Hi – I was wondering if you knew your way around Shanghai because I don’t, and perhaps you might be able to give me some ideas on what to do around town.”
“Well, I’m a visitor myself but I’ll share what I know.”
That was all the invite I needed. Lise was currently living in Kunming, primarily to study Chinese and was in town visiting her brother. Her Japanese dad had married an American – putting my curiosity to rest. We spent the rest of the afternoon roaming the streets of an ever-increasingly pleasant Shanghai. That evening, I met her friendly but somewhat over-protective brother. We three dined at the 5-star hotel in which he was staying. Crowds bustled around the lobby trying to glimpse Cindy Crawford, in town to plug the new line of Omega timepieces.
After assuring big brother that she wouldn’t “stay out too late”, Lise and I adjourned to the on-premises botanical gardens and stargazed – celestially, that is. Soon we were star-crossed. Several long kisses later, she blithely stated, “You know – I leave for Kunming in the morning.”
The amnesia that had blissfully anesthetized the frustration of my flight delay was rapidly ebbing, unveiling the heavy clarity of five remaining days adrift in an impersonal concrete jungle of 10MM strangers.
“Why don’t you come with me to Kathmandu?” I implored, hardly believing what I was hearing – both from her and myself.
“You’re…….”
“I know – it’s silly….I’ve known you for 12 hours.”
We held each other tight out on the dewy meadow till the sun peeked above the horizon. After a silent goodbye, I stumbled out of the hotel grounds exhausted and vacant. I wandered into my guesthouse around 9:00 a.m., flopped into bed and stared transfixed at the TV – MTV Asia bathing me in its light drivel. Seiko Matsuda’s new video “Missing You” set to a backdrop of Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge was on heavy rotation.
I looked out the window of my ninth storey room, and tried to focus my attention on just one of the numerous ant people pacing below. Low as I was feeling now, would I still trade places with that twenty something outfitted in the smart Italian suit clutching his Nokia, spare hand gesticulating wildly, weaving in and out of his cohorts sharing the sidewalk? Across the street stood a serene looking woman waiting for the little green man to beckon her across. She had a smile on her face that no traffic smog, police siren, jackhammer drill or stagnant sewage could diminish. If I approached her and opened my mouth, would she too spend a magical day with me and skip town the next morning?
My gaze wandered further up the horizon. I visualized the faithfully firm stone foundation of the Brooklyn Bridge, across from which in the bowels of Lower Manhattan lay the space I called home. I could scarcely recall my daily routine and yet at times of fatigue, I longed for its comfort. The beauty and horror of routine is that one doesn’t have to think about it. Life then was a plod, sometimes pleasant, other times pallid. Despite the little plot twists and inspired characters that peppered the play, the stage essentially stayed constant from act to act. Jettisoning the daily routine was like hiring a stage manager on speed and steroids.
I was now standing by the windowpane, leaning gingerly over the sill, closing my eyes and feeling the gentle breeze wafting warm breaths of polluted air against my face. The air was heavy. I felt like it could support my body as I leaned precariously forward and downward. I was so tired.
A sudden noise from the street below made me lose my balance and the resulting vertigo startled me into grabbing my pillow and opening my eyes back into the reality of an interrupted doze. Seiko Matsuda was on again – or had she never left. The sound came again. I realized it was a rapping on the door. Not knowing the time, I staggered and opened the door expecting to see a housekeeper of sorts. Lise stood there with a small backpack and a nervous smile.
There would be time for words later as our lips found each other and I was returned to a familiar state of vertigo. She had decided to postpone her flight back to Kunming without telling her brother, and had remarkably remembered the name of my hotel. The next few days we spent holed up in thel room, curtains drawn so my time-of-day awareness was triggered only by the interval estimate between Seiko Matsuda videos. We did however take to the streets for our meals and one extended afternoon of sightseeing on our last day – a day memorable for the long silences we filled by simply entwining our hands together.
On that last morning before Lise left, I took photos of her against the open window of our refuge. An inevitable loss is ponderous and weighs you down, while a sudden one is like a knife that cuts you up. Neither is pleasant. One results in severe emotional bloodletting in the short run but ultimately heals over, sometimes leaving nary a scar. The other may have no visible external impact but like a cancer, can continue to fester and rot if ignored.
About a year later, Lise came to visit me in New York. Seiko Matsuda’s “Missing You” was not on MTV rotation there. Interaction between us was stilted and two days later, I awoke to a note on my bedside table wishing me well.
