Never again.

This post goes back in time to my departure flight from Boston to Istanbul on July 14.

The passengers sharing my row are going to Lahore; I peeked at my neighbor's boarding pass as she tucked it into the pocket in the seat back.  They talk loudly, greedily, in the American style.  The style of my people.  Talking at the world, fending it off and consuming it at the same time, they hold up their cell phones as if they need them to supplement their own five senses.  They examine the movie screens in the seat backs.  They master the mechanism of the tray tables.  The boy – who is, I notice, about twice the size of the girls – pokes at the movie screen.  This seems to be their first time on an airplane.  They explore it openly, colonizing, taking possession with an appalling air of entitlement that is both aggressive and innocent.  

Turkish Airlines is based, of course, in Turkey.  We all have a layover at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul.  Two weeks ago at Ataturk, men wearing stylish black down jackets to conceal the bombs wrapped around their torsos emerged from taxis, entered the airport, and murdered forty-four people.  I dreamed last night that I wandered by mistake into the area where they had put up a memorial for the victims that I saw in the news.  A grief-stricken dream-airport-employee told me I shouldn't be in there, but wanted to show me the photos.  Then he couldn’t find them, and then I couldn’t find my way to my gate, and then there were other less friendly airport employees hovering around the edges of the vast empty room where I'd found myself.  It was one of those dreams that you never find your way out of, so you take it with you.

My row-mates have black hair, light brown skin.  The girls' hair is long and straight and shiny; it falls over their faces constantly as if to protect them, and constantly they throw it deftly back over their shoulders, and almost instantly it slips back down, veiling their faces, reflecting the ceiling lights. I count them -- there are six young people, three of whom are in my row, traveling with a woman wearing a head scarf who seems to be their mother.  She sits directly in front of me, and is silent and still.    

Do they know about the men emerging from taxis wearing winter jackets on a hot summer night, about the one who was shot and rolled about on the floor, struggling to detonate his bomb?  I saw a surveillance video of this man struggling, suffering, we all saw it.  Of course they know.  We all know.  But we have these plane tickets, we have these plans.  We want to fly away and have experiences and fly back, like well-trained falcons. 

They nest.  Two of them pluck the little plastic-wrapped headphones from their seats, but the one next to me doesn’t notice hers.  It’s on the edge of the cushion and her knee brushes against it and it falls to the floor.  She folds herself up like a bird.  She tucks her hair behind her ear.  She doesn't yet know she's lost something.  It's rarely recorded -- that moment when you have lost something, when something goes missing.

I should tell her.

I settle back in my seat and take out my book and start to read, and right then, all together, as if obeying a silent order, they spelunk in their carry-ons and their hands emerge holding IPhones.  They discover the USB ports in the seat backs and plug them in almost simultaneously.  Everything they do is deft and urgent and authoritative, as though this entire planeload of people depends on them.  As though we await their orders. And yet I am sure that if their mother were to stand up and walk back down the aisle and disappear, they would be instantly at a loss.

I reach down and secrete the dropped headphones in the palm of my hand.

As always in families, there is one who is different – here it is this boy.  They’re all talking, but he can’t seem to stop, and he repeats himself aggressively, aiming his questions at the girl to his left.

Will there be wifi?  Will be there be wifi?  Do you think there will be wifi?  Should I ask her if there will be wifi? 

He asks this with the urgency of someone who has entered a dark space.  Will there be light?  Will there be air?  

Do you want me to ask her?  I can ask her.  Do you want me to?  Hey, should I ask her? 

The Turkish Airlines crew, I suspect, will not suffer fools.  They smile severely at the passengers, aiming their eyes at hairline level.  There is only one male crew member, it seems, and he does not look at anyone as he goes about the work of corralling people into their seats.  He places carry-on luggage into the overhead storage bins, shuts each one with a snap once it's full.  He seems jaded and brooding.  I wonder where he was when he heard about the attack.  Likely in an airplane, 40,000 feet in the air, all of them, having to react to the news without skipping a beat, while pouring coffee, offering this, offering that to squirmy, petulant travelers.  The women are devastatingly beautiful.  They all have their hair pulled back and up into flawless buns, their eyes made up with long dark lines that extend beyond the lids.

I don’t think that the noisy boy should call a crew member to ask if there will be wifi, but want him to, just to see what follows.

The sister beside him tells him no.  She says it like this:  “Nooo-wuh!"

I see now.  This has been a long trip for them already.  He has been talking since he opened his eyes this morning.  She has placed herself on the front lines, absorbing his constant barrage of questions and demands, fending him off.  She tells him to shut up.  She tells him to stop.  She tells him she doesn’t know.  She tells him to shut up.  She tells him to stop.  Whenever she says “Shut up” or “Stop,” she gives the final “p” its own syllable – an elongated schwa.  “Sto-puh,” she says.  “Shutuhh-puh.”  She rides these expressions of annoyance like waves that keep picking her up and moving her away from something she wants.

The girl next to me is successfully ignoring her brother.  She is smaller, more self-contained, as though she knows that at any moment she could take flight, alone, and transport herself to Pakistan.  He asks her direct questions that she lets fall; he seems accustomed to it and is unfazed.

I turn back to my book, read for a few minutes, until the noisy boy raises his voice, this time at the smaller sister, the quiet one next to me whose headphones I have stolen.  He and the other sister, I see, have opened their headphones and plugged them into the seat backs next to the video screens.  His eyes widen when he sees that my neighbor has no headphones.

Where are your headphones?  Don't you have any?  I have headphones.  They were right on my seat.  You idiot.  They were right on your seat.  Look.  Look on your seat.  You're probably sitting on them, idiot. 

The quiet girl flutters, panics, turns in her seat, searches underneath her for the headphones.  Three small worry lines appear in her forehead.  I know nothing of this girl except this, and that it will always be true:  when she loses something, three lines appear in her smooth forehead, and the people around her, like me, reflexively want to erase them.

You can ask for some headphones.  I'm not gonna ask for you.  You're the one who lost them, idiot.  You're the one who lost them.  Ask.  Go ahead, ask.  Maybe they'll give you more, even though you lost them like an idiot.  

I unfasten my seatbelt, turn in my seat, bend over, pretending to search for the headphones on the floor.  The girl watches me without looking at me.  I open my palm, offer the headphones.  It’s like feeding a bird. She flutters and giggles lightly and takes the headphones and plugs them into the port under the little movie screen.  She caresses the screen of her phone as if to console it.  She smiles as lists of names and phone numbers track rapidly up and down, each one accompanied by a tiny face, taking stock of her life so far.

Hours later, she is sleeping easily, folded up in her seat, when I also fall asleep, finally.  I dream that I awaken to find the male flight attendant kneeling beside me in the aisle, picking something up off the floor.  I try to see what it is, but he notices I'm awake and quickly fists his hand around it.  Then he looks me in the eye and says this to me:  Never again.  You will never come back here again.