Patricia Kolesnicov
02/05/2021 18:50
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 02/05/2021 18:50
The journey just begins when he puts the six crumb sandwiches ordered that morning in his suitcase, thinking about when he eats them THERE.
It is a kind of insurance,
an extension of the visit: after almost 20 years of living abroad, things of the heart are often disguised as matters of the stomach.
Impossible to suspect that what follows is a week locked in an incomprehensible airport.
Yes, like in the movie.
But nothing to see.
So let's return to the starting point: the man orders everything neatly, calculates if the weight is correct and answers the WhatsApp that calls him insistently: from Israel they warn him that the airport is about to close.
He tells his daughter, the one who stayed here when everyone left.
The woman googles, consults, looks on Twitter: it's true and for two and a half hours her father will stay outside.
His first flight, to Istanbul, arrives well but the second section,
the one that returns him home, falls after the closure.
The history of MK begins 78 years ago in Buenos Aires, or it begins 18 years ago in the 2001 crisis, when with his wife, his in-laws, his youngest daughter and her family they put their lives in a container and crossed the ocean.
Or 17 years ago, when the youngest daughter changed country again and stayed forever in Barcelona.
Or it begins three years ago, when his wife dies and he consolidates the ritual of airplanes, gifts, stays with his daughters.
Once Barcelona, once Buenos Aires.
Until the pandemic.
In 2020, MK got through it with friends and family from ALLÁ.
He looked at passages, he contained himself: he had to wait for the panorama to clear up before traveling.
He was buying trinkets, T-shirts, ornaments, just in case.
And when there was a little window, it flew.
It came for the Holidays.
The month was uneventful.
The Buenos Aires rituals without nostalgia -no luxury is given-, the restrictions of the Covid, the walks, the gifts again.
The affidavits, the PCR.
The sandwiches, the suitcase. The call.
The call is informal: it says that there are many cases and that the airport is closed.
But the call center of his airline -Turkish Airlines- assures him that the Istanbul-Tel Aviv flight is not canceled, all normal.
A couple of hours later the youngest daughter confirms, by a contact at the Tel Aviv airport, that this plane is not going to enter.
Siamo fuori.
First, the soul to the floor.
But it doesn't matter, we have imagination, if Tel Aviv is closed, we go to Barcelona.
MK communicates with the Turkish call center.
The first operator does not have enough Spanish to answer unforeseen questions or make speculations so she does not miss him when she cuts him (or she cuts him).
We start again, the second operator understands the situation.
No, you cannot change the Istanbul-Tel Aviv section for Istanbul-Barcelona
because it is another area.
Will the man want to go to Cairo, the whole world is a handkerchief?
Umm.
Anyway, Cairo is ruled out.
Can the lady sell a new section?
To Spain?
Yes, no problem.
NO PROBLEM.
Credit card, passport data and ahead: the section that does not fly is reimbursed, clarifies the operator (later it will turn out that this is false).
But go ahead, go ahead.
Two daughters on a trip, in the end it is not a bad business, thinks MK.
You must wait about 14, 15 hours, between one flight and the other.
Does MK know that Turkish has a courtesy hotel for those who stop in Istanbul for more than 12 hours?
Of course you don't know.
Does the operator tell you?
Don't make me laugh.
With everything, the important thing is solved, we go to Ezeiza.
MK -78- enters the airport alone, what a remedy.
Documents, papers, PCR, surprise: at the airline - the same one that a little while ago sold you a ticket without noticing anything - they inform you that you will not be able to enter Spain without an exit ticket.
Anywhere.
From outside the daughter takes the cell phone and takes out another Barcelona-Istanbul, by the same company.
Two tickets that are impossible to use from the start, but the passengers do not know it and the airline - which will later be very strict with the entry requirements to Spain - neither.
Either you don't know or you don't report it.
Or they don't care, because they don't lose the money.
Fasten your belts.
Sixteen hours of flight and there we are, Istanbul.
MK looks for the airport hotel, he is not interested in anything more than spending time and leaving.
The next day he returns, dispatches the suitcase and when he goes to board, oh,
the PCR won.
Who attended him in Buenos Aires did not realize even a few minutes ago, when the suitcase was dispatched, what a thing.
Well, too bad, come back tomorrow.
MK understands this with the English that he can and with the heart -78 years old- that he has.
Spin and it will be tested.
Wait the four hours it takes for the result.
She talks to her daughters intermittently: she doesn't know how to connect to the airport's Wi-Fi and
when the airline grants it to her, it lasts an hour.
While you wait, they speak to you.
A man - in Castilian - convinces him to go to another hotel, because he blasts.
You accept.
It is outside the airport and there you go without your suitcase, which was left in the airline or you fly to Barcelona or who knows.
For a few hours the daughters cannot find him and have a knot in their stomach.
The hotel is neither good nor cheap, but nothing bad happens to it: the next day they will actually look for it and leave it in front of the Turkish counter.
Ah, no flight today.
He did not know?
Ugh, come back tomorrow again.
He is tired MK.
Badly eaten, badly asleep, yirando.
He wants to go home - to the house he chose, to the country he adopted - but that is the hardest of all.
For him and for the whole world, Israel is armored.
By phone, the Israeli consul in Istanbul informs one of his daughters that there will be a rescue flight, from Frankfurt.
"Let him go to Frankfurt and try to go up," he suggests.
Seventy-eight years old he has MK and has been circling a Turkish airport for two days.
You need to stop, change clothes, get somewhere, speak Spanish, not be afraid.
Frankfurt is the same distance as the Moon.
But hey, tomorrow, tomorrow.
Still without his suitcase, with the same clothes that he left Buenos Aires with, he gets another hotel.
Spend the night.
Morning passes.
At two ends of the world, two daughters are following him, to the rhythm of their connection-disconnection.
Jokes: did you eat baclava?
Are you going to stay selling tea in the Grand Bazaar?
Row to board again, boarding pass, PCR and… “Spain?
No, you need a photocopy of your daughter's passport ”,“ No, you need a legalized invitation letter .. ”,“ No, you need a consular authorization ”.
MK's legs go limp.
Literally passes out.
There, on boarding.
Instead of taking the plane to hug her daughter, she falls to the ground.
You wake up sitting in a wheelchair, you don't know where you are.
They leave it there.
Single.
What is MK doing in that zero point of the world that is any airport?
MK doesn't think about it because not thinking about it is a strategy to survive.
"At last I meet my South American destiny," Borges makes Laprida say when some gauchos are going to kill him.
And if any destination reaches this MK that no longer has a ticket anywhere, it is that of the survivor.
You know this: He survived a family tragedy - the deaths of two brothers - when he was too young to process but old enough to support deeply wounded parents.
He survived no longer know how many coups d'état, Rodrigazo, the theft of that car too old to have insurance with which he had managed to earn a living, 2001. He knows that to survive sometimes you have to curl up, block yourself.
There he is, still in the wheelchair, immersed in himself.
After a while someone from the company comes to look for him.
He is not connected, but meanwhile the daughters talk with Spanish, Israeli, and Argentine diplomats.
A while later, the email from the Spanish consulate arrives: “In response to your email, we inform you that the travel restrictions between the EU and Turkey, implemented by Order INT / 657/2020 of July 17, modified by the Order INT / 1119/2020 of November 27 does not allow the entry into Spain of travelers from Turkey who do not have a valid residence permit.
These restrictions have been renewed until January 31, 2021. This Consulate is not competent to decide on the applications of foreign citizens who are not legal residents of Turkey. ”Can you have such bad luck?
The Spanish consulate explains: “Istanbul, due to the fact that it is a city to which you can travel without restrictions from a number of countries, is used with increasing frequency as the stopover point from where you try to enter Spain. , in deliberate violation of the provisional restriction currently in force for public health reasons ”.
Ready, there is no way to go to Spain.
Go anywhere and try from there, like an illegal immigrant looking for the most porous border?
Uff.
Suddenly the world is not so wide or so global.
Suddenly the shine, the mix of perfumes of the free shop are no longer glamorous and hurt.
Suddenly MK is no longer a citizen of the world: all doors are closed.
Minus one.
Four hours go by in the wheelchair.
MK doesn't have his clothes, he doesn't know where he's going.
Wait, they offer you something -a hamburger- to eat, you eat even though you are not hungry, you are parked at the transfer desk.
The daughters raise the option:
that he returns to Argentina.
The greatest feigns insanity
and proposes a tourist plan: go to Istanbul, such a hotel, Taksim, the palaces, take a walk, wait for Israel to open.
It's ridiculous.
MK disconnects, disappears from the radar.
Neither by whatsapp nor by phone or anything.
Five, six, eight hours.
Later we will know that, as he did not have a boarding pass, they did not let him check in at the airport hotel, so someone from Turkish Airlines took pity on the man settled in the wheelchair - they already call him "baba", which means "father" or "grandfather" - and took him to his VIP lounge.
People came, ate, champagne was served, they felt important, they left.
He kicked off his shoes, slept.
What did he have to expect the next day?
He did not know.
But the next day would bring news.
As a personal matter, an employee at the Transfer Desk tells you about a ticket to Buenos Aires.
Spend all day, spend all day there.
Going to the front with the English he learned in the 50s in a public high school in Avellaneda.
Lying with the truth, like a good trick player.
MK doesn't care for anyone there but Baba has a chance.
Baba is a big, desperate man, with problems to communicate and he goes to the bottom of a big, desperate man, with problems to communicate.
A trick of the weak.
When night falls, he leaves with his ticket and his boarding pass, which is also the key to his room at the airport.
The famous courtesy hotel for transit passengers, they told him.
And they told him he was invited.
But in the end no, again to take out the wallet.
With this solution the suitcase also appears.
MK -Baba, for new friends- opens it in that room with violet light that in Argentina would be a hotel accommodation but here it is for passengers and the airport.
The crumb sandwiches are smelled as soon as the closing closes, a smell of a lifetime, of the bakery on the corner, of happy birthdays.
A scent with history.
An odor that is not "in transit."
The two days until the flight are better.
Antonella Migliavacca, the Argentine consul in Istanbul, intervenes, who gives restraint and puts her face so that everything goes well.
They call him from the Jewish community.
And also friends from everywhere.
MK recovers, dares to go out (the hotel is on the other side of Migrations, already in Turkey), he even buys a diver.
The hours are milder, the time has come, now you are going to embark and embark and there is my beloved Buenos Aires, waiting for you to hug you after the swab.
Like a movie backwards: daughter, car, highway, toll, hallway, the room that he vacated
a week ago.
And wait.
That's the only thing the Israeli consulate responds when it says he's stranded.
Wait.
His medical appointments, his rent renewal, his life on hiatus: waiting and managing to get accurate news because there are no officers.
These days, when you call the airline's call center to retrieve unused tickets, they will tell you that you have to process them in the center, they will even give you the address of the office, on Carlos Pellegrini street.
But when he arrives he will find out that ah, no one has been there for months: because of how things were going with the call center, he must have suspected.
In the middle of the Buenos Aires summer the temperature drops.
In the daughter's yard, in the San Cristóbal neighborhood, MK smiles and takes his brand new diver out of the suitcase.
With a stamp on the arm: "I love Istanbul."