Part 5.
Desperate times, right.
I’ve been lucky to travel often for school, and through the years I’ve amassed a small amount of airline miles, hoping to one day buy myself an upgrade in class division; to travel business class home from my graduation, a special treat for myself. This was not to be predestined.
I took the opportunity to upgrade. I wouldn’t say I was upset with the choice, but I was not particularly pleased either, but something HAD to be done.
However.
Buying into business class was not the glamorous affair it once was, with all the pizzaz and prestige of days gone by. Rather, it was now a sullen, sombre affair. I upgraded, for access to the Emirates Business Lounge, which, is a sight to behold. Food from every corner of the world. Ice cream and pastries on demand. Facilities, for you to use at your whim. A five-star resort, in an airport of uncomfortable travellers. There’s travel, and then there’s this. “anything you for you my liege.” At your service, no matter the time of day. Recline on beds of cotton, or dine on tables of glass. The finest things, for the finest asset- Paper money. And people revelled in it.
Not in July of 2020. If that was Eden, this was the Earth. Everything was stripped to its bare minimums. The square-footage, quartered. Amenities arrested. Almost as if there had been a robbery, and everything of value had been exhausted. Not even the reclining couches were allowed to be used. Only the u shaped kind, which I joined to make a cot of sorts. A hark back to the glory days, embers of a once-rising phoenix—a desolate wasteland.
But there were couches, and couches could be slept on.
To say I had the most broken sleep of my life would be an understatement, teetering on the edge of the physical and metaphysical, not escaping into the fantasy realm, but on the cusp of reality, aware, but dazed. 8 hours passed, slipping into and out of existence, but still very much idling in expectation. And then, like a crisp breeze on a dewy spring morning, the boarding call sounded. nothing can describe the wave of relief that swept over.
After 15 hours of agitation, I was finally homebound.
Video montage of the trip:
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