Forty-Eight Hours

You need to order something now; we have another connection, and you won’t get anything later. the kid was adamant about fasting; either that or he didn’t like his dad taking him to McDonald’s under the garb of ‘having a (happy) meal.’ I saw them later near my departure gate, and we started talking about our destinations in broken Urdu; I love how others try to speak their native language even if they’re struggling.

I am taking my kids to Jeddah; this whole thing is a mess. We’ve been travelling for almost two days, and this little one’s not even eating; that part, I figured, wanted to suggest Burger King, but hey, too young for parenting advice.

Apart from Urdu, growing up in a specific part of the world, I had some background context on their itinerary and asked them to pray for me. However, I hope the itinerary doesn’t involve another instrument of American hegemony in the Middle East. Upon landing, I couldn’t see the bunch again; for obvious reasons, they had to figure out a lot, along with some meal plans. I feel like I am being too invasive here.

In my defence, I put my mind to rest with their meal situation until I came across a duo from Lahore with sleek Punjabi; who doesn’t like that? The McDonald’s kid in me went numb, and the Faisalabad side of things started to show, which involved some Punjabi banter at the airline desk; we thought no one was here to interpret the niceties of our conversation until some gentlemen from Bombay behind us laughed like anything hence proved.

After sorting some logistics and back-and-forth conversations, to put it nicely, I was back with another bunch; this time, we’ve resorted to our colonial heritage, also known as the English language. Apart from a few curse words in what I presume were Arabic, we finally made it to our hotel and held onto each other for a few more hours until we were back in our comfort zones, and we didn’t need others to fight our battles.