The world is getting to me. Neither head-in-the-sand denial nor blithe indifference can fend off the fears.
My companions are leaving. Even though they are not ascending in chariots of fire but El Al and Turkish Airlines, the feeling of being left behind is real. My wife sits alongside, knowing that she could have been on that early flight out were it not for one problem: her husband does not have his passport. She bemoans that she resisted her normal, “Have you got your passport?” check – after all I am an adult. Wasn’t it a very adult thing to conceal my passport so cunningly in the hotel room that I clean forgot that it was there?
The cold certainty of my mistake told me that I was in trouble. Owning up fast went some way towards undoing the error: I would pay for it to be taken from its present location some two hundred kilometres down the road to our destination of a week’s time where it and I would rendezvous well in time for the journey home. That would have made a feelgood ending to a minor movie. But disaster movies run a different script.
Disaster movies use a single, massively disruptive event to generate panic, conflict, a good script and strong leads. Coronavirus supplied the event, the media generated the panic and heads of state tried to be the leads. The script was not known but improvised as the movie went on, a disaster within a disaster. What they did, though, was provide the ingredients: borders closing, nations on lockdown, big events cancelled, flights grounded, panic buying, stock markets in free fall.. Hollywood would have thought it unrealistic.
And just in case too much abnormal becomes the new normal, here comes the spike to keep the audience involved: “You have to leave the country, the borders are closing… . Aah, you don’t have a passport. You have a problem I think.”
Were this a fantasy movie, the passport officer would reach for her coronavirus testing kit, run the test and say, “As I can see you are not infected, in these exceptional circumstances that trumps not having a passport. You can proceed.” At that moment the credits roll and there may even be the possibility of a sequel, opening with touchdown at Cape Town International.
But the movie I’m in is set for disaster. Will I be watching the last plane out of Ben-Gurion, while the South African consulate in Tel-Aviv tries to request Home Affairs to find the unabridged birth certificate of Roger Graham?
The eight days which have suddenly been removed from my world had within them the timeous arrival of a passport bearing my name. I sit with my wife in this hotel, the last two guests. The hotel is closing. People are praying. It will arrive, I know that. God answers prayer.
Postscript
The passport arrived in time. Thank you for your prayers.
Good grief! What a nightmare situation to be in.
I feel proud that although (at various times) I have mislaid my wallet, lost my address book, and granted temporary leave of absence to my sanity, in over forty years I have only once mislaid my passport – and I did not know it was missing.
Until a crew-member from the ferry service to the Outer Isles found me at the hotel where I was working, and handed me my passport, which I had left on the table in a tearoom on one of the islands the day before.
Nor have I ever missed a flight (and my first adult passport had over one hundred stamps and visas in its pages).
I am very glad you got home in time.