Travel experience in the time of coronavirus elicits a state of fear and anxiety. The anxiety snowballs when one is boarding a plane. A traveller truly feels under a great deal of stress. This is exactly what happened to me while I was getting closer to the Dubai Airport when I recently travelled to Toronto in Canada.
The airport’s giant building looked like a pyramid, especially with its dim lights and huge corridors. When I stepped into the airport building, I saw only a small group of employees dressed in their usual uniforms, wearing face masks. They were standing at a safe distance from each other.
Looking at the marble floor, there was a drawing of the feet for passengers. These were markers for people to stand above and meant to keep people separated by two metres from each other.
One might wonder what the kind of panic these faces hid behind their masks — the panic of an invisible unknown enemy lurking everywhere that has led the entire world to paranoia, fearing a cough, a sneeze or a dry throat. Who would have thought that waking up every morning means another day to be added to the timeline of fear?
With both his hands covered with gloves, a young employee was there to guide passengers to a compulsory path. She guided passengers to walk through a metal frame similar to the door of a room. They took temperature of everyone to make sure that no one was suffering from fever — a telltale sign of coronavirus.
An airline employee asked each passenger to present his/her passport and remove his/her face mask to verify that each passenger’s face matches their passport picture. After the completion of all these procedures, she wished passengers a happy voyage and pointed to a nearby window to complete their onward travel procedures to Canada.
A few seconds later, another Emirates employee gave each passenger a red cardboard box containing a couple of plastic gloves, two blue face masks, disinfectant wet paper wipes, and two hand-sanitiser bags, before proceeding to weight their luggage.
Who would have ever thought that Dubai Airport that receives tens of millions of passengers every year, will have a limited number of passengers? The usual bustle was missing. Due to precautions around COVID-19, and travel restrictions in several countries, not too many people are flying at the moment.
Like a scene from a movie
Passengers were sitting apart, staring at their mobile phones to keep themselves busy while waiting for their flight. It was like a scene from a movie featuring a group of people, all of them masked, with headphone wires jutting out of their ears.
One might wonder what the kind of panic these faces hid behind their masks — the panic of an invisible unknown enemy lurking everywhere that has led the entire world to paranoia, fearing a cough, a sneeze or a dry throat. Who would have thought that waking up every morning means another day to be added to the timeline of fear?
When a passenger boards a plane nowadays, the feeling is that of walking through a hospital corridor. The flight attendants on my Toronto flight were dressed in white, wearing face masks and plastic gloves, looking much like nurses.
The cabin crew was not wearing the usual red hat bearing the Emirates logo. There was an empty seat in the middle of each row, separating one passenger from another. That was in the economy class. In the first-class, most seats were empty.
Time passed slowly on the board while passengers kept watching the screen in front of their seats, looking for a movie to fill in the 14-hour flight time between Dubai and Toronto.
During the long flight duration, passengers had to calm their nerves while breathing hard from behind their masks, since it is imperative to travel with a face mask throughout the flight.
Fear factor
The air filtration devices in the plane usually purify its inner air from viruses by 99 per cent, but who guarantees that one would not be a victim of 1 per cent? However, passengers felt uneasy during the flight until they landed in Toronto.
At the Toronto airport, an immigration officer, who was not wearing a mask, asked us the usual questions such as Where have you come from, do you have food, do you have prohibited substances?
Then, she asked the unusual questions: Do you feel hot, do you have cough, where you will stay? The officer then warned us in a serious manner: do you know you that you should stay at home for 14 days, according to the Canadian law?
During my home quarantine, I used to look out of the window of my room, overlooking a back garden, happy birds flying freely without panic or fear.
I am writing these words on the eighth day of my home quarantine while thinking of the value of life. I look forward to complete this quarantine.
Hussain Darwish is a traveller, columnist and writer
