The Direction of the Wind: A Novel(11)
That is exactly what she is now, she thinks as she scans the large airport signs, trying to figure out where to go. No one looks like her. No one dresses like her. No one speaks her languages, so she can’t ask anyone for help. She moves through the crowded terminal, following people from her flight who walk with purpose, as if they know the way. She finds the customs line and nervously checks around her to make sure the people around her are also carrying foreign passports and she has found the right one. Every uncertainty piles upon the last, and she feels herself fuming at Papa for being stuck in this strange new place because of his lies. She is here because he deprived her of her mummy. Is there any greater atrocity a parent could commit?
She is lost in her thoughts when the person behind her nudges her, pointing to an open station, and she gives him an apologetic smile before moving toward the kiosk.
“Bonjour, bienvenue,” the customs agent says to her in a monotone as she hands him her passport. He has light skin, dark hair, and a dry, bored expression.
With feigned confidence, Sophie hands him her passport, which still looks shiny and new, the spine tight as the agent opens it. He glances at her briefly, and her pulse quickens as she tries to think of how to explain the purpose of her visit. Business? Pleasure? What category does “searching for the mummy you thought was dead” fit into?
The agent presses the crisp pages open, glances quickly at the one with her visa, and takes his large metal stamp and slaps it down on her passport with a definitive motion. “Au revoir, Mademoiselle. Bonne journée.”
She collects her documents and shuffles past him, surprised and relieved at how easy it was to get through customs. Papa had so often complained of hassles while traveling on an Indian passport. “Westerners are always suspicious of us,” he would say. It was one of the reasons she had never joined him on his business trips despite his urging. She had no desire to willingly invite that into her life when she lived so comfortably where she was.
She finds the baggage claim area and scans the belts for her suitcase. She’d quickly packed some photos of Papa, photos of Nita before she died, and her own personal effects.
Left, Sophie reminds herself. Photos from before Nita left them. She feels equal parts anger and anticipation at the thought of Nita having done that. How could she? Had Papa done something to drive her away? Could Sophie have done anything to make her stay?
Sophie shakes her head to break her spiraling thoughts and focus on finding her luggage. She knew it would be cold in Paris in late October, so she brought her heaviest jacket and thickest shawl, but looking at the warm wool coats on people around her, she knows she is not prepared for the weather outside of the airport doors. Her valuables are always with her, namely several lakhs of rupees she took from Papa’s safe-deposit box—the money that became hers after his death. Her fois now control those funds after Papa’s passing, but Sophie knew the bank teller well enough to be granted access. She keeps the money in a zipped sleeve strapped around her hips underneath her panjabi and tries to carry herself in a way such that it will not be noticed beneath the thin fabric. In Ahmedabad, all her shopping was done on the home accounts she and Papa had at every shop they frequented, so she typically carried very little cash, and no one in India used credit cards. Carrying this much money makes her very nervous, but she knew she’d need more money for this journey than she has ever kept before.
As she approaches the conveyor belt, she cannot believe how smoothly it flows around and how patient and orderly the passengers are, standing respectably apart from one another, each one fixated on their mobile phone, nonchalantly waiting for their bags to arrive. It has none of the chaos of the Ahmedabad airport, with people pushing ahead of each other and directing servants to retrieve their belongings. As a child, she’d gone to the airport to meet Papa after his business trips because she was so excited to see him after his time away and begged her fois to take her so she wouldn’t miss another second with him. As she got older, it had become their tradition right up until he passed away, and she had loved seeing his eyes light up when he would see her waiting for him after a long, weary flight.
She stands to the side, scanning the metal belt for her brown suitcase. It is easy to spot because she tied yellow synthetic rope around it to secure the contents, just like she’d seen Papa do before each of his trips. It surprises her that none of the other passengers took those same precautions to protect against theft.
The sea of faces around her is different from anything she has ever known. She has never been in a place with so few Indian people. In fact, she can probably count on her fingers and toes the number of non-Indian people she has seen in her entire life. Now, she sees many white faces, some so pale that thin blue veins can be seen through the skin. Then she sees a couple of Black men with trendy scarves tied around their necks and woolen jackets on their shoulders. Other than on American television shows and films she watched via their satellite, she has never seen a Black person before. These men look nothing like what she has seen portrayed on the screen and are instead dressed like the sophisticated businessmen in tailored suits she saw every day in India.
It is nerve racking for her as she tries to make sense of the signs and find where to exit. She is too self-conscious to ask any of these foreign-looking strangers for help and doubts they would understand her anyway. She worries about her half-baked idea to come to Paris and wonders if she should turn around and take a plane back home. It would look like she had been gone only a couple days. Her arranged marriage to Kiran could proceed as planned, and she would be back in a world she understood with people who understood her. As uncomfortable as she is, it’s the thought of her marriage that gives her strength to continue with her mission. If she finds Nita, Sophie could have a different path. Perhaps one that does not include marriage to a stranger. Learning Nita shunned her marriage forces Sophie to think about options that were previously not even in her realm of understanding. But even if marriage is her path, she needs to know what happened to Nita, because how could she ever become a parent without knowing that? Lineage is essential to consider when planning a family. What if whatever caused Nita to leave also lives inside of her? She is apprehensive about what she will find, but this is one instance in which cautious, pragmatic Sophie, who balances the pros and cons of all situations as she would a profit and loss statement, thinks uncovering the unknown weighs as the better option.