A Visit to Macedonia on the Way to Paris

By Cassandra Hirsch

We were far from Paris, sitting at the gate in Philadelphia’s airport waiting for our flight to board for Dulles in D.C. and onward to Charles de Gaulle. Reading, I left the page often to see what was going on around me. People had begun to board and a few feet in front of me was a young woman, heavy-set, with long brown hair, hugging an older woman whom I presumed was her mother. The older one turned away and walked through the gate, leaving her daughter in tears, leaving her to look long after she had disappeared down the concourse to the plane, the young woman’s stare so intent on the walls that swallowed her mother whole, it was as if she could see through it or will her mother to turn around. After a few minutes, still crying, she turned and left.

It was our turn not long after and, once on the plane, I saw that my husband and I were seated across the aisle from each other. I looked at the woman seated by the window with an available seat beside her and recognized her as the mother I’d been watching say goodbye to her daughter. Of the two I could have chosen, I chose this seat, with Joe in the single one across from me.

The woman didn’t respond to the usual prompts by the flight attendants to fasten our seatbelts and look at the emergency procedure card and we were already coasting slowly toward the runway. I pointed to the seatbelt and she looked at me, confused, before she opened her mouth and began speaking in a language I didn’t understand. She didn’t know how to fasten the belt. So, I did it. She said, “Macedonia” and smiled, as did I, which made her smile more, nodding as if that would take care of everything, as if now that I knew where she was from and her native language we could begin conversing.

The plane sat on the runway for a half-hour. The woman was going home and when we took off, she crossed herself several times and murmured a prayer. I turned to her afterward and waved out the window, saying, “Goodbye, Philadelphia!” and we both found that amusing, more so when I pointed out the window at the shrinking skyline and showed her with my hands how tiny everything was becoming. She nodded and laughed, then gripped my knee and didn’t let go for some time. I was afraid to uncross my legs, not because I feared anything improper would happen, but I worried it would upset her if I shifted, upset her trust in me.

Because clearly she did trust me. Perhaps I flattered myself, but having just left her daughter, it occurred to me from the moment I chose the seat that I knew I could help her and, in doing so, help her daughter. I knew it as soon as I saw her, when I recognized her features as those, much younger, in her daughter’s face. Simply sitting next to the old woman would have done nothing and before she opened her mouth to speak what at first I thought was Italian (speakers of Macedonian might laugh at that mistake), I had no clue that there might be this barrier between us. Yet, what was clear early on was that there was only a small one. Language proved to be an insignificant obstacle to what, in the end, we did accomplish.

The woman was a nervous flyer, praying demonstratively on take off and waving her hands a little as if to scatter the words of her prayer around her. I touched her shoulder in thanks then and pointed out the window at the blanket of clouds we were flying over, a sight that clearly terrified and thrilled her and she crossed herself again, three times.

What stays with me is her face, so close to mine on that crowded little aircraft that I could see the cross-hatching of her deeply tanned skin. With her cropped white hair and bright eyes, it was impossible to tell if she was 65 or 85. Her smile was ready, even with a lingering regret behind it from either a life lived or a daughter left.

As the plane descended, she began her prayers again and placed her hand back on my knee until we were on the ground. When we landed in D.C. and stood to de-plane, she handed me her bag to hold while she finessed herself from our snug fit and, taking it back, went before me. Her legs were bowed and thick as trunks, moving only by the force of her will. I couldn’t let her continue alone and looked at my husband, conveying a message. Just wait for me. I need to do this. He had little other choice.

I flagged an airport employee and explained to him, motioning to the woman so she would understand what I was doing, that she needed a wheelchair and he brought one out immediately, telling me he would take her to her gate. Momentarily lost myself, I hugged her and she held on a moment. Then I walked away toward my husband, toward Paris.

(Note: In the fall of 2009, this will be published in the Drexel University 33rd Anthology, a book of writing by faculty and students and used for teaching purposes).