For the last five months, I’ve had a date circled on the calendar that hangs above my bed. It may seem a retro idea in a time of smartphones, but I ordered the calendar about two months into the pandemic. It’s one of the tacky ones showing NYC city scene - times square, blurry yellow cabs - that you get at airport shops, but it worked. In the hazy vagueness of those early months of Covid, the ones when days, weeks, and months melded into each other like liquid paint until there was nothing left but unremarkable beige, a physical paper object with square numbered boxes allowed me the delusion of control. At night I’d cross another day out - not unlike what I’ve seen in prison movies - and the simple act of a black cross was strangely comforting because it got me closer to one day in particular.
I circled November 15th particularly, the day that I was originally due to fly out from New York and get to Lahore before the world stopped. The ticker was still valid, and the hope that that was the day I’d be able to see my partner and family again outside of hazy pixels on Zoom calls soothed me. When things became difficult to handle in the pandemic, I would often look at the red day, saying to myself: just until then, just make it until then.
“What do you mean I can’t fly out?” I asked.
“Your Covid test, sir,” continued a voice of medicated calm. I swear if the voice on the phone had been a person in front me, I would have eaten them whole. “Unfortunately, it didnt arrive in the 72-hour window.”
“Yes it did. I swear I made DAMN sure! I had to stand in line for five hours to get that test! In the rain! I wore sweatpants in public for Christ’s sake!”
“It’s seven minutes over the time limit.”
“Seven minutes?”
“Yes sir,” the voice answered, faltering slightly under the weight of my stony silence. “Seven minutes.”
“I swear,” I cry-growled, “As God is my witness, I’m going to to kill you in seven minutes. Six if you don’t run.” It was the last thing I heard myself say before having a full-blown panic attack. It wasn’t the voice’s fault, I knew that, somewhere. Ever since flu season began in Autumn, New York streets had been crawling with slow moving lines of hundreds and hundreds of people trying to get tested. Trump’s breathtaking incompteance meant that there weren’t enough tests or people to administer them, and so I was prepared that not only would the wait be long but the results may not come in the timeframe that the airlines had allowed.
The days after I took the test (“You’ll know in 3-6 days” was the repeated chorus of the helpline) I kept refreshing the patient portal website every five seconds, belligerent in my belief that after nine months of near solitary confinement nothing - NOTHING - was going to keep me from leaving on Red Day.
Then it arrived, a scant few hours before my flight time, but the fact of it having been taken seven minutes outside of the timeframe counting back from the departure time meant that I would have to do the whole thing over. Now the hospitals said that it took a minimum of five days to get results, which was too long to fly. I was caught between a Covid test and a Hellscape, doomed to never board.
But any good desi knows that there is always something you can do with intractable bureaucracies. So I scoured the internet that night with the ferocity of a hacker from a 1990s movie, going through fake websites promising Covid tests for travel guaranteed within 24 hours or doctors promising home visits. They all sounded like fat teenagers in their mothers’ basements, stealing people’s credit card information. Still I left dozens of messages and sent email after email. I was about to crawl into a hole when my phone buzzed back. Her name was Dr. Miracle (seriously) and she said that they could guarantee results in 24 hours if I took the sample to the lab myself.
“Lady, I’d take it to Hades.”
Turns out the lab was in Beaconhurst, which isn’t much different but takes a 45-minute taxi ride to get to from the city. The car dropped me off at a rundown building and when I knocked, a pink-cheeked hijaban opened the door and pointed for me to take the biohazard bag that I’d been given at the doctor’s office earlier that morning to the transwoman standing by the glass door. My doctor had a contact here apparently, and the whole thing had a kind of clandestine air to it, but I didn’t care. This meant I could leave. This meant I could fly.
I write to you now from the nearly deserted JFK airport, populated only by murderously disgruntled TSA agents and one single McDonalds booth. This is the first time I’ve flown since Covid, and in many ways the experience is a lot nicer if only because there are absolutely no lines anywhere. Since I know first hand what it took for me to get on the flight, I look at the mask strangers around me with a degree of affection, comfortable in the knowledge that they’ve all been tested negative at least within the last 72-96 hours. It’s not a lot, but it’s something. By the time you read this, I’ll hopefully be in my home in Lahore after a long flight, again confined to another quarantine but this time happily, because after nine months I’ll have a new view out the window, and I would have made it past that red circle into a halo of loved ones.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com
I circled November 15th particularly, the day that I was originally due to fly out from New York and get to Lahore before the world stopped. The ticker was still valid, and the hope that that was the day I’d be able to see my partner and family again outside of hazy pixels on Zoom calls soothed me. When things became difficult to handle in the pandemic, I would often look at the red day, saying to myself: just until then, just make it until then.
“What do you mean I can’t fly out?” I asked.
“Your Covid test, sir,” continued a voice of medicated calm. I swear if the voice on the phone had been a person in front me, I would have eaten them whole. “Unfortunately, it didnt arrive in the 72-hour window.”
“Yes it did. I swear I made DAMN sure! I had to stand in line for five hours to get that test! In the rain! I wore sweatpants in public for Christ’s sake!”
“It’s seven minutes over the time limit.”
“Seven minutes?”
“Yes sir,” the voice answered, faltering slightly under the weight of my stony silence. “Seven minutes.”
“I swear,” I cry-growled, “As God is my witness, I’m going to to kill you in seven minutes. Six if you don’t run.” It was the last thing I heard myself say before having a full-blown panic attack. It wasn’t the voice’s fault, I knew that, somewhere. Ever since flu season began in Autumn, New York streets had been crawling with slow moving lines of hundreds and hundreds of people trying to get tested. Trump’s breathtaking incompteance meant that there weren’t enough tests or people to administer them, and so I was prepared that not only would the wait be long but the results may not come in the timeframe that the airlines had allowed.
The days after I took the test (“You’ll know in 3-6 days” was the repeated chorus of the helpline) I kept refreshing the patient portal website every five seconds, belligerent in my belief that after nine months of near solitary confinement nothing - NOTHING - was going to keep me from leaving on Red Day.
Then it arrived, a scant few hours before my flight time, but the fact of it having been taken seven minutes outside of the timeframe counting back from the departure time meant that I would have to do the whole thing over. Now the hospitals said that it took a minimum of five days to get results, which was too long to fly. I was caught between a Covid test and a Hellscape, doomed to never board.
But any good desi knows that there is always something you can do with intractable bureaucracies. So I scoured the internet that night with the ferocity of a hacker from a 1990s movie, going through fake websites promising Covid tests for travel guaranteed within 24 hours or doctors promising home visits. They all sounded like fat teenagers in their mothers’ basements, stealing people’s credit card information. Still I left dozens of messages and sent email after email. I was about to crawl into a hole when my phone buzzed back. Her name was Dr. Miracle (seriously) and she said that they could guarantee results in 24 hours if I took the sample to the lab myself.
“Lady, I’d take it to Hades.”
Turns out the lab was in Beaconhurst, which isn’t much different but takes a 45-minute taxi ride to get to from the city. The car dropped me off at a rundown building and when I knocked, a pink-cheeked hijaban opened the door and pointed for me to take the biohazard bag that I’d been given at the doctor’s office earlier that morning to the transwoman standing by the glass door. My doctor had a contact here apparently, and the whole thing had a kind of clandestine air to it, but I didn’t care. This meant I could leave. This meant I could fly.
I scoured the internet that night with the ferocity of a hacker from a 1990s movie, going through fake websites promising Covid tests for travel guaranteed within 24 hours or doctors promising home visits. They all sounded like fat teenagers in their mothers’ basements, stealing people’s credit card information. Still I left dozens of messages and sent email after email
I write to you now from the nearly deserted JFK airport, populated only by murderously disgruntled TSA agents and one single McDonalds booth. This is the first time I’ve flown since Covid, and in many ways the experience is a lot nicer if only because there are absolutely no lines anywhere. Since I know first hand what it took for me to get on the flight, I look at the mask strangers around me with a degree of affection, comfortable in the knowledge that they’ve all been tested negative at least within the last 72-96 hours. It’s not a lot, but it’s something. By the time you read this, I’ll hopefully be in my home in Lahore after a long flight, again confined to another quarantine but this time happily, because after nine months I’ll have a new view out the window, and I would have made it past that red circle into a halo of loved ones.
Write to thekantawala@gmail.com