A Moment of Reflection, or Maybe a Segment of Autobiography

When I landed at the airport in Cincinnati, it was midnight. The airport was almost empty. I collected my bag and went directly to the desk, where I was supposed to notify the UC executive shuttle driver. 

All I was doing in the meantime was just checking the boxes so that nothing would go wrong. Before this period of my life, I wasn’t really habituated to speaking in  English, especially with native speakers. But I discovered I was communicating pretty well.

When I bade my family goodbye at the airport, I was completely on my own. I checked in the two big luggage and completed pre-flight tasks. Sitting in the cozy airport lounge, right before the onboarding, I got my period. I bade my motherland bleeding, both metaphorically and literally. 

I could not sleep during my 34-hour-long journey. To my utter surprise, I was not even crying! I saw a girl on the flight who was crying the whole time on the Dhaka – Dubai leg.

During my transit at the Dubai airport, I felt very sleepy but could not sleep as I had to catch the Dubai Metro, which is a driverless automated train, to go to another terminal for my connecting flight. I wonder how Dubai’s massive airport looks like right now, given the war situation.

It was pretty hot at the Houston airport when I arrived. It was 9 PM when I was done with my immigration, customs and other formalities, and still it was sunny. 

On the domestic flight from Houston to Cincinnati, a lady and a gentleman were sitting next to me. I’m not sure if they were a couple. The lady was looking at me curiously. I don’t know why I felt that I’d seen her before. But it had zero possibility. Now, if I think about it, I guess her face is similar to Professor McGonagall from Harry Potter. And maybe that’s why she seemed like a familiar one! 

She was very hygiene-conscious, I suppose, as she sanitized her seat before sitting. I was feeling embarrassed when I caught a cold thanks to the air conditioner and started sneezing constantly. I couldn’t stop myself for a while and then fell asleep-good for me and her! 

I didn’t realize how fast it landed. It was a short flight. The sleep was out of extreme tiredness; it was not relaxing even for a moment. And since then, I’ve probably never relaxed, as I have to be aware always!

I was waiting at the airport for another student to come, and then the driver would call us to go. I was sneezing then as well. An elderly woman told me, “Bless you”. I felt warm instantly. It is a norm I knew, but people say this even to unknown people, which I didn’t know then. 

What time was it – 2 or 3 am? Then I reached the place that I called home for four months. Since I was packing, I was concerned about how I would lift my two 23 kg pieces of luggage to the third floor alone. In our country, we usually depend on other people for such physical labor. The girl I was taking the lease from told me she would help. And she really did! Though she was younger and didn’t look much stronger than I, she did most of the lifting. I was rather in a supporting role. The roommates were Vietnamese American. Sharing an apartment with non-Bangladeshi is not a usual practice for Bangladeshi immigrants in the US. It was a completely new experience for me, which I chose consciously. I finally slept well that night. 

I can remember a day in my teenage years when I had a dream about waking up abroad, and guess what? Yes, it was America indeed! During a beautiful sunny morning, I was standing on a balcony in my dream. That was just a dream! I had never dreamt of coming to America in a literal sense, umm…I mean, the plan was not concrete. However, I lived the dream. Often, I reflect on past moments and embodied experiences. I feel blessed, stronger, and grounded.