Stops on the road

Balzac under the cold neon glare

I wake up when dad asks me to get up because we have to change planes. We arrive in the departure lounge to wait but barely five minutes later, we have to go back into the same plane. I settle in and sleep peacefully, but a few hours later, dad wakes me up again to tell me that we have to change planes again. Waking up, I hear a little girl of about 6 crying and I’m sad for her. Her mother is a very young and pretty blonde woman and is as sad as I am for her daughter who can’t stand these interminable changes. We arrive again in a departure lounge where we wait longer than the previous time, but always boarding the same plane again; we’re in Omsk. We go back in and the plane doesn’t start once, then twice. Then, with dad, we think about our poor Kagoo in Paris which had the same difficulty staring as this plane, but the problem is that here I don’t have Djanan’s muscular arms to help me push the engine. Finally, after a third attempt without success, they tell us the plane will be delayed without knowing exactly for how long. We’re not very happy since we have a train to catch and we wouldn’t want to miss it. We wait in this airport that looks more like a hospital than anything else and we settle in, I have a small piece of pizza to eat and I read. My book is “La peau de chagrin” by Honoré de Balzac. He writes so well! He details things in a way I would never have thought possible. A Russian man tells us in half English and half sign that a plane should be here within three hours, so we wait. I keep on reading and dad edits his photos. Sacha, the Russian man, tells us the plane is landing and it shouldn’t be too long and it will be ok for our train. We are relieved. We put our things away and when they call us, we go board the plane. At first, the plane doesn’t start. But then a man dressed in orange manages to start the engine by the strength of his hands and the blowing of the wind. When the plane takes off, I fall asleep listening to my iPod. I wake up when our plane arrives in Tyumen, our final destination and I say to myself: “finally”.