Saturday 18 November 2017

Story from the Past

It's a Saturday night, I am staying in front of arrival Terminal of Indira Gandhi International Airport in New  Delhi, and waiting my parents to come. They are coming to attend my marriage ceremony. Dubai -Delhi flight has landed a hour before and people has started to come out from the building. My eyes are searching my parents in the crowd, but they are nowhere appear.
By every minute I get more and more  anxious, "what happen to them? where they are?"these are the questions in my mind. There is no way to go inside to arrival hall, the only thing we can do is to wait. Time to times asking my husband try to see as much far as he can through the windows, and everytime he replies same answer " they are not yet here".
After two hours of waiting, I start giving up. My mind is flies  everywhere, thinking too much of negatives. My parents are not young, they don't speak english. this makes me feel worry. Have they arrived to Delhi? or may be something happened in Dubai? So many thing are coming to my mind but I am scared of thinking it.
 Two and half hours after arrival: my heart is coming out from my chest, tears are coming from my eyes. I don't understand what is going on. Trying to call Fly Dubai office to get some information, no one replies. My husband is trying to enter to the building, talking to the policemen, who stands near to gate.  He refuse allowing him to enter inside. We give my parents detail to another policeman to just check out if they have arrived or not. This man has gone inside, by promising me that he will check it from emigration if people with those names arrived with that flight or not. But he has gone and did not come back.
It's three hours after the plane has landed, my parents are not there. I am totally lost. I can not stop crying.
Police is not able to give any normal solution to this problem, The only thing they repeat is " we can not allow you to go inside" from other side they don't do anything.
It's night and every office is close. wherever we call no one replies. My father phone should has been in roaming, but it was not reachable.
Now I am only praying. Praying in my mind, praying loudly with my own language, people look at me in strange way, but I don't care. My husband is running here and there, trying to get some information and from other side asking me to calm down.
It's three hour and 40 minutes after plane landed, slowly sunlight is visible. And suddenly I see some indian guy holding one trolley with the bags, which are very "familiar" to me, how many times I have washed these bags when I was a child. In one second my mind flows to my childhood , when my father was coming from abroad, how happily I was opening that bags to see what was inside...Then again I am back to the present time,  and I see man coming with this indian guy is my father. His, already not even gray but white hair makes my heart to melt down. After them I see my mom, slowly walking behind them. They have not seen me, but we were very close and I could hear how my father said:
"Just stop here, my daughter told me to wait them in front of gate number 6". The most funny thing was that he was telling this in Armenian Language, and the indian man was replying in Hindi "haan ji" (ok).  (Of course they did not understand languages, but somehow they understood each other.)
By seeing this scene, the big smile has appeared on my face. How innocent are our parents, as they  get old, they become a child the same time. Human being comes this world and goes with same psychology.
Then I hugged my mom and dad, brought out all the fears which I was holding in my heart.
Later on we got to know that they have been stopped by emigration officer who has asked my parents to answer some questions and fill some form regarding to their stay in India, but since everything was in English they could not understand it. Then he refused them to put an entry stamp till they will not fill the form. It has taken more than three hours for my parents to request people to help them, when finally one boy from Duty Free has fill that form and give it to them. They have pass it to this officer and finally were able to come out.
That form was simple piece of paper, which was asking about name, nationality, visa length and return flight, and these all information was written in the passport and the ticket which was on their hand in that time. But it seems for that man it was so hard to check it out.