As tired as I was, the sky was starting to get light by the time I managed to fall into some kind of sleep. When I did, I dreamt that I was at an airport, somewhere abroad, but not one I’d ever been to before so it could have been Dubai. It was beyond huge and there were no signs anywhere in English, and nobody seemed able to understand a word I said.
I must have already checked in, because I had no luggage, just bags and bags of bulky shopping. I was rushing to get to my boarding gate. None of the gate numbers, however, were sequential – they seemed to be random, as if the numbers had been called out in a game of Bingo – and anybody I tried to ask just shrugged at me, or chattered away in a language I couldn’t understand.
Things kept falling out of the many bags I was trying to carry – I must have bought half of Duty Free – and I had to keep stopping to pick them up again. Bottles rolled like skittles across the shiny floors, their criss-cross plastic covers doing nothing to slow their progress. I chased after them, wondering how they could roll so fast and in so many different directions and why none of them had smashed.
Cumbersome electrical items were bulging, like awkwardly shaped biceps, through the rips their pointy corners had managed to make in their bags. Posh boxes of chocolates and fancily wrapped cosmetic gift sets were tumbling about all over the place and people were starting to trip up on the things my bags were shedding around me.
An announcement shrilled through the speakers, calling my name, the final passenger for boarding. I had to hurry. The gate was going to close.
I had to leave everything and run. But which way?