8 Citizens of Nowhere (Changi Airport)

ARRIVE SINGAPORE       21.35                         DEPART SINGAPORE  07.40         

Beginning the descent into Singapore. We’re landing at Changi Airport in about half-an-hour (maybe less). The cabin is preparing to land; a sudden buzz of electricity charges and changes the torpor around me. People fidget, people manically check the overhead lockers, people queue again outside the toilets. An amazing sunset is occurring to my left. A vibrant, burning red blazes beyond the window. The sky is on fire. Ardent colours. I take photos. Don’t feel so good – light and lethargic. Am here for the next ten hours until my connecting flight departs tomorrow morning. There are no real expectations of this layover, now. When I booked the flight, I was looking forward to spending time here at Changi. Of all the times to get food poisoning the day before a long-haul flight was not the best. Seat belt signs chime on. The sun has now disappeared behind a wall of fog, leaving behind a changing kaleidoscope of nebulas and bursting supernovas. Exhausted. All I want is to shower; to lay down on my bed and close my eyes. But like the speaker in Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” there are commitments still to navigate:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

The sky is now filled with colours and magic. Descending through silent clouds. And there are miles to go before I sleep.

I can remember waking yesterday – in the middle of the night – with cramps in my stomach. Laying in the darkness not daring to move I can remember thinking I was lucky to only have been ill this late into the holiday (the last day) and feeling ok with it (like it was some kind of pact). Then the illness struck. For an hour I vomited and struggled to keep down any water. It happened in violent waves. Sitting on the floor of the bathroom I can remember being surprised how physically tired I felt. After the illness had passed, I showered and lay back on my bed. I felt shattered and wobbled between extremes of being too hot or too cold. At one point, I lay as still as I could in the dark, trying not to move, to breathe softly, to not think, to be as motionless as possible. I listened to the sounds of the rainforest outside the room sing through the final arias of the nocturnal symphony. I could hear the ocean against the shore. Eventually I fell asleep sometime in that strange elixir of dawn and first light.

At breakfast I felt ok. Nibbled on some fruit, had a coffee. My taxi had been booked to take me from my accommodation to the airport just before lunchtime (an internal flight then an international flight to Singapore at 6pm; ten hours before the second leg of another journey).

It didn’t take long before I was ill again. I made it to the bathroom in the cafe and then again to the one in room without disgrace. I lay on the bed, perspiring and now resigned to the situation; nothing else to do but wait for the taxi. My bag was packed and ready, but I was ill. Seriously ill. Now it was concerning. At what stage could I honestly say ‘the worst of it’ had passed? Would it pass? I plucked up the courage to venture to a chemist a short distance away. The walk there was painful and slow. Lethargy weighted each of my steps in the humidity and wet tarmac. My stomach winced, tender as if it had been kicked. But I made it and explained my story; buying hydration tablets and all manner of pills out of desperation to not vomit on any of the planes (or airports). Can’t remember much of the journey to the airport. Can’t remember much of checking in. Can’t remember much of that first flight. Everything just happened.

There is an acute awareness of entering a parallel dimension inside an airport. Time operates differently. Past and future are no longer fixed. The conventional sequence of existence erodes. Personal time differs from external time; time zones are crossed by the hour, body clocks operate independently of local time, departure times and arrival times become one and the same thing. Time becomes a paradox of metaphysical theories. The airport becomes something of a wormhole – a rogue existence punched through the space-time fabric allowing Citizens of Nowhere to come and go as they please. Time breathes; Time just is. There are no longer the fixed coordinates which order our everyday lives. The airport is a journey into an alternative reality, where, to paraphrase the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleu-Ponty, the flow of time broods before us like a storm on the horizon and we are merely floating downstream towards it, always aware of its presence. 

On arrival at Changi Airport (21.35) I flowed out into a terminal with the rest of the flight. And here in Singapore airport, like any other big airport, colours of confusion swirl and move without any familiar anchorage. Colours of clothes, of currency, of passports. Citizens of Nowhere all in transit, all in symphony, all in situ, searching for screens bearing information of the brooding future: details of flights, departure gates, destinations so far away. Staring at screens, pockets of silence eddying in the flow of motion, simultaneously reassuring and unnerving. I walked along coloured corridors, on moving walkways, weaving in and out of people as they weaved in and out of me. I could not go fast – my body ached and I felt drained. I looked at maps. I searched screens. Couldn’t find my flight. I walked through shops selling duty free and magazines. I found an information desk. They took my boarding card, checked something on a computer, confirmed my flight the next morning, advised me what terminal to go to. Before leaving, I asked about the airport hotel. Someone had mentioned it to me weeks ago – a transit hotel in Changi Airport where you could stay overnight. I was given a map of the airport; it was circled here and there, showing me where I was, where to find the hotel (and my departure gate at 07.40). 

From Terminal 3, a Sky Train to Terminal 2. Singapore Airlines, Air India, Etihad Airways, Lufthansa Airlines, Silkair. Transfer Lounges, Walking Times, electric bulbs and neon signs become the canopy of stars overhead. Moving through the fatigue that had weighed me down I passed through coloured lights, busy bars, people moving until I found the Transit Hotel. Leaving behind the flow of people, I entered the silence of a glass door and approached the familiarity of a reception area. A smiling face told me rooms were available. Minimum purchase of six hours (with additional hours added on by the hour). Money paid. A key card in my hand. A room of one’s own.

The hotel room – 422 – was perfect, clean with a shower and a bathroom. Another world within a world. A step off the carousel. My own space again. Stillness and silence; the hum of air-conditioning. Here I could leave my bags, put them down, let them be and walk around without having to drag them behind. The shower – a welcomed shower – left me feeling refreshed (skin, scalp and face). In clean clothes I sat on the bed like a Nighthawk in one of Edward Hopper’s paintings, feeling the weight of my body sink into the solitude of mattress. And then my stomach began to speak again. This time, not tender pangs of anguish, but an eagerness to eat again. The joys that can be found in the smallest of things.

And so, I re-entered the cloud city of Terminal 2 at Changi Airport. I walked slowly now and noticed how amazing this airport really was. Free from the stress of needing to pay attention to small things, of guarding your belongings, of having senses stimulated beyond retention I became a Citizen of Nowhere once again. The legs could stroll and I could marvel. There was a cinema that played movies for those in transit. There was an area playing live music. There were places to eat all about me (Thai, Indian, Italian). And yet despite these temptations all my body craved was a whopper from a Burger King (with fries and a coke). This would be my first meal in nearly a day. I walked and sat in a large, open Sports Bar with a giant screen. It was screening a match between Liverpool and Celtic. It was only a pre-season game but it was of importance as Liverpool had recently appointed a new manager, Rafa Benitez.  I sat and ate slowly, watching the Reds win 5-1, and everything felt good.

At some stage I went back to the room in the transit hotel and slept. I slept well and set my alarm. The illness had passed. And so I slept soundly in Changi Airport as a Citizen of Nowhere – lost in time, unaware of coordinates, transiting beyond borders. And everything felt good.

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