I feel like I should split the first day from the airport stuff, since they are distinct.
For the past few trips, whenever I or my family came, we would be met at the door of the plane by a man working for my uncle, who would whisk us to the VIP lounge, take our passport and tickets, and handle everything for us. After they've claimed the luggage, we would leave, without ever having to talk to an airport official. Since the country was strengthening its security measures in anticipation of the SAARC conference in Dhaka in January, the VIP lounge was closed to non-government officials.
So John and I got off the plane, quite tired and slightly cranky to find no one at the door for us. I'd been warned, so we walked over to the immigration lines and waited patiently at the long "foreign" passport line. The grandmother was actually domestic passport, and could've easily stood on the shorter line, but she said she couldn't do it alone and refused to go. She kept asking me why we weren't on the shorter line, and I kept explaining that *she* could, but we couldn't. Finally she got exasperated, and when she saw that her friend had no trouble going through on her own, she grabbed her passport and walked straight to the counter, not even noticing that there was a line. The people she cut looked annoyed, but kept quiet.
After she finished, she came back to me and gave me back her passport. I asked her, startled, why she was back there. If she was done, she should be on the other side, not back here. So she left, heading for the baggage claim.
By this time, I'd seen the man who was to have met us at the claim, so I figured he would take care of the grandmother.
A girl standing in front of us, dressed in a black pantsuit (a bit too clingy, I thought) and too much makeup (I can't imagine travelling for hours and then putting on makeup without thoroughly cleaning the face), turned around and started asking me questions about where I was from and what I was doing with the white boy. I was a bit irritated, but I realized that by marrying John, I invited these comments (my countrymen are not known for tact) so I politely explained that this was my husband.
She switched to English at this point and we all chatted, but I couldn't feel very nice towards her.
We finally got through immigration, and the bored official just stamped us through. We met the man in white who asked me where the grandmother was, and I mentally sighed once I realized the grandmother had walked right past him and neither of them had noticed each other. We went to baggage claim and I found the grandmother myself. I told her to sit down, and then proceeded to ignore her rants about how people will steal her luggage and tried to help John find our bags as well as hers. He was exhausted, but he managed to get all our bags...at one point, I glanced over to see him hop on the baggage carousel, check the tag on a bag, and then hop off. It was amusing.
About an hour and a half to two hours after landing, we found all our luggage and we walked towards the VIP lounge, completely bypassing customs, and met my father and my cousin in the parking lot. We loaded all the bags into two cars - a jeep and a car - and headed for my cousin's home.
It was about 5am - we'd landed at 3- and the entire city was deserted. A bit dark still, which I knew was an illusion, since I knew the city would wake up soon enough with the dawn prayers, and then John would be overwhelmed. I was kind of glad that his first taste of a Third World country was slightly on the bare and civilized side...I really wasn't relishing his shock and horror when he realized what kind of madhouse he was stuck in for two weeks.
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