Return Trip

Walking out of the airport the first thing I noticed was the heat. I'd been to hot places before, well if you count Toronto, but there was just something consuming about this heat. It was like the heat was just waiting to swallow me whole, leaving nothing to spit out later. Then again, maybe that was my imagination playing with me. It had been doing that a lot lately.

Thankfully my friend Monika had arranged for someone to meet me at the airport and take me to my hotel: the Ishtar Sheraton. It wasn't much. Then again, what in Baghdad was? The building was once beautiful, but time and warfare have taken their toil, even on that. Now the once opulent structure looked old and worn out, the casualty of too many bombings, too much death.

And it is with that my journey began.

More appropriately, my journey began ten years ago in my apartment discussing life after university. I suppose I just wanted to put off joining the 'real world' for as long as possible and there was just something romantic about backpacking around Europe.

It was Sharon's idea to visit Iraq: beautiful, vibrant Sharon. Some would say she looked more the Viking goddess than the mathematician. But mathematician was she by trade, blonde beauty by looks. And with a resolve that was all Sharon, she wanted to go to Iraq. What it was that compelled her to go I'll never know. Go she wanted and go we did.

Somehow, the air didn't feel quite so hot then, nor the heat so suffocating. Then again, maybe my imagination is playing tricks with me. I wouldn't doubt it. The mind has been known to play tricks on people, mine more than most.

I remember clearly getting out of the airport with Sharon, she telling me how much we'd love travelling here. "You'll never believe what a deal I got on the hotel. It's absolutely amazing!"

"But are you sure it's safe for two females to be travelling alone here?" I couldn't help but ask her. I was always the worrier. Ever since I'd met her, she'd always been the carefree risk-taker while I had been the practical one, needing to have worked out all the details before proceeding.

"It'll be fine. It's not like we're the only female travellers that ever come here."

And with that we managed to grab a taxi to the Ishtar Sheraton. It was beautiful then, shiny and new, built with a hope for the coming years, years that would instead bring it bombings and bloodshed. Time would catch up with the Ishtar Sheraton, aging it faster than one would expect, taking that once new and beautiful structure and turning it into the aged and withered building that stood before me.

Travelling with Sharon had been an adventure. The sights, the smells, even the tastes had all seemed that much more alive, that much more real. There was just something about her that could do that. She lived life to the fullest, as though each second would be her last, forcing anyone with her to do the same. Each second, each taste or smell or touch, was something to be savoured.

We'd only been there a week before I came to realise that maybe she'd known something the rest of us had missed. Maybe in her zest for life she'd known that she had to enjoy as much as possible, before time caught up to her.

To be honest, it all happened very quickly. I was heading back to the hotel, tired and hot after spending the morning shopping. There was something about the heat that just sapped the strength right out of a person. She, on the other hand, wanted to go across the street. She'd seen a little stand and wanted to check it out. She promised to only be a minute.

Back at the hotel I waited and waited and waited. She never came. Seconds became minutes, minutes became hours, hours became days and still she never came.

At some point, I'm still not sure when, I managed to call the police, the embassy, anyone I could think of. And still she never came.

That was all ten years ago. I waited a while for her. The police never found any trace of her, no one did. I waited a few of weeks, before going home to start my new job. I guess a part of me kept hoping that she'd call. She never did.

I've come back, staying in the same hotel, the same room, hoping to put it behind me. I guess a part of me is still hoping. You could say a part of me is still waiting, waiting to say good-bye.