Leaving Pakistan, she smiled back at the no-nonsense woman at the security checkpoint who waved her through, “Mashallah, your outfit is beautiful, sister!”, she exclaimed. “I hope you come back soon.” She thought how 10 years ago, she didn’t even know where Pakistan was on a map, but now it was one of her home countries. Although roughly aware of the history, events of the 21st century had relegated Pakistan in the memory of Americans to the nebulous Middle East. Now, she knew a lot more about geography. Now she knew a lot more about the world.
Home, not to the country of her birth, but the country of her preference, China, where the air smelled different in an intangible way and the people, who weren’t her people, felt comfortable and safe.
After clearing immigration at Pudong International Airport, she headed to the washroom before catching the metro. She carefully removed the shalwar kameez she had grown used to in her husband’s country, and changed into more local dress, a baggy Nike t-shirt and tight jeans with artful tears in the knees. It was strange how easy it was outwardly to slip between cultures, while inside the residuals of worlds far apart in every way sought to refuse her a feeling of belonging.
In this mindset, still at the airport, the child first appeared to Julia. “Excuse me, auntie, I am lost. Can you help me?”, the child queried with eyes that seemed unworldly. Julia wasn’t sure if she spoke in English or Chinese, because some phrases become blurred between languages with time. The child could have been Chinese, or could have not been, she had dark hair and eyes, but the one thing that she knew is that this was odd. Where were the girl’s parents? Why did she come to Julia, of all people, someone clearly an outsider?
She brought the child to a security officer, where through broken Chinese and Baidu translation, she was able to convey the issue clearly. She waited there a while awkwardly, and finally the security staff that had come took her information and told her they would contact her if they needed anything. At least, she thought that was what they meant. Sometimes she pretended to understand more Chinese than she actually knew out of stubborn pride, and it resulted in a lot of confusion.
Weeks, then months passed, and no one ever let her know what happened to the child. Then, the unimaginable happened. Julia and her husband Ali had taken a trip for the holiday to Malaysia, only he was returning to Pakistan for a family emergency, while she was returning to their home in Nanjing. Leaving Kuala Lumpur was a both a little sad but also a little happy, and after four hours she landed for a layover in Hong Kong. As she had done when leaving Pakistan, she sought out a bathroom and changed out of the clothing she wore in Malaysia. The long hijab and flowing pantsuit went into her bag, and the pink Kuromi sweatshirt replaced it. The ritual of reorienting place and culture once again began. Again, the feeling of not belonging to anywhere came.
Julia was standing in the line at the airport Popeye’s when she felt a tug on her shirt hem. “Excuse me, auntie, can you help me? I am lost”, a childish voice spoke in almost a whisper. It jarred her, and she turned and looked. She was sure it couldn’t be the same child she had met in Shanghai. She tried to shake off the strange coincidence of this happening to her twice. She was not approachable. Her whole life she had been told this, so nobody, especially strangers, ever came to her for help. So, for the second time in her life, she took a little girl to the airport security office to find her family.
This time, however, there were questions. The English-speaking officer was skeptical. “How did you find this child? How do you know her? Why did she come to you?”, they fired off at her. Her answers felt like falsehoods, because even she didn’t know these answers. This time before they finally sent her away, she made one request; “Can you please send me a message updating me about her situation? I am very worried, and I won’t be able to sleep, not knowing that she is safe”.
Julia never received a message back. She tried calling the airport, but never reached anyone that could tell her about the lost little girl. As time went by, the memory of the two little girls she had found lost in Chinese airports faded, only occasionally being told as an amusing story on nights out with friends. At these occasions her husband would always gently mock her tendency to portray the story as supernatural, which sometimes even made her believe it.
Several years went by, and Julia traveled extensively, to America, to Pakistan, and various locations throughout the world. She always felt like she was outside the culture, a stranger, everywhere she went. Home to Florida was not home, but a foreign country with people who looked like her and spoke her native language. Home to Lahore, a foreign country where people understood her religious practices and always greeted her with warmth, but never felt comfortable nonetheless. Home to China, a foreign country, where the people didn’t look much like her, but understood her ways, feelings, and systems, and she theirs. There were many other places that were also not home, and the only thing that became comfortable was the feeling of being outside looking in at other people and cultures.
The final time she found the child, she was positive that there were no coincidences, despite any mathematical theory that says so. Therefore, she resolved to discover why this child kept crossing her path.
Julia had just gotten off a 12-hour flight from Seattle and was wheeling her carryon past immigration, past customs and headed to the Didi pick up point when it happened. She had once again changed out of her grubby, travel-worn, boho clothes that she seemed to favour in Florida, and put on a full-length denim skirt with her Uniqlo vest and TW Bear button-up shirt and shimmied the jade bracelet back over her wrist.
Her elaborate code-switching somehow helped her to adjust between countries and had been her habit for her ten years abroad. With that familiar melancholic feeling of both missing home and being home simultaneously she brought up the Didi app, when she felt a small hand on her arm.
“Excuse me, I am lost. Can you help me?”, she heard. Julia knew before she turned around that it would be a little girl with dark hair and dark eyes who looked terrified and alone. “Have we met before, ‘xiao pengyou’?”, she asked the child gently, despite the thudding of her heart and the goosebumps on the back of her neck.
The little girl, who seemed a little older than the last child, started to weep and Julia couldn’t help but kneel down and comfort the scared, lonely child.
“I want to go home,” she wailed. “I can help you, but I need to ask you some questions”, Julia said firmly, but the child continued to weep, wiping her running nose with the back of her hand.
Because there are no real coincidences, and because the key seemed to be within Julia, she realised that she should do things differently. “Isn’t that what they say?”, she thought. “Doing things the same way over and over and expecting different results is insanity. And truly, I am beginning to think that I am possibly losing my mind.”
She brought the child to the KFC she spotted across the terminal and ordered a meal for each of them. She watched the child eat voraciously until she finally finished off the last piece of popcorn chicken. She hoped that now she could ask a few questions.
“My name is Yangxi, and I am Chinese, but I am from Manchester, England. Every year my parents bring me here to make sure I grow up knowing my culture and family history,” the child explained. “I hate coming here. Every time that I return home to Manchester, I feel like a stranger. Yet every time I arrive here, I am also a stranger. I just wanted to disappear for a while, find a place that feels like home. Maybe the airport is home.” Julia nodded in understanding, but she was not here to sympathise, but to find resolutions for both of their problems. Over the next 30 minutes, she was able to get Yangxi’s parents’ names, and what flight they had come in on, but was no closer to learning the answers to her own mystery.
When her parents finally found them sitting in the KFC there was a flurry of activity and accusations, which were eventually somehow resolved amicably. While the father made calls to let security know that Yangxi was found safely, Julia tentatively began a conversation with the mother. “I don’t understand this girl”, the mother said exasperatedly. “No matter what precautions we take, she seems to slip away in the airport, always getting lost.” This got Julia’s attention. “This has happened before?”, Julia asked. “Three times now. Once in Hong Kong, and another time in Shanghai. I thought she’d gotten over it, since it’s been a few years now.”
Later, when Julia tried to make sense of everything, she didn’t mention it to Ali. It was incomprehensible and he’d never believe she wasn’t making it up. Was Yangxi really the same child she had found twice before? And how, and why, did this child come to her? Julia didn’t believe in coincidences. These chance encounters, her moments of “getting into character” every time she arrived in China, her feeling of being lost, they were bound together in some karmic lesson from the universe. Maybe there are many strangers traveling the world, home everywhere and nowhere, who don’t know where they belong, and maybe they’ve also chanced across other travellers adrift looking for a place like home.
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