A beer in Addis Ababa
An innocent date.
He was cute. Who doesn’t like a man in uniform? On his bag was a tag that said CREW.
I didn’t spot him working on the flight, but I don’t think I would have noticed if a herd of goats got on board. I was exhausted. From work stress and zero hours of sleep the night before. From the sugar rush of falling in love with a new country, that so often crashes as you head back home.
Time is just a number in transit, I lose all notion of it. And personal space. Everyone leaned in unison as the bus swung towards the terminal. His side eye crossed mine, both of us failing to be discreet. I chose to look at the floor instead. My face felt shiny with the stale sheen of recycled air. There was a tang in my mouth, as sour as my mood.
Inside, the chances of a decent meal were slim. Addis Ababa International was without frills, one or two shops selling beaded necklaces, grey mops rotting in corners. The Africa Cup was being broadcast and the terminal hum was occasionally interrupted by whoops and yells. I settled for a Burger King with a patty that was white round the edges.
Guess where I am, I text a friend, knowing full well he would never be able to.
I went to check the number of my gate, and we were facing each other.
“Where you headed?” he asked, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“Geneva,” I said. “Switzerland.”
“Nice.”
“You?” I asked back.
“I’m going to Washington DC.”
“You’ve got a long way to go.”
“My next flight is in about an hour.”
He raised his eyebrows until it became a question.
“Do you want to grab a beer?” I asked, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
He was lean and sat with his legs crossed, his hair buzzed close to his head. He radiated an ease with himself that was contagious, a lightness with being on the road.
“My name is Ami Innocent Saiba, but most people call me Innocent.”
“You aren’t though, are you?” It was cheap. He must have heard it a thousand times before, but he collapsed all the same.
“My mother had high hopes!”
At his most expressive, there was a roundness to his vowels from the country we just left. The rest came out American.
“What were you doing in Rwanda?” I asked.
“I was visiting family for the holidays,” he said. “My mother and my sister.”
“Where are they based?”
“In Kigali.” He gave a wry smile.
“It’s a very special city,” I affirmed.
“It will always be home.”
There was another cheer from the bar as someone scored. I held my pint glass in both hands as if it were my own trophy.
“Are you close to your sister?”
“I’m super close to my sister but man, she’s a grown up now.”
I laugh.
“She causing you trouble already?”
“Not yet but she might.” He laughs with me. “I don’t even want to think about it.”
For an hour, we buried ourselves one layer under small talk. I wondered what it was like to be a straight man working for an airline. If it was exhausting being so transitory. Whether he did this all the time, collecting vignettes of people’s lives and phone numbers like a librarian of the skies.
“Have you ever had to interrupt people trying to join the mile high club?” I asked.
“I always admire the ambition,” he said.
A few days later he texted, Let’s have a call sometime.
I’m seeing someone here, I typed without sending. I left the message on read.
Several months later, not-so-Innocent came to Switzerland. He had a friend here to visit and we met up for another drink, swapping questions all over again. We sat in a white tiled open-all-night Lebanese restaurant that could double as a laundrette.
Another question hung between us that we didn’t vocalise.
“You know,” I said, deciding to answer it anyway, “my best friend has imposed a dating rule on me called Bangs within Borders.”
He stopped mid sip and put his Coke down.
“Bangers within borders?”
I spluttered, one sharp exhale.
“Yeah.” I didn’t correct him. He laughed with me, putting his hand over his mouth to cover it.
“What does it mean?”
“It means I can no longer date outside the Swiss border,” I continued. “She said if I take one more flight for one more man, she’ll personally fly after us and bring me home.”
“She sounds serious.”
“She totally is,” I put up my palms for emphasis. Dropped them again. “But, being serious too, I don’t have the courage to pursue anything that’s impractical anymore.” I admitted. “Or the energy.”
“Bangers within borders,” he repeated, slowly, incredulous. “Not heard that one before.”
“That’s me.” We both smiled at each other, closed mouthed.
A few years ago, I would have booked tickets for this wizardry. Thrown myself into the improbability of how we met. Arranged different weekends in different cities where we would spend time in a capsule and long for each other in between. Video calls. Endless messages. Uncertainty. What ifs. There’s a side to long-distance romance that appeals to my independence. It’s like having a boyfriend, but only part-time.
Yet there’s a reason why it’s banned. Why there’s barbed wire and security and no visa exemptions. I want to construct a reality in my present, build something on my own plot, not keep planning for a future trip that keeps life in a case. Plus, I’ve got those stamps in my passport already. Enough, even my friends are saying, an extension of myself.
Before we said goodbye, Innocent told me he’s a writer too. We go months without talking and then a poem lands in my inbox. A vignette. A snippet from his time in the air or on a bar stool of whichever country he’s in. Considered lines that come from his innermost thoughts.
It’s intimate. It’s friendship. It’s magic all the same.