The airport queue

Back and forth we go, transitioning from check in en route to the departure gate, lining up to have our belongings and ourselves security scan.

Long organized queues snake laterally in front of the security, as hundreds maybe thousands of people are channelled back and forth, slowing but steadily advancing in one direction and then the opposite one.

We shift haltingly forward, facing people in the lines on either side of us. All ages, all colours of humanity of this soon-to-be-airborne population drift by. There are families, single people, blue- and brown-eyed people, staring ahead as they walk. The queue flows smoothly and only a few people have their mobile telephones in hand, snatching occasional glances.

There is so much similarity between the colours, the features, the expressions going by; the mass sometimes broken by occasional brand names or other writing emblazoned on clothes.

Unspoken, each knows their destination, travel documents close to hand, the short-term memory of life before the queue receding as recent time relinquished. Further to go, further back; the strangers in their seemingly uniform bulk each has their history, their complex web of dreams and subconscious tides that take them back and forth on their voyage, closer and farther to each other.

Geneva airport