From the sliding doors to the baggage claim belt, to the taxi drop-off point and the check-in zone, the floor of Terminal One was littered with the debris of travel interrupted. Stranded passengers erected suitcase forts and sleeping bag moats around tiny patches of floor claimed as their own. A young, pale-skinned woman picked her way through the rubble. A leather satchel, swung low around her black army boots. Around her neck a Polaroid camera leapt and recoiled with each step. It was testament to her single-mindedness that these two disparate bouncing objects did not entangle—or strangle—her.

Quiche had a plan and no one said anything about it being practical.

Nearly two hundred souls, smelling of armpits, were marooned across the concourse. It helped to pretend these strangers were camping out in her backyard. But that game had brought her no closer to achieving her quest. This time, as she crossed the terminal floor she decided a more intimate tactic was needed. Quiche looked at the clutter of people’s lives as though washed up with the tide, and in excruciating slow motion renewed her journey. Her first footfall brought the toe of her boot in contact with the corner of a sleeping bag. The next step cheekily pushed an upturned novel a whole centimetre toward its owner. It took her triple the time to cross the concourse playing this game of transparent stranger. By the time she reached the other side she was trembling. Her sneaky footsteps had brought her into contact with more people than she had talked to in her entire life. She collapsed against a wall and clutched her chest, breathless and guilty. She would not be playing transparent strangers again.

“Are you okay?”

Quiche turned to find herself confronted by the knowing eyes of child—large, dark and receptive like radar dishes.

She had meticulously avoided any conversation since arriving at the airport. Her first instinct was to pretend she had not heard the dusty skinned boy. Her fingers darted to her satchel, the weight a reassuring alibi. She would feign being busy. Yes, there was something very important deep within her satchel demanding her full attention. When she looked up next the boy would be all gone away.

“You’re funny,” he said, after a minute or so.

This was not good. A fat finger of words jabbing her in the face. Quiche peeled her fringe from her eyes, looking around for an escape route. Off to her right a refugee camp formed around a row of vending machines. She would make a dash for it. If the boy followed, she would either lose him in the crowd, or the vending machines would transfix his boyish nature with their chocolaty promise.

She buckled shut the satchel’s flap. It was now or never. She shot one furtive, gazelle-like glance over her shoulder. In that fleeting instance the boy’s knowing eyes pierced deep into her awareness and she believed those rich, wide eyes were capable of taking in everything up to and including radio waves.

She thrust her hand into her cardigan and produced a Polaroid picture. It was faded and creased. Cracks ran across its surface.

“Him?” she said, proffering the photograph to the boy. He took the photograph and studied it. Within its yellowing frame, a moustached gentleman stared back from an airport in the 1970s. He wore a white linen suit, trousers flared in the style of day. He also wore a long trench coat in the same colour. His moustache was neatly groomed and long hair fell gracefully behind his ears. At his side a small child was thumbing her nose at the camera.

“Who is he?” the boy asked.

Quiche shrugged, assuming the photo said all that needed to be said about her quest.

“Ahmed!”

The boy had little time to respond before mother came into view. A shimmering cobalt burqha enveloped her from top to toe, her eyes obscured by a rectangle of black mesh. Quiche was immediately mesmerised by the shimmying fabric and the way it hid all trace of the person inside. Before this woman and her veil there could be no cross talk, no facial tics or arbitrary nuances of behaviour to confound her brain. At last, someone she could turn to for help. The woman said something in her language to the boy. He replied and gestured towards Quiche, who grabbed a smile from the ether and painted it onto her face.

The woman in the veil took the photo from her son’s hand and studied it. When she spoke next he translated: “She says an airport is a place somewhere between heaven and earth. A place where answers wait for questions and their asking.”

With that the woman pointed out across the concourse.