The airy, immense space is gleaming artificially because beyond the tall glass walls, where the tarmac, runways, and mountains ought to be, there’s just fog, a soupy black fog that has covered the airport and delayed everything. The inbound jet got diverted, and will not even depart from its current location until the fog starts to burn off. Our layover in Atlanta was going to be more than six hours—we booked the flights just two days ago, so we took what we could get—but now it’s going to be tight. It’s possible we could miss it, but we haven’t yet begun to worry about that. We—my father, me, and Trish, a US consular officer who was assigned to our case, my sister’s case—have been quietly monitoring the departures board near our table.My poor father, my poor sister. I push my seat back, stand, and excuse myself. Because of the delays, the terminal is badly overcrowded, and I have to step over lots of feet and suitcases. But everybody is calm and polite. There was madness at check-in, but here there is serenity—the anxiety just dissolves into the air and light of the terminal.
