A quietish morning

It's a quietish morning at the airport, but then it always is. The only chap expending any energy in the sunshine is a sweeper raising billows of dust on the runway. The lone woman on security is delighted to have someone to talk to. She looks like some of the mothers of my neighbourhood but in standard-issue blue and lipstick. So I greet her as such, calling her baji, sister. She sits me down and tells me about her children. You would not believe the hassles with school buses, you simply would not. And fees! Oh dear me, no. What a lot they do charge these days.
It's unseemly to frisk a friend so she doesn't and she doesn't have time to inspect my bags, what with sisters-in-law to discuss.
"Cup of tea? - Of course", she answers the question herself, "you're a teacher."
What a lot she knows about schools. Tea for two is brought by a tea-boy (Shouldn't he be at school?) moments before two embassy women stride through flashing their ID. That's the other way of avoiding her hands, but it won't buy you a brew. Next a grandma bundles in with such general bagginess of both luggage and person the light ruffling of garmenture by my bosom buddy is not, I am guessing, effectual.
Some sort of superintendent of security drops his specs and then his safety standards. He kicks the shards of glass under a carpet. Don't tell the embassy women.
Outside, in the Aviation Authority's own Chelsea Flower Show, the men I saw lighting cigarettes eight months ago when I arrived seem only just to be drawing the last drags now. They stub them out, wander up to the cabin crew and exchange hearty greetings and manly hugs. They are ushered on. It seems almost a shame to break up the party by boarding the plane.

The mountains between that place and now are so silent, still and large they make me wonder whether that green cherry orchard of a place behind them was all a dream.