Baggage Claim

You have landed. Your flight is over. Everyone around you is collecting their luggage and walking cheerfully out into their lives.

Your bag is not here. Your bag is arriving soon — the board has said so for a while now. All you have is a paper tag describing it: a colour, a type, a little marker on the handle. So you stand at Belt 4 and you watch. Bags come. Bags go. Some of them are almost yours, close enough that your heart does a small unnecessary thing, and then the belt carries them away again.

Lean in to inspect any bag against your tag. Take one by mistake, if you like — nobody will stop you, though the airport will notice. Ring the lost luggage bell as many times as your dignity allows. Listen to the public address system explain, with enormous courtesy, that belt seven does not exist and that lunch has been ongoing since 1997. Watch the hall slowly empty around you until it is just you, the hum, and a belt that keeps turning because that is what belts do.

There is no way to win. There are several ways to stop. Finding out which one is yours is the whole holiday.