dispatch 1 - NYC

She stepped off the airplane in New York and was immediately overwhelmed. It was years since she’d last been there, and certain things were a shock to her: the size of buildings, the width of highway lanes, the number of fat people around. In the distance she thought she could see the skyline of Manhattan, something she mostly ignored during her previous visits. She kept walking toward the adjacent terminal, and lost sight of that famous sawtooth silhouette, her mind turning to the task at hand - security check, passport check, customs check. All routine for a frequent traveler such as the former de facto Grigovian ambassador to the United Nations. A light traveler, she had packed one week’s worth of clothing into her carry-on bag. She’d toured both war-torn regions and peaceful metropolises, forged rivers and ducked gunfire. In her former post, she had addressed well-dressed heads of state and rag-bound orphans alike, sometimes both in the same day. There is little left, she thought, that will shock me. I’m ready.
“What’s the purpose of your visit?” the dark-skinned immigration agent said.
“Pleasure,” she replied. The man leaned forward to look at the computer screen in front of him.
“Is this your first time in the U.S.?” he asked, peering up at her.
“It is my first time here as a civilian.”
After a few more moments, and some thoughtful glances, the agent punched keys on his keyboard, slid a slim piece of paper between the folds of her cornflower-blue Grigovian passport, and handed it back to her.
“Welcome to America.”
Erya Rovend smiled in thanks, picked up her passport, shouldered her backpack, and started following signs to Ground Transportation. Within an hour, she was in midtown Manhattan, where she bought two cheap gravity knives and a wool scarf from a sidewalk vendor. Seeing something familiar in the man’s worn face, she greeted him formally in Pashto, a language common to Central Asia. His smile was so wide she was afraid it would split his head in two, the creases and cracks all running together at the corners of the eyes. Taking her hands in his, he blessed her, wishing her success on her path, wherever it would take her.
Swept along by a pressing mass of pedestrians moving by, she soon lost sight of the Afghan gentleman, losing also her patience for the touristik bustle of Times Square. She walked west, toward the setting sun. At a corner bakery she bought two sticky pastries, one for her and one for a homeless woman crouching in a nearby alleyway. Upon reaching the Hudson River she turned south, making for the Grigovian Travellers’ Mission on 8th Avenue and 14th Street.
Erya Rovend - civic leader, social philosopher, martial artist - had arrived in America. And she was going to find out what, as the Ynki tend to say, made it tick.

© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥