The Guatamala Airport

THIS STORY IS A GOOD METAPHOR FOR MY LIFE.

I looked down from the inside passenger seat as we approached the Guatemala City airport. The one story concrete terminal building with the wide veranda looked suspiciously like the one in the movie, “The Comedians,” taken from Graham Greene’s novel about Papa Doc Duvalier and the atrocities in Haiti.

I knew that Guatemala claimed part of the little country of Belize, where I was headed once I had changed planes at the airport down below. The ominous look of the terminal building also reminded me that several trips earlier I had scuba dived off Ambergris Key with a young military attaché to the U.S. embassy in Guatemala City. I was shocked to read in the newspaper several weeks later that he had been machine-gunned in his car in front of his apartment by Guatemalan rebels. The picture in the newspaper showed a small car riddled with bullets.

I awoke from my reverie to the voice of a stewardess saying we were preparing to land in Guatemala City. I checked my watch. We were late in arriving.

Next the stewardess asked if the passenger named Honey would identify himself. I wondered what that was all about. I prefer not to be noticed in strange lands. After the second request, I pushed the call button above my head.

A young, pleasant, olive skinned stewardess came to my seat and politely asked if I would gather my possessions and come forward because the control tower had asked that I debark first. “You can sit next to me by the door while we land,” she said.

I obeyed, of course, but I wondered what it was all about. Why was I being singled out?

We landed and taxied to a spot fifty or so yards from a terminal building. The door folded downward to almost touch the ground with the stairs built into the door. I looked out.

Surrounding the bottom of the stairs were five men in green uniforms. Four held automatic weapons with wire handles for gunstocks and the one directly at the foot of the stairs a sidearm.

I turned questioningly to the stewardess. “What’s happening,” I said.

“We were instructed that you should debark first alone.”

“Why?”

She shrugged and maneuvered in the small space by the door so I could not withdraw. Reluctantly I began to descend the stairs. The men stared at me or toward the terminal building across the tarmac. When I reached the bottom, I said hello to the man with the side arm and smiled wanly. I did not speak Spanish.

Nobody spoke. The four men with machine guns gathered on either side and behind me. The man in charge motioned curtly with his arm that I was to follow him.

Together we walked across the tarmac, one in front, two on either side, and two behind me, and up the stairs and across the veranda and entered the terminal building. They led me to a counter. A man in green uniform behind the counter said “pasaporta.” I didn’t have one. Neither Mexico nor Belize required one, and I hadn’t planned on stopping in Guatemala.

I laid out my ticket, Missouri driver’s license with awful picture, and other identification. The five armed men still surrounded me. Any proof of who I was or that I even existed was on the counter. The man in green picked up everything and left the room. All he had ever said to me was, “pasaporta.”

Several tense minutes passed, and a lovely young lady in a blue skirt and white blouse came back through the door where the man in green had taken my identification. She handed my papers back to me and said in perfectly lilted English, “We held the flight to Belize for you. It’s waiting outside.”

“My baggage,” I stammered.

“Your baggage is being moved now. Everything is being taken care of.”

“Thank you,” I said and motioned as if to ask where the plane was I was to board.

She said something in Spanish to the leader of my escorts, who motioned curtly that I was to follow him. Together we walked out of the terminal, one in front, one on either side, and two behind me, and crossed the veranda, down the stairs, and across the tarmac to where a twin engine plane with its engines running and its door stairs open and down awaited us. I climbed the stairs and looked back. The four men with machine guns surrounded the bottom of the stairs and the leader stood at the bottom of the stairs just as they had greeted me.

The door closed and we took off for Belize City. The rest is still a mystery.