On the Aeroplane Steps

On 27 April 2009, after I had completed the scholarship formalities and received the tickets, there was nothing left for me to wait for.

It was time to travel.

And that was when fear began to creep in.

Throughout the previous months, I had been chasing my dream, knocking on doors, waiting and trying… but I had given little thought to what would happen if the door actually opened.

Now it was real. I was leaving.

I would be leaving my mother, my siblings, my friends, my homeland and the entire world I knew… for the first time in my life, and for a period I knew would be no less than a year.

When the moment of departure came, I tried to hold myself together, but I wept as I embraced my mother, my sisters and brothers, and said goodbye to my dear friends who had gathered in the majlis.

I asked them to take care of themselves… and entrusted my mother to their care.

Then I stepped outside.

I sat in the back seat of the car, closed the door, and silence fell… amid a tangle of emotions.

The car pulled away from my father’s farm in Qiddiya towards King Khalid International Airport. It was sunset.

I turned towards the window… and began bidding farewell to my world.

In the light of the setting sun, Tuwaiq Mountain—so familiar to me after all those years—passed before my eyes… the Suspension Bridge, the Television Tower, the Diplomatic Quarter, King Saud University… the cars and people, then the Northern Ring Road with the exits I knew… the towering palms and streetlights standing in rows along its central reservation, passing before me one after another.

They were not merely places; they were memories, people, moments and days of my life.

I watched them disappear behind the car window…

As though I were seeing them—and leaving them—for the last time.

We arrived at the airport.

At the boarding gate, I stood looking at the aeroplane, my eyes flooded with tears.

At that moment, I remembered #Talal_Maddah:

“On the aeroplane steps, I wept—I could not help but weep for those dear to my heart when they bade me farewell.”

Only then did I understand those words.

Some songs stay with us for years… yet we do not truly understand them until we live them.