People were on their feet, getting their bags from the overhead compartments. It wasn’t the usual crowd of people, shoulder to shoulder, and I was able to ease my way past them so I could be almost the first person off. The door opened and bright light and warm air flooded in as people exited.

I stopped for a split second at the door. There was a set of stairs pushed up to the plane and we were exiting onto the tarmac. I could see that we had come to a stop well away from the terminal. I climbed down and a flight attendant was at the bottom, directing us toward the building. It was surrounded by planes, and other aircraft dotted the tarmac. Most were commercial planes, but I could also see big military aircraft, and there were men and machines unloading skids laden with what I hoped were relief supplies. Farther away was a whole fleet of helicopters. That made sense. I knew that the airport in Phuket was closed. The helicopters would probably be used to ferry the supplies from here to there…and getting from here to there was my next challenge, as well.

Here I was in Bangkok. All I needed was a way to get to Phuket. I figured the answer was somewhere inside the terminal. I followed the little line of people inside. Most went off in one direction to claim their luggage. Everything I needed was in my carry-on bags.

I skidded to a stop. Inside the terminal there were people everywhere. It wasn’t that I didn’t know about crowds. I lived in New York, after all. I’d traveled through airports around the world. But this was different.

All of the seats in the waiting areas were taken, and people were sitting and lying on the floor. The place was jammed to the rafters with tourists—most of them very noticeably white in an Asian country, and all of them wanting to get home. Some were in filthy clothes, or their hair was all matted and sticking up in a thousand directions. Others were in mismatched clothing or looked as if they’d just come off the beach and had nothing to change into.

Despite the size of the crowd there was hardly any noise. The normal buzz of an airport was somehow missing. Instead there was an eerie silence. People were speaking in quiet tones, as though they were in a church or at a funeral. A funeral. How many of these people had lost somebody? I didn’t have time to think about any of that. I couldn’t think about anything except what I had to do. I had to keep moving.

I passed by a long line of people waiting to use a bank of pay phones. People were trying to call home. I thought about my parents maybe waiting in a similar line somewhere trying to do the same thing…somewhere…they could be here! Quickly I scanned the line, looking for my father or mother or even my brother—my father might be sitting somewhere with my mother and they would have let my brother call. I looked around. I didn’t see them.