British Airways Flight 6555 to Damascus

It must've been a cruel joke by British Airways. How could someone in their right mind schedule a flight to Damascus, the capital of Syria, followed immediately by a flight to Tel Aviv both at Gate 22 in Terminal 4?!? (For clarification, Gate 22 is at the end of a long, long, long hallway and is practically disconnected from the rest of the terminal.)

Well, it happened last night at Heathrow Airport. When we arrived at Gate 22, we sat down 90 minutes before our flight and started to get concerned by the increasing number of Syrians arriving and staring (yes, really, really staring) at me in my kippah.

I had planned on doing my Hebrew homework while waiting at the gate but quickly decided against it. I was getting increasingly nervous as more and more Syrians showed up and the glares increased.

Then it happened! The flight was cancelled! I said to Jen, "Let's get out of here!" And so we rapidly walked back to the main terminal, hearing the shouts and seeing the tears of upset Syrians who would not be going home. I thought that BA might as well say, "We're not flying to Syria because of the Israelis and, especially, those Jews sitting right there!"

We made it safely to the main terminal and I was glad we'd made the decision to run.

Ultimately, the time grew nearer to our flight and more Israelis showed up so the demographic balance wasn't necessarily in our favor, but we weren't the lone outsiders. It was an awkward and strange situation, to say the least.