It’s about the distance between panic and patience; and how, in travel and in life, that distance can sometimes feel like the longest journey of all.
By Raphic Burdo
The call came late on a Friday evening in Islamabad, when I had almost convinced myself the week was over. My phone rang just as I was stepping out of my office. The voice on the other end was official, measured, and entirely final.
“Sir, you’ll need to be in Kuala Lumpur by Sunday morning.”
The news jolted me. A top government functionary, the kind of person everyone refers to as VVIP, was to visit Malaysia the next evening. I was to reach ahead of him to ensure everything was in place: the arrangements, the meetings with Malaysian IT firms, the business conference TechConnect where I had to present Pakistan’s IT brief.
I hung up the phone and sat still for a while. My body was in Islamabad, but my mind had already begun its journey east.
I packed in haste, half consciously, half absent-mindedly. I bought a few things from a nearby mall, though I barely remember what. Shirts, maybe a new tie. I stuffed them into my suitcase along with the suits and files.
My wife watched quietly, her face wearing the kind of concern that doesn’t need words. As I zipped the bag, she tied a black fabric band to its handle.
“You’ll recognize it easily,” she said. “Everyone’s luggage looks the same.”
I remember smiling faintly. It was such a small, tender act — a gesture of care that, in the rush of departure, felt unnecessary. By the time I would remember it again, that little strip of cloth might have gone missing.
I landed at Kuala Lumpur International Airport around half past twelve on Sunday afternoon, after a sleepless night through Bangkok. The air was warm and damp — a sudden, heavy welcome.
Two officers from the Pakistan Embassy were waiting to receive me. We greeted one another with polite smiles and hurried towards the baggage claim.
The first belt passed. Then the second.
Bags came and went.
The crowd thinned, and silence crept into the hall.
Mine never appeared.
We waited another half hour, scanning every piece of luggage that rolled by. The belt’s hum began to sound mocking.
One of the officers asked, “Sir, are you sure you recognize your bag?”
“Yes,” I said. “It has a black fabric band on the handle. My wife ties it every time.”
We checked the end of the belt where unclaimed luggage is placed. Nothing.
“Sometimes bags are misplaced,” another officer said, lowering his voice. “Sometimes they… disappear.”
I frowned. “Disappear?”
He hesitated before adding, “If there’s something valuable inside, it attracts attention.”
I paused for a moment before admitting, “A few thousand dollars. Just travel cash.”
The officer’s expression changed instantly. “Sir, you shouldn’t keep money in a checked bag,” he said, trying to stay respectful.
It was a lecture I couldn’t argue with.
Two hours passed before we decided to lodge a formal complaint. At the customs desk, an officer told us, “This isn’t our department.” At the airline counter, another asked us to wait. There was a kind of bureaucratic serenity to their indifference — as if losing a bag were a natural part of travel.
As we walked back through the near-empty hall, I glanced at a few bags lying abandoned near the belt’s end. Something urged me to stop.
“I’ll just check the tags,” I said, more to myself than anyone else.
The first tag I turned over had my name on it.
For a moment, I simply stared. Then I laughed, half in disbelief, half in relief. The officers clapped politely, one of them saying, “Sir, I told you it must be around.”
As I lifted the bag, I noticed that the black fabric band was gone.
It must have come loose during the rough handling. It was a small, ordinary thing, undone somewhere between Islamabad and Kuala Lumpur.
Yet its absence struck me. That missing strip of cloth was the reason I hadn’t recognized my own belonging.
Another officer suggested we check the cash, but I waved him off. “No, no. Let’s get to the hotel. We’re already late.”
At the hotel, I opened the suitcase the moment I entered my room. I found the clothes, the files, the souvenirs but not the envelope.
I searched again. And again.
Then I began pulling everything out, scattering it across the floor like a frustrated customs officer.
Nothing.
My stomach tightened. It wasn’t only the loss; it was the realization that I had done something foolish by leaving money where I shouldn’t have, trusted carelessness to duty.
I sat on the bed, head in my hands, thinking of my wife’s warnings, of my son’s lost suitcase in Los Angeles, of all the family stories about luggage that never returned.
I felt a quiet humiliation more than panic.
After a while, I decided to shower before the evening’s business dinner. I stood before the mirror: unshaven, tired, and faintly absurd.
I opened my shaving kit.
There, tucked neatly under the razor, was the white envelope.
For a few seconds I didn’t move. Then I picked it up, opened it, and counted. Every single dollar was there.
I leaned against the sink and laughed softly, almost in disbelief.
Later, sitting by the hotel window, I watched Kuala Lumpur’s skyline dissolve into twilight: towers glowing, traffic gliding, rain beginning to fall like threads of silver.
I realized that I hadn’t really lost my money. I had lost something subtler: my calm.
The missing fabric band suddenly came to mind again. How easily it had come undone, how quietly it had slipped away. It felt like a metaphor for the fragile knot that holds our composure together during chaos.
In the rush of duty and travel, I had let worry take charge, and for a while it had ruled me completely.
Finding that envelope wasn’t just recovery. It was a quiet reconciliation with myself.
Sometimes, I thought, we mistake our own fear for fate. We call things lost when they’re only misplaced; not in the world, but in our own cluttered state of mind.
And when we stop to breathe, we often find what we’re looking for — right where we left it.
Author’s Note
This story is not about a lost bag, or a found envelope. It’s about the distance between panic and patience; and how, in travel and in life, that distance can sometimes feel like the longest journey of all.
Short Story: Birthday of a Unicorn
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Raphic Burdo is a poet and writer, hailing from a remote village of Sindh province of Pakistan
